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Re: [tor-talk] Tor already running

On 08/24/2012 06:00 PM, Robert Ransom wrote:

No.  If the Tor Browser is packaged properly for a Linux distribution,
it will be configured to use a system-wide Tor instance, and it won't
use any of the startup crap that TBB includes.
Ok. I was thinking of Tor Browser and the bundle as the same thing. To confirm, you're saying the bundle as provided is only for local installation? But wouldn't installing the browser globally necessarily conflict with Firefox? It's useful to have both... 

What do you recommend for packagers?


No.  TBB is intended to not interact with a system-wide Tor instance in any way.


Is there any reason to have multiple instances of Tor open?


* There is currently no way for any program not started by TBB-Vidalia
to determine which ports TBB-Tor is listening on, and there is no way
for any such program to determine what control-port password Torbutton
will need in order to send TBB-Tor a âSIGNAL NEWNYMâ command (required
for the âNew Identityâ command to work).  (See also
https://bugs.torproject.org/6609 .)


What's the suggested solution here? Why not write those data into a file
or environment variable?


TBB-Vidalia does write all of that information into environment
variables, which is why only programs which it starts have easy access
to it.  The control-port password will never be written to a file
because any attacker who can authenticate to a Tor instance's control
port can completely destroy its user's anonymity.
Ok, I've looked through the script. Seems like it just tells Vidalia where the Tor Browser is located. Perhaps Vidalia itself should have a flag to relaunch the browser. 
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