Hello, On 12/19/2011 10:32 AM, Roger Dingledine wrote:

On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 08:09:31PM +1100, tony wrote:

...

In the Tor logs for a relay, I get the following message:

Dec 19 19:42:23.662 [notice] Renaming old configuration file to "/etc/tor/torrc.orig.1" Dec 19 19:42:23.662 [warn] Couldn't rename configuration file "/etc/tor/torrc" to "/etc/tor/torrc.orig.1": Permission denied

I've played around with file permissions but it doesn't help.

Tor seems to be working. Does the error matter?

Running Tor on a Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS

Sounds like you're using the standard Tor deb and then using Vidalia (or maybe arm) as the gui. That's fine, but the standard Tor deb doesn't have write access to its torrc configuration file (everything in /etc is supposed to be read-only from the perspective of normal programs).

Even with this configuration, you can use Vidalia to change the configuration of the Tor that is running. Next time you start Tor it won't remember the changes you made. But when you attach Vidalia to it, Vidalia will try to make the changes again. I'm not sure if the previous sentence is entirely accurate anymore.

So if you're happy with how things are going, it's fine.

Thank you for this very, very helpful answer. I find it very hard to understand how tor and Vidalia (and arm) interact exactly within the OS (pointers to documentation about that are welcome). In the above case, who is trying (and failing) to edit the torrc, is it Vidalia or tor?

If you want to change Tor's configuration long-term, you should either edit your torrc file yourself or [...]

Am I correct to say that if I do that, then when launching Vidalia it will try to over-ride the settings in "/ect/tor/torrc" with its own, which (I guess) it stores within "~/.vidalia/" ? Thank you for your explanations and the continued inspiration. Olivier.