Hi @Denis M Goddard,

The hidden service is connecting to 127.0.0.1:8008; maybe the ssb-server is not listening on that. You could try ss -ltnp|grep 8008 or netstat -ltnp|grep 8008 to see what it is listening on. You can change the listen host by adding a "host": "..." property in the connections object alongside the "port" property.
e.g. "net": [{ "port": 8008, "host": "::", "scope": "public", "transform": "shs" }]
Or maybe you could change the torrc line, e.g. to [::1]:8080 to make it connect using IPv6

@Denis M Goddard
I don't think the ssb-server/sbot CLI can connect using the unix socket currently. (sbotc would.) It is probably trying to connect to your public IP. What you could do is change the listener host in the ssb config from 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0 or ::. But then it will be listening publicly and I'm not sure if you want that. In that case, you may be able to set "host": "127.0.0.1" in the sbot config (in the top-level config object, not in connections) - or as a CLI option, like ssb-server --host 127.0.0.1 whoami - to make it connect to 127.0.0.1. That host option has to match the host you have set in incoming.net[0] or you will get an error about conflicting connection settings.