polipo-tor deb/ubuntu native package

[travis+ml-tor-talk at subspacefield.org]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 12:03:58AM -0500, andrew at torproject.org wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 07, 2011 at 03:21:22PM -0800, travis+ml-tor-talk at subspacefield.org wrote 15K bytes in 259 lines about:
> There has been much discussion over a combined tor and polipo package,
> as well as a vidalia-tor-polipo package for deb-based systems.  

Well, I just saw the vidalia ubuntu packages lately, and I think I'll
make it a recommended package for my polipo-tor package, since vidalia
doesn't seem apropos for headless servers, for example (I could be
wrong; only installed it recently).

> The core issue is that packages should not overwrite other packages
> config files.

I don't; I just installed to parallel files such as /etc/polipo-tor.

In other words, it installs polipo, tor, and a bunch of other
dependencies, and then installs a parallel set of config files,
/var/run pid files, and log files so that it doesn't interfere with
the installed polipo.  It also runs on a different port (8118 instead
of polipo's default of 8123).

To make it ridiculously easy for people, I created my own repo here:

http://www.subspacefield.org/packages/ubuntu/

Just follow the instructions, sudo aptitude install polipo-tor,
install torbutton (or whatever), and go.  Should take all of one
minute to get up and running.

> We've generally assumed (wrongly) that linux users
> understand their system and can handle manual configuration of a few
> packages, such as tor, polipo, and vidalia.  The general answer for
> users who just want a tor client is to use the tor browser bundle.

I understand; I'm old school, I used to track all third-party sources
via CVS, but it just doesn't scale very well.  Nowadays if it's not in
a repo, it doesn't exist for most people - it's beyond their
level of interest.  I understand both points of view.

> The real answer is to fix firefox so it doesn't need a proxy between it
> and Tor.  We patch firefox to do just this in the osx and linux tor
> browser bundles.  Polipo was a fine kludge until either we started
> patching firefox or mozilla fixed their many-years-old socks bug.

Hmm, I had no idea this was even available for Linux.

It looks like a tarball - it's unclear how this will interact with a
package manager, which likes to know which packages installed which
files, and updates them automatically, etc.

> The great thing about free software is that you're welcome to do just
> what you're doing.  You don't like the situation, so you solve it.
> Great.

Thanks. ;-)  I believe in do-ocracy.

So, now I've brought the level of effort down to one minute or less,
and the level of thought down to something you can do while drunk and
sleep-deprived, since there's no decisions required.

So how do I make people aware of the option?
-- 
Effing the ineffable since 1997. | http://www.subspacefield.org/~travis/
My emails do not usually have attachments; it's a digital signature
that your mail program doesn't understand.
If you are a spammer, please email john at subspacefield.org to get blacklisted.
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