[tor-talk] problems with TorBirdy

[Sukhbir Singh]

Bry8 Star:
> I manually change "mailnews.wraplength" inside "about:config" of TB
> (Thunderbird), from 72 to 68, but when TB is restarted it goes back
> to 72 again ! why it is not honoring my custom settings ! ?

Yup, lots of people have asked for this and we should allow users to set
their own custom length and not enforce the 72 character limit.

I have opened a ticket for this: #8318.

> I manually change "mailnews.reply_header_authorwrote" inside
> "about:config" of TB (Thunderbird), from "%s" into "Received from
> %s", but when TB is restarted it goes back to "%s" again ! why it is
> not honoring my custom settings ! ?
> 
> i manually change the "mailnews.reply_header_type", from value "1"
> into "3", but it goes back to "1" when TB restarts !

Yes, this is enforced. See:

https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2012-May/024380.html
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2012-May/024395.html

> In "OpenPGP" menu bar option in TB > Preferences > Advanced >
> Additional parameters for GnuPG :
> i change this value from :
> "--no-emit-version --no-comments --throw-keyids --display-charset
> utf-8 --keyserver-options
> no-auto-key-retrieve,no-try-dns-srv,http-proxy=http://127.0.0.1:8118
> --keyserver hkp://2eghzlv2wwcq7u7y.onion"

> And when Thunderbird is restarted, its gone back to http-proxy port
> 8118 ! why ?
> why it does not allow me to use my own custom settings ! ?

Like we discussed before in tor-dev, this is related to: #2846, #7068,
where we are just fail-closing Enigmail. At this stage, I am not sure
whether we are going to support custom settings for this as we have
plans to ship our own HTTP proxy or shim, so for now, I suggest you just
change the port on which your HTTP proxy listens to 8118, which is
TorBirdy's default.

> SOLUTION/SUGGESTION:
> 
> TorBirdy need to have a BUTTON, may be something close to "RESET",
> that will reset back all custom settings to default (Anonymity
> friendly settings).
> 
> But, TorBirdy should not automatically override a user's custom
> settings.

The design approach is that we enforce the settings we think the user
should not be changing. We have gradually allowed many settings to be
changed (like the `mailnews.wraplength' above) but I don't think we will
allow changing of all the security settings that we are configuring. As
bad as it seems, we think it is a good approach as one badly configured
setting might render the entire point of TorBirdy useless.

> And TorBirdy need to create a log file, showing what config-options
> it has set/changed and time, of change so that TB user can find/use
> his/her previous important changes/settings if need arises.

That's a good idea and we are working on this so that the operation is
more transparent. We have started updating the docs.