Info about installing it on different operating systems can be found in the `CLI README file <https://github.com/onionshare/onionshare/blob/develop/cli/README.md>`_ in the Git repository.
It is possible to automatically start OnionShare from the CLI using a systemd unit file.
You may find this particularly useful if you are operating in 'persistent' mode, and want to start the same onion service every time your machine starts.
To do this, you need to prepare some OnionShare json config first.
Here is the main OnionShare config. In this example, it's stored in ``/home/user/.config/onionshare/onionshare.json``. You may need to adjust some of the settings, but if you already have OnionShare installed, it probably looks much like this already::
{
"version": "2.6.2",
"connection_type": "bundled",
"control_port_address": "127.0.0.1",
"control_port_port": 9051,
"socks_address": "127.0.0.1",
"socks_port": 9050,
"socket_file_path": "/var/run/tor/control",
"auth_type": "no_auth",
"auth_password": "",
"auto_connect": true,
"use_autoupdate": true,
"autoupdate_timestamp": null,
"bridges_enabled": false,
"bridges_type": "built-in",
"bridges_builtin_pt": "obfs4",
"bridges_moat": "",
"bridges_custom": "",
"bridges_builtin": {},
"persistent_tabs": [
"my-persistent-onion"
],
"locale": "en",
"theme": 0
}
Notice the 'persistent_tabs' section. We will now create a file at ``/home/user/.config/onionshare/persistent/my-persistent-onion.json``, that looks like this::
**Don't actually use this private key, service_id or client_auth keys! They are shown only as an example. Never share the private_key with anyone.**
The easiest way to generate the onion address and private key is to first create a 'pinned' OnionShare tab in the desktop app and started the share for the first time. This will then have saved the persistent settings to your ``.config/onionshare/persistent/`` folder with a random name. You can unpin that tab once you've generated it the first time. Or, you can leave it where it is, and use that persistent file in your systemd unit file below.
Now you can create a systemd unit file in ``/etc/systemd/system/onionshare-cli.service``. Be sure to adjust the User and Group to your own user/group, as well as changes to any paths to the onionshare-cli binary or the paths to your JSON configs and shares.
Note that although ``/home/user/my-shared-file.txt`` was defined in the ``filenames`` section of the ``my-persistent-onion.json`` file, it's still necessary to specify it as the argument to the onionshare-cli command.
Be sure to run ``sudo systemctl daemon-reload`` after creating the unit file.
Now you can run ``sudo systemctl start onionshare-cli.service``. If you have ``journalctl`` installed, you can run ``sudo journalctl -f -t onionshare-cli``, and you should see some output of your service starting::
[...]
Feb 09 10:14:09 onionshare onionshare-cli[18852]: [6.5K blob data]
Feb 09 10:14:18 onionshare onionshare-cli[18852]: Compressing files.
Feb 09 10:14:18 onionshare onionshare-cli[18852]: Give this address and private key to the recipient:
Feb 09 10:14:18 onionshare onionshare-cli[18852]: http://niktadkcp6z7rym3r5o3j2hnmis53mno5ughvur357xo7jkjvmqrchid.onion
Feb 09 10:14:18 onionshare onionshare-cli[18852]: Private key: RHJSN4VI3NKGDSIWK45CCWTLYOJHA6DQQRQXUID3FXMAILYXWVUQ
Feb 09 10:14:18 onionshare onionshare-cli[18852]: Press Ctrl+C to stop the server
If you don't want your users to use a Private Key, set ``public`` to be ``true`` in the ``general`` settings of the my-persistent-onion.json file.
You may want to migrate your OnionShare data when switching to another computer. This is especially true if you had a 'persistent' onion address and you want to preserve it.
OnionShare stores all such data in a specific folder. Copy the relevant folder for your operating system below, to your new computer:
