[tbb-dev] Problems with and without tor-launcher

[Thomas Klausner]

On Mon, Dec 02, 2019 at 06:44:25PM +0100, Nicolas Vigier wrote:
> On Mon, 02 Dec 2019, Thomas Klausner wrote:
> 
> > > 
> > > This is a change from this ticket:
> > > https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/28044
> > > 
> > > So you can either download tor-launcher, and extract it under
> > > browser/extensions, renaming the tor-launcher-$version directory to
> > > tor-launcher:
> > > https://dist.torproject.org/torbrowser/9.0.1/src-tor-launcher-0.2.20.2.tar.xz
> > > https://dist.torproject.org/torbrowser/9.0.1/src-tor-launcher-0.2.20.2.tar.xz.asc
> > > 
> > > Or you can build without tor-launcher by adding "ac_add_options --disable-tor-launcher" 
> > > to the .mozconfig.
> > 
> > What do you recommend? I'm unclear on what tor-launcher does.
> 
> tor-launcher is the part that is responsible for configuring and launching
> the tor daemon that is included with Tor Browser.
> 
> So I think it depends how you plan to use the browser. If you plan to
> use it with a system tor daemon (not started by the browser), then
> building without tor-launcher might be an option. However I don't know
> if that really works, or if we have things depending on tor-launcher
> being there. An other option would be to include tor-launcher but
> disable it by setting the TOR_SKIP_LAUNCH environment variable to 1.

I tried enabling it (by moving it in the correct location, with
tor-browser 9.0.6 and tor-launcher-0.2.20.5) but when I start such a
tor-browser, I see:

=== Window 1 ===
Tor Launcher

Unable to start Tor.

The Tor executable is missing.

(OK)

== Window 2 ====

Wait for Tor to start...

For assistance, visit support.torproject.org/#connectingtotor

(Quit)


and then it hangs.

tor is in $PATH, and I have tor already running on that machine, both
on 9050 and 9150.

tor-launcher doesn't seem helpful in my use case (packaging for pkgsrc):

1. it doesn't find tor even though it's in $PATH
2. it doesn't notice a running tor

Is this something for which I should open bug reports?

I guess I'll disable it for the package.


One other thing:  When I start tor-browser with TOR_SKIP_LAUNCH=1, I see

"Something Went Wrong!"
Tor is not working in this browser.

but when I enter an .onion address, it works fine. What's up with that?

Cheers,
 Thomas