[tor-bugs] #10416 [Tor]: Tor won't start on Windows when path contains non-ascii characters

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#10416: Tor won't start on Windows when path contains non-ascii characters
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     Reporter:  iktsuarpok  |      Owner:
         Type:  defect      |     Status:  new
     Priority:  normal      |  Milestone:
    Component:  Tor         |    Version:  Tor: 0.2.3.25
   Resolution:              |   Keywords:  windows, unicode
Actual Points:              |  Parent ID:
       Points:              |
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Comment (by mcs):

 Replying to [comment:6 nickm]:
 > TBB people -- can we trace what command line Tor is getting in this
 situation?  Are we losing the non-ascii characters between the launcher
 and Tor, or between Tor and the filesystem call?

 (parenthetical comment:  If I place the downloaded exe (self-extracting
 installer) in a folder that contains non-ASCII characters in its name, I
 see "Error launching installer".  So I had to extract it onto the Desktop
 and then move the "Tor Browser" folder into the non-ASCII folder.  So
 maybe the installer has trouble with non-ASCII paths too.)

 To see some debugging from Tor Launcher, edit ...\Tor
 Browser\Data\Browser\profile.default\prefs.js and add these two lines:

 user_pref("extensions.torlauncher.loglevel", 0);
 user_pref("extensions.torlauncher.logmethod", 0);

 Then open a cmd prompt and cd to ...\Tor Browser\Browser.  For non-ASCII
 characters to be displayed correctly in a console window, you need to set
 the font to Lucida Console (which can be done from the console window's
 menu) and you should set the code page to UTF-8 by executing this command:
 chcp 65001

 Then start the browser like this:
 firefox -console -no-remote

 A console window should open and you will debugging output from Tor
 Launcher, including a dump of the args that are passed to tor.  The
 problem is, I cannot tell if the paths being passed to tor are correct or
 not because the console window does not have the correct code page.  I
 will have to devise a way to capture the command line args (maybe I can
 temporarily replace tor.exe with something that does just that).

 > Also, could somebody refresh me on why this needs to be an absolute
 path?  I know I've had it explained to me before, but I didn't see the
 explanation here or on #9593 when I checked.

 Tor Launcher passes absolute paths to tor because Tor Launcher cannot
 change the current working directory, and therefore the only (seemingly)
 safe choice is to use absolute paths.  Given the kind of problem exposed
 by this bug though, it would be nice if it could figure out a way to use
 relative paths.

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/10416#comment:9>
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