a simple guid to run a shadowsocks proxy on Ubuntu

shadowsocks_on_ubuntu.md

Run a Shadowsocks Proxy Server on Ubuntu

Install Shadowsocks

It's possible to install ss-server by apt:

apt-get install shadowsocks-libev

by pip:

pip install shadowsocks

or build it from source:

sudo apt update
sudo apt intall gettext build-essential autoconf libtool libpcre3-dev asciidoc xmlto libev-dev libudns-dev automake libmbedtls-dev libsodium-dev git python-m2crypto libc-ares-dev
git clone https://github.com/shadowsocks/shadowsocks-libev.git
cd shadowsocks-libev
git submodule update --init --recursive
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
make install

Configure Server

First, we create a new system user for shadowsocks:

adduser --system --no-create-home --group shadowsocks

Then we create a folder for shadowsocks cofigurations, and add configuration file to it.

mkdir -m 755 /etc/shadowsocks
touch /etc/shadowsocks/shadowsocks.json

Then we add contents to shadowsocks.json we just created.

{
    "server":"192.0.0.1",
    "server_port":8388,
    "password":"mypassword",
    "timeout":300,
    "method":"aes-256-gcm",
    "fast_open": true
}

The datails about this json file can be found here in shadowsocks' wiki and here. As mentioned here, local_address and local_prot should not be appeared in server-side config file.

Optimize Kernel

You may want to apply some changes to /etc/sysctl.d/local.conf and run sysctl --system too. See here.

Open Ports on Firewall

We should open TCP connection to port specified in config file, 8388 in this example.

iptables

iptables -4 -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 8388 -m comment --comment "Shadowsocks server listen port" -j ACCEPT

ufw

ufw allow proto tcp to 0.0.0.0/0 port 8388 comment "Shadowsocks server listen port"

Run Server

You should be able to run ss-server like this:

ss-server -c /etc/shadowsocks/shadowsocks.json -a shadowsocks -v start

Create System Service

To make system daemon, we should create /etc/systemd/system/shadowsocks.service with these contents:

[Unit]
Description=Shadowsocks proxy server

[Service]
User=root
Group=root
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/ss-server -c /etc/shadowsocks/shadowsocks.json -a shadowsocks start
ExecStop=/usr/local/bin/ss-server -c /etc/shadowsocks/shadowsocks.json -a shadowsocks -v stop

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

And run:

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start shadowsocks

And if everything is OK, to make OS run service daemon automatically:

systemctl enable shadowsocks

Run Client

To connecent to server, download the appropriate client app from shadowsocks website and configure it based on shadowsocks.json you have created.

Termianl Client

To run client on termianl, after installing shadowsocks or shadowsocks-libev, you should be able to run sslocal with an appropriate config file like this, as mentioned here:

sslocal -c shadowsocks.json

Or:

sslocal -c shadowsocks.json -d start

Config file shadowsocks.json should be like this:

{
    "server":"my_server_ip",
    "server_port":8388,
    "local_address": "127.0.0.1",
    "local_port":1080,
    "password":"mypassword",
    "timeout":300,
    "method":"aes-256-cfb",
    "fast_open": false
}

After that, you can connect to socks5://127.0.0.1:1080 or tunnel all system's traffic throw it.

In terminal, can can use:

export http_proxy=socks5://127.0.0.1:1080
export https_proxy=socks5://127.0.0.1:1080