Hi everyone,
Last time I wrote a tutorial on how to build an PPTP server. Now a new way to connect emerged: Shadowsocks! Shadowsocks is already a hot topic among some Chinese-speaking communities but still largely unknown to the expats I think. Here we go: the first tutorial on building a shadowsocks server in English!
After finishing this tutorial you should be able to visit blocked websites on your Windows computer using your own Shadowsocks system.
Shadowsocks is a creation by clowwindy.
Step one: First get a VPS
Get a Linux VPS. A VPS is shortened for Virtual Private Server. It’s not a whole machine (too costly!) but one portion of a machine. A 256 Ram VPS is about 60-90 USD a year and that’s all you have to pay. And if you manage to sell your shadowsocks accounts, you can even make profits!
A cheap and yet very fast and stable VPS provider is digitalocean.com. Only 5$/month for a 512mb RAM SSD VPS!
For China users, vr.org offers the best Hong Kong VPS servers.
A decent VPS provider is linode.com which provides Japan and US servers fast for China.
A cheaper choice is budgetvm.com
You need to get a VPS with linux centos, Debian or Ubuntu installed. After purchasing you will get an IP for your VPS, and a SSH (never mind those terms. Few knows what they actually are) account.
Step two: install Shadowsocks server application on your VPS
Use Putty (software name) to log on to your remote VPS using the IP and SSH account provided. And you get a DOS like black Window with a command line like this:
Type at the command line:
wget --no-check-certificate https://breakwall.net/promo/install_ss.sh
And press enter
Then type at the command line:
bash install_ss.sh
to run the script.
First the script will ask you to type a password. Then it will ask you whether to install nodejs. Press ‘y’ for yes.
After the script finishes, then all is set on the server side! So easy:-)
Step Three: run the Windows client program
Click this link https://breakwall.net/soft/yingwa.zip to download the Shadowsocks Windows client. Unzip the file and run yingwa.exe, you will get this screen:
Now fill the server with your linux VPS server IP. Fill your password you have set on the server in step two. For port number type 999
And click connect. Now open IE or chrome and enjoy your work.
Both shadowsocks server and client are open source projects hosted at github.com
