[tor-qa] Vidalia standalone bundles for testing (TBB 3.x "mod")

[matt at pagan.io]

> Hi everyone!
>
> We are accelerating the stable release of the TBB 3.x series because Firefox 17
> ESR is no longer supported. In order to do this we need to make sure we have
> some standalone Vidalia bundles that people can plug in so they are not too
> disoriented by the change. A lot of us have been using the 3.x series for a
> while, but plenty of people have not, and we don't want to upset them.
>
> I have spent the evening trying to get together a functional batch. I have the
> first pass available, with some known problems. Linux is able to display the
> relay map and show your hops, but I haven't been able to make it work on
> Windows or OSX yet. I would appreciate anyone figuring out what that issue
> might be, but I will also look into it more tomorrow. I assume it is not
> finding the geoip file correctly.
>
> Here's how to test these:
>
> 1. Download
>
> 2. Extract *into your TBB 3.x directory*. This is important. They may work
> outside of it, but it depends a lot on your system libs. I am sure they will
> work *in* it and that is how they are "designed" right now (though longer-term
> that will not be the case). If they work outside of your TBB 3.x directory that
> is merely surprisingly good news. (But try it anyway, for fun.)
>
> 3. Run the start vidalia script. On Windows, this is Start Vidalia.exe. On OSX
> and Linux it is start-vidalia.sh.
>
> 4. Let me know what happens!
>

The 32-bit linux version worked fine for me on Crunchbang 11 with TBB 3.5. The
exit button only closes Vidalia and is not connected to Tor Browser, which makes
sense, but might confuse some users. Another surprise was that there are no
notices in the Advanced message log, even though the basic message log lets me
know that the Tor Software is Running and I am Connected to the Tor Network. I
started Vidalia after starting Tor Browser, so of course it doesn't have the
bootstrapping messages (new notices do show up there), but it took me a second
to realize that. None of these are issues only notes.