Re: Can't start Tor under Debian

[Roger Dingledine <arma@xxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2005 at 06:12:12PM +1000, Seehow Youare wrote:
> Installed Tor 0.9.6 onto Debian testing and can't get Tor to run.
> 
> Why create a user called debian-tor if root is supposed to start Tor?

Because the script "/etc/init.d/tor" is run as root, and it runs the
start-stop-daemon script, which launches tor as the debian-tor user. So
tor is never run as root.

> Selecting previously deselected package tor.
> (Reading database ... 149528 files and directories currently 
> installed.)
> Unpacking tor (from .../tor_0.0.9.6-0.woody.1_i386.deb) ...
> Setting up tor (0.0.9.6-0.woody.1) ...
> debian-tor uid check: ok
> debian-tor homedir check: ok
> 
> root@storage:/etc/init.d# /etc/init.d/tor start
> Starting tor daemon: tor...
> Mar 29 17:46:09.921 [notice] tor_init(): Tor v0.0.9.6. This is 
> experimental software. Do not rely on it for strong anonymity.
> Mar 29 17:46:09.923 [warn] /var/lib/tor is not owned by this UID 
> (113). You must fix this to proceed.
> Mar 29 17:46:09.923 [err] options_act(): Couldn't access/create 
> private data directory /var/lib/tor
> Mar 29 17:46:09.923 [err] init_from_config(): Acting on config 
> options left us in a broken state. Dying.

"grep 113 /etc/passwd"
Is uid 113 debian-tor, or is this an old debian-tor, or what? It looks
from the above like you used to have tor installed, and it probably left
its /var/lib/tor/ directory, and then you installed a new one and it's
not compatible with what used to be there?

--Roger