Set Shadowsocks as HTTP proxy on Raspberry Pi

This article will help you set you Raspberry Pi as a Shadowsocks client(rather than a gateway or a router in your house) to access websites blocked by GFW.

1. You should have a overseas server with shadowsocks server already installed and configured
2. Install Shadowsocks with Python

sudo pip3 install shadowsocks

3. Add a config file with basic proxy info

{
    "server":"",
    "server_port":,
    "local_port":1080,
    "password":"",
    "timeout":300,
    "method":""
}

You can store the config file as/etc/ss-config.json

4. If your meet EVP_CIPHER_CTX_cleanup error, it’s an OpenSSL used by Shadowsocks outdated version problem, see solution here

5. Start the shadowsocks process

/usr/local/bin/sslocal -c /etc/ss-config.json start

you can let this command in daemon mode with -d parameter.

6. Convert socks traffic to HTTP through Polipo

apt install polipo

add config file

sudo nano /etc/polipo/config

add following topic content at the end of the config file

socksParentProxy = "127.0.0.1:1080"
socksProxyType = socks5
chunkHighMark = 50331648
objectHighMark = 16384
serverMaxSlots = 64
serverSlots = 16
serverSlots1 = 32
proxyAddress = "0.0.0.0"
proxyPort = [ADD CUSTOM PORT HERE]

restart the polipo process

/etc/init.d/polipo restart

set HTTP and HTTPS proxy

export http_proxy='127.0.0.1:[CUSTOM PORT ABOVE IN POLIPO CONFIG]'
export https_proxy='127.0.0.1:[CUSTOM PORT ABOVE IN POLIPO CONFIG]'

to make these export commands work permanent, add them to system path.

7. Connection test

curl http://ip-api.com/json    // HTTP proxy
curl https://api.myip.com      // HTTPS proxy