[tor-bugs] #2824 [Tor bundles/installation]: Make Linux TBB not fail in a non-obvious manner when run as root

Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki torproject-admin at torproject.org
Fri Apr 1 02:52:35 UTC 2011


#2824: Make Linux TBB not fail in a non-obvious manner when run as root
--------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
 Reporter:  rransom                   |          Owner:  erinn
     Type:  defect                    |         Status:  new  
 Priority:  normal                    |      Milestone:       
Component:  Tor bundles/installation  |        Version:       
 Keywords:                            |         Parent:       
   Points:                            |   Actualpoints:       
--------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
 Currently, the Linux Tor Browser Bundle tarball contains files owned by a
 non-root user and its corresponding group.  This causes TBB to fail to run
 when it is unpacked and run by root (Tor sees that its !DataDirectory is
 not owned by the user that it is running as and refuses to run).
 Regardless of how absurdly bad an idea running TBB as root is, it
 shouldn't fail in such a non-obvious manner.

 There are two not-mutually-exclusive ways to fix this:

 1. Set the owner and group of every file/directory in the Linux TBB
 tarball to `root:wheel` (UID and GID 0).
 2. Add an explicit check to `start-tor-browser` to detect that TBB is
 being run as root and refuse to run, with a meaningful error message.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/2824>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
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