Re: [tor-bugs] #3945 [Tor bundles/installation]: tbb's socksport auto confuses windows users who try to use other apps

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#3945: tbb's socksport auto confuses windows users who try to use other apps
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 Reporter:  arma                      |          Owner:  erinn
     Type:  defect                    |         Status:  new  
 Priority:  normal                    |      Milestone:       
Component:  Tor bundles/installation  |        Version:       
 Keywords:                            |         Parent:       
   Points:                            |   Actualpoints:       
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Description changed by arma:

Old description:

> Now that TBB sets socksport auto, we have a number of users who try to
> use their other apps with Tor and find that port 9050 mysteriously
> doesn't work.
>
> One answer is for them to run two Tors, one that's TBB that's for
> browsing, and another that's the "system" tor for other things. That's a
> bad answer, among other reasons because we don't have a good 'system tor'
> package for them to easily install, and we don't have excess packager
> time to add one to our stack.
>
> Another answer is to tell users who want to run other apps too to go edit
> their tbb's torrc to pick 9050 as its socks port. We should explore
> exactly what steps this would take, but it's not a good long-term
> solution either.
>
> Another answer is that Tor ought to try 9050 first and fall back to
> something else if that fails to bind (or fails to be usable, per #3943).
> That answer isn't perfect since it will still produce mysterious failures
> if you try to run a Tor instance that demands to bind to 9050. But I
> think it's the best one we've got.
>
> In the mean time, perhaps we should disable the 'socksport auto' thing in
> the TBB's we ship. Or perhaps we should do that only for certain OSes,
> e.g. Windows which has a related problem already (#3941).

New description:

 Now that TBB sets socksport auto, we have a number of users who try to use
 their other apps with Tor and find that port 9050 mysteriously doesn't
 work.

 One answer is for them to run two Tors, one that's TBB that's for
 browsing, and another that's the "system" tor for other things. That's a
 bad answer, among other reasons because we don't have a good 'system tor'
 package for them to easily install, and we don't have excess packager time
 to add one to our stack.

 Another answer is to tell users who want to run other apps too to go edit
 their tbb's torrc to pick 9050 as its socks port. We should explore
 exactly what steps this would take, but it's not a good long-term solution
 either.

 Another answer is that Tor ought to try 9050 first and fall back to
 something else if that fails to bind (or fails to be usable, per #3943).
 That answer isn't perfect since it will still produce mysterious failures
 if you later try to run a Tor instance that demands to bind to 9050. But I
 think it's the best one we've got.

 In the mean time, perhaps we should disable the 'socksport auto' thing in
 the TBB's we ship. Or perhaps we should do that only for certain OSes,
 e.g. Windows which has a related problem already (#3941).

--

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/3945#comment:1>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
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