How to access PoW enabled onions on Qubes Whonix (whonix-gateway-17) : DrugHub | Torhoo darknet markets

Whonix is still shipped by default with an old Tor version lacking PoW support. This short guide will explain how to:
- Add Tor project mainline repos.
- Disable Vanguards on whonix-gateway. Vanguards is built into Tor so python Vanguards is not really needed and often it's creating issues, https://torhoo.cc/go.php?u=TDNVdlVHRnlhWE09# spotted one of them here:
/post/bc9a1db8378501e6bf97/#c-30f51cddf2994908fc

Start with a fresh whonix-gateway-17 template.

- Open whonix-gateway-17 - Xfce Terminal

#run the following commands as root
sudo su

#stop vanguards
systemctl stop vanguards

#make sure wget, curl, vim and apt-transport-https are installed
apt install wget curl vim apt-transport-https

#save Tor project signing key to /usr/share/keyrings/tor-project.gpg
#this key is needed to authenticate Tor mainline packages
#whonix-gateway-17 template has no direct Internet access, the update proxy will be used
https_proxy=127.0.0.1:8082 wget -O /usr/share/keyrings/tor-project.gpg https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89.asc

#add Tor mainline repositories
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/tor-project.gpg] tor+https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org bookworm main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tor.list
echo "deb-src [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/tor-project.gpg] tor+https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org bookworm main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tor.list

#update package database
apt update

#update packages. you should see Tor getting updated to latest version (0.4.8.10 at the time of this writing)
apt dist-upgrade

#disable python vanguards addon
systemctl disable vanguards

#mask python vanguards unit
systemctl mask vanguards

tor --version
#you should see "Tor version 0.4.8.10"

tor --list-modules
#you should see "pow: yes"

- Shut down whonix-gateway-17 (important).
- Shut down all whonix-workstation qubes and any qube using sys-whonix as net qube. Alternatively you can run "qvm-shutdown --force sys-whonix" from dom0 terminal.
- Start sys-whonix or any qube using sys-whonix as net qube. You should now be able to access PoW enabled onions without issue.
Or just reboot your system.

Tips:
- Do not remove/purge vanguards package, it will most likely break your whonix-gateway-17 template. Just disable and mask the systemd unit.
- Make sure you shutdown whonix-gateway-17 template otherwise changes won't take effect even if you restart sys-whonix.
- After Whonix team pushes any updates to whonix-gateway-17 template make sure vanguards is still disabled. Sometimes it gets re-enabled when updated. You can do this by running "sudo systemctl disable vanguards" and "systemctl mask vanguards" from whonix-gateway-17 terminal, you don't need to repeat the above process entirely.
- This guide will also work for whonix-gw-16, just replace "bookworm" with "bullseye" when adding Tor mainline repos.
- This guide may work on other Whonix setups (Virtualbox, KVM) but it hasn't been tested so there is a very small chance it will break your system.