[tor-bugs] #2091 [Vidalia]: Support ControlSocket as well as ControlPort

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#2091: Support ControlSocket as well as ControlPort
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 Reporter:  arma         |       Owner:     
     Type:  enhancement  |      Status:  new
 Priority:  major        |   Milestone:     
Component:  Vidalia      |     Version:     
 Keywords:               |      Parent:     
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Comment(by arma):

 See also item n on
 https://www.torproject.org/getinvolved/volunteer#Projects

 Vidalia currently doesn't play nicely with Tor on Linux and Unix
 platforms. Currently, on Debian and Ubuntu, there is a configuration
 mechanism which allows Vidalia to override Tor's ability to start on boot
 (by sourcing /etc/default/tor.vidalia which sets RUN_DAEMON=no at the
 user's request), but full implementation of ControlPort  communication is
 still required.
 A better solution on Linux and Unix platforms would be to use Tor's
 ControlSocket, which allows Vidalia to talk to Tor via a Unix domain
 socket, and could possibly be enabled by default in Tor's distribution
 packages. Vidalia can then authenticate to Tor using filesystem-based
 (cookie) authentication if the user running Vidalia is also in the
 distribution-specific tor group.
 This project will first involve adding support for Tor's ControlSocket to
 Vidalia. The student will then develop and test this support on various
 distributions to make sure it behaves in a predictable and consistent
 manner on all of them.
 The next challenge would be to find an intuitive and usable way for
 Vidalia to be able to change Tor's configuration (torrc) even though it is
 located in /etc/tor/torrc and thus immutable. In Debian and Ubuntu we
 handle this with the aforementioned /etc/default/tor.vidalia but this
 functionality could (or should) be less distribution-specific.
 The best idea we've come up with so far is to feed Tor a new configuration
 via the ControlSocket when Vidalia starts, but that's bad because if the
 user is not using the latest Debian/Ubuntu packages, they may not have
 disabled Tor's ability to run on boot and will end up with a configuration
 that is different from what they want. The second best idea we've come up
 with is for Vidalia to write out a temporary torrc file and ask the user
 to manually move it to /etc/tor/torrc, but that's bad because users
 shouldn't have to mess with files directly.
 A person undertaking this project should have prior knowledge of various
 Linux distributions and their packaging mechanisms as well as some C++
 development experience. Previous experience with Qt is helpful, but not
 required.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/2091#comment:3>
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