Re: Can't start Tor under Debian

[Roger Dingledine <arma@xxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Mar 30, 2005 at 04:21:02PM +1000, Seehow Youare wrote:
> >  /var/lib/tor is not owned by this UID 
> 
> >> why don't you simply
> >> $ chown 113:110 /var/lib/tor
> 
> Shazaam ! it worked ...thank you.
[snip]
> Is there a wiki that we can add the details of this thread to so 
> other people can get help ?

Hm. You're the second person to have this problem. In both cases I'm
suspecting it's user error -- you, or some program you ran, messed with
the directories in a way that made them unsuitable for Tor.

My guess is that typically this is because people install a package
(which wants to start Tor via /etc/.../init.d/tor), and then they run
tor directly from the commandline. So the Tor package has different
plans about which uid was intended to start Tor.

Putting aside for the moment the fact that the user is supposed to do
what we expect them to do, is there a way to make us more tolerant of
what users do? Maybe the first step is to have clearer log messages --
e.g. "if you really want Tor to run as user %s, then please run 'chown
%s.%s %s', as root if necessary."

What other steps could we take?

Is there a way for Tor to notice if it's installed as a package, and
prefer not to be started directly?

--Roger