How to run tor arti with g3 http proxy

2025-09-01Updated: 2025-09-022 min

Table of Contents

Introduction🔗

Short description how to use tor with an http proxy.

The solution uses 3 parts.

arti
g3proxy
Any Software which can use an http proxy

This picture shows how the setup looks like.

  
---
config:
  look: handDrawn
  theme: neutral
---
flowchart LR
  A[Client] -->|HTTP-protocol| B[g3] -->|SOCKS-protocol| C[arti] --> D[TOR-Network] --> G[Original Destination]
  E[Client] -->|HTTP-protocol| B[g3]
  F[Client] -->|HTTP-protocol| B[g3]

  D[TOR-Network] --> H[Original Destination]
  D[TOR-Network] --> I[Original Destination]

  J[Client] -->|SOCKS-protocol| C[arti]
  K[Client] -->|SOCKS-protocol| C[arti]

arti🔗

Cite from arti Homepage

Arti is a complete rewrite of the C Tor codebase, and it is currently under active development. It is written in Rust, and it is designed to be modular, reusable, and easy to audit.

You will need to build arti to run arti 😄. I run the setup on an ubuntu based distribution because of that will I use here the apt command.

This is a small and short summery from the original compiling-arti Page.

# clone the repo
git clone https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/arti.git

# navigate to the directory
cd arti

## install some necessary packages 
sudo apt install libsqlite3-dev

cargo build -p arti --release

tip

tip

Maybe you will need to run the build and install process several times to add all required dependencies to the host where you build arti

g3proxy🔗

You can download prebuild packages for g3proxy or build your own. I have choose to build it.

git clone https://github.com/bytedance/g3
cd g3

sudo apt install liblua5.4-dev capnproto libc-ares-dev

cargo build

tip

tip

Maybe you will need to run the build and install process several times to add all required dependencies to the host where you build g3

g3proxy have a lot more configuration options then shown here which can be seen in there README

config🔗

g3 requires an configuration file.

---
runtime:
  thread_number: 2

log: stdout

server:
  - name: http_proxy
    escaper: default
    type: http_proxy
    listen:
      address: "[::]:10087" # <<<< http-proxy listening port
    tls_client: { }   # Open layer-7 https forward forwarding support

escaper:
  - name: default
    type: proxy_socks5
    proxy_addr: "[::1]:9150" # <<<< arti listening port

Runtime.🔗

After both tools (arti, g3proxy) are now build start 2 shells and run in one arti and in the other g3.

shell 1 arti

/datadisk/git-repos/arti $
# target/release/arti proxy
2025-09-01T15:11:17Z  INFO arti::subcommands::proxy: Starting Arti 1.5.0 in SOCKS proxy mode on localhost port 9150 ...
2025-09-01T15:11:17Z  INFO tor_memquota::mtracker: Memory quota tracking initialised max=8.00 GiB low_water=6.00 GiB
2025-09-01T15:11:17Z  INFO arti_client::client: Using keystore from "/home/alex/.local/share/arti/keystore"
2025-09-01T15:11:17Z  INFO tor_dirmgr: Marked consensus usable.
2025-09-01T15:11:17Z  INFO tor_dirmgr: Loaded a good directory from cache.
2025-09-01T15:11:17Z  INFO arti::subcommands::proxy: Sufficiently bootstrapped; system SOCKS now functional.
2025-09-01T15:11:17Z  INFO arti::socks: Listening on [::1]:9150.
2025-09-01T15:11:17Z  INFO arti::socks: Listening on 127.0.0.1:9150.
2025-09-01T15:11:17Z  INFO tor_dirmgr: Marked consensus usable.
2025-09-01T15:11:17Z  INFO tor_dirmgr: Directory is complete. attempt=1
2025-09-01T15:11:17Z  INFO tor_guardmgr::guard: We have found that guard [scrubbed] is usable.
2025-09-01T15:11:18Z  INFO arti::reload_cfg: Successfully reloaded configuration.
2025-09-01T15:11:28Z  INFO tor_guardmgr::guard: We have found that guard [scrubbed] is usable.

shell 2 g3proxy

/datadisk/git-repos/g3 $
# target/debug/g3proxy --config-file g3proxy/examples/chain_socks_proxy/g3proxy.yaml

Now can you configure the Browser to us the http proxy on 127.0.0.1:10087 and you can run a test with curl

  
---
config:
  theme: neutral
---
flowchart LR
  A[`curl`] -->|`127.0.0.1:10087`| B[g3] -->|`SOCKS`| C[arti] --> D[TOR-Network] -->|`https`| G[https://check.torproject.org/]

shell 3

# curl -sSL \
    --proxy 127.0.0.1:10087 \
    https://check.torproject.org/ \
    |egrep -i cong

      Congratulations. This browser is configured to use Tor.
      Congratulations. This browser is configured to use Tor.

some thoughts🔗

As curl supports also the SOCKS protocol can you tell curl to use the SOCKS protocol, but there are some applications out there which do not support SOCKS protocol but HTTP protocol for proxying requests, for such applications are this setup helpful.
In the World are also some other tools out there which supports HTTPS–>SOCKS transformation like privoxy’s forward-socks5. I choose g3 just because it’s quite small and written in rust 😄.