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

[Mark Smith]

On 12/17/13 11:55 AM, Erinn Clark wrote:
> * Sherief Alaa <sheriefalaa.w at gmail.com> [2013:12:17 15:11 +0200]:
>>     �I tested this on OS X 10.9 and I had to put Vidalia's files one by one in
>>     TorBrowser.app otherwise the entire folder will be replaced (Contents) and
>>     even after that Vidalia still fails to know Tor's path.
>
> Ugh, that sounds pretty nasty. OSX 10.9 !#@%#%!.
>
>>     So I did something different, I deleted TorBrowser.app, extracted a fresh
>>     TorBrowser.app and a Vidalia-standalone folder and launched Vidalia and
>>     gave it Tor's path (/Users/MyUserName/Downloads/TorBrowser.app/Tor/tor)
>>     and it worked. After that, I opened TorBrowser.app and it also worked.
>>     Then I took a look at the activity window and it found out that there are
>>     two tor processes running.
>>     Should TorBrowser.app use an existing tor process or it needs to launch
>>     its own?
>
> It uses the existing process, I'll add the missing tor. I guess that on 10.9
> we'll have the issue with the absolute path it needs, and I can just re-use the
> same hack we had to use last time when the geoip couldn't be found.  But I'm
> not sure what to do about Contents being completely overwritten, because that
> is pretty odd behavior... and we can only use the absolute path trick if they
> are going to be in the same directory.

I don't think you need to mix the Vidalia files in with the TBB ones. 
If you are using cookie authentication, Vidalia should be able to read 
all of the tor settings without knowing where torrc is as long as it can 
(1) connect to the tor control port and (2) read the cookie auth file 
(located in TBB.app/Data./Tor/control_auth_cookie, but the location is 
discovered via the control port).  The following seems to work for me on 
Mac OS 10.8 and 10.9:

1) Place the Vidalia files alongside the TBB files, e.g.,
     .../TBB3.5/TorBrowserBundle_en-US.app
     .../TBB3.5/vidalia-standalone-0.2.21-osx/
     .../TBB3.5/vidalia-standalone-0.2.21-osx/Contents/
     .../TBB3.5/vidalia-standalone-0.2.21-osx/Contents/MacOS/
     .../TBB3.5/vidalia-standalone-0.2.21-osx/Contents/MacOS/Vidalia.app

2) Start TBB by opening TorBrowserBundle_en-US.app

3) Start Vidalia by opening Vidalia.app (if I try to open 
start-vidalia.sh, my Mac just opens the contents in the Xcode text editor).

In fact, it seems like all I really need out of the Vidalia package is 
Vidalia.app.  The key is to start TBB (and thus tor) first.

Caveat:  I am not a Vidalia expert and I don't know where it expects to 
find vidalia.conf by default, or whether it really needs a vidalia.conf. 
  If it defaults to cookie auth. on port 9151 then a lot of things 
should "just work."  That's what it seems to do....

-- 
Mark Smith
Pearl Crescent, LLC
http://pearlcrescent.com/