[tor-bugs] #19646 [Obfuscation/meek]: Mac OS: wrong location for meek browser profile

[Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki]

#19646: Mac OS: wrong location for meek browser profile
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------
 Reporter:  mcs                                  |          Owner:  dcf
     Type:  defect                               |         Status:
                                                 |  needs_review
 Priority:  Medium                               |      Milestone:
Component:  Obfuscation/meek                     |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal                               |     Resolution:
 Keywords:  tbb-regression, tbb-6.0-issues,      |  Actual Points:
  meek, TorBrowserTeam201611R                    |
Parent ID:                                       |         Points:
 Reviewer:                                       |        Sponsor:
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------

Comment (by mcs):

 Replying to [comment:15 dcf]:
 > Does it make sense to remove the check for `torDataDirFirefoxProfilePath
 != ""`, and just make `TOR_BROWSER_TOR_DATA_DIR` and
 `torDataDirFirefoxProfilePath` the primary way of choosing the path on all
 platforms? `firefoxProfilePath` can remain as a fallback, only used if
 `TOR_BROWSER_TOR_DATA_DIR` is not set. I say this because the
 [https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/brade/tor-
 launcher.git/commit/?h=bug19646-01&id=5ac452d86f93ee15ba3722afc606be862e8f3686
 tor-launcher patch] unconditionally sets `TOR_BROWSER_TOR_DATA_DIR`, and
 it's surprising that the environment variable will be ignored on platforms
 other than mac.

 This is a good question to raise. The reason Kathy and I wrote the code to
 only use `TOR_BROWSER_TOR_DATA_DIR` on OSX is because on the other
 platforms the meek browser profile is not currently located under the Tor
 data directory. On OSX, we moved the location when we changed to the
 `TorBrowser-Data` structure (#13252) because we had to do migration anyway
 and because we thought it made more sense to put the profile under
 `<tordatadir>/PluggableTransports/` (it is more hidden there and less
 likely to be confused with the main Tor Browser profile).

 Someday when we move Linux and Windows to a similar scheme (see #18367 and
 #18369) we should definitely modify `meek-client-torbrowser` to only have
 one codepath. I created a new ticket for this (#20600) as well as a parent
 ticket to track all of the related work (#20599).

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/19646#comment:16>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
The Tor Project: anonymity online