[tor-talk] How to make TBB useable as "system Tor", as Tor, Vidalia, pluggable transports system level replacement?

[Patrick Schleizer <patrick-mailinglists@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi!

TLDR
----
----

We would like to use TBB as "system Tor". Using TBB not just as
integrated browser bundle, but as as Tor, Vidalia (Tor GUI), pluggable
transports replacement on the system level. For any application. Not
just the browser.

Long
----
----

Why?
----

- Most, latest technology for censorship circumvention, i.e. pluggable
transports such as meek, scamblesuite, fte, etc. will not be packaged
for Debian anytime soon.

- Pluggable transports are due to their nature too dynamically evolving.
There is a giant gap between availability of a pluggable transports and
installability from stable distributions such as Debian.

- Vidalia has been deprecated. There is no nicely looking, maintained
way to easily configure Tor and bridges anymore besides the tor-launcher
add-on.

- TBB comes with the tor-launcher add-on, which is a well maintained GUI
for configuration and troubleshooting of Tor and all sorts of the latest
and greatest pluggable transports.

- TBB comes with recent versions of Tor.

- TBB is built reproducibly.

Current Problem
---------------

At the moment, TBB is an integrated browser package. It does not
integrate well for use with other applications, with the general system.
Because,

- once you close the browser window, no other application can connect.
- it's not possible to just configure and start Tor without opening the
browser window
- once Tor is configured, you cannot start Tor without running X server

Solution
--------

Make TBB useable as "system Tor".

Related
-------

It's still an open task how to "Make TIMB and TBB/PTTBB cooperate in a
smarter way.":
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/10950

Maybe we can think of something to solve both at once.

Recently posted this as Tor trac ticket:
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/14121

That ticket also contains a few ideas how to implement it.

Since it looks like a bigger improve, I hope you excuse me duplicating
it here.

Depending on how much, complex, difficult this task is, linostar might
provide a patch to add this feature.

Feedback
--------

What do you think about this proposal in general?

Implementation
--------------

Think of the trac ticket as a generalized, non-hacky, robust solution
that can be merged into torproject mainline some day. You got any ideas
for that?

Also... Do you have any shortcuts in mind on how one could implement
this in any quicker, more hacky way?

Cheers,
Patrick

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