This doubletalk is driving me nuts

Ted Smith teddks at gmail.com
Thu Jun 4 17:31:34 UTC 2009


On Thu, 2009-06-04 at 13:28 -0400, Praedor Atrebates wrote:
> I have just built and installed tor-0.2.1.15-rc in replacement for my previous 
> 0.2.0.34 version.  
> 
> Nothing has changed from before this upgrade, not the location or entries in 
> my torrc, not the perms on tor, not the perms on /var/lib/tor, etc.  When I 
> try to start tor via vidalia, it now fails with messages:
> 
> Jun 04 13:23:43.160 [Warning] Error setting groups to gid 85: "Operation not 
> permitted".
> Jun 04 13:23:43.160 [Warning] If you set the "User" option, you must start Tor 
> as root.
> Jun 04 13:23:43.160 [Warning] Failed to parse/validate config: Problem with 
> User value. See logs for details.
> Jun 04 13:23:43.160 [Error] Reading config failed--see warnings above.
> 
> 
> I have a "toruser" group set on my system.  I am a member of the toruser 
> group.  It worked before, but now it doesn't.  Then there is the doubletalk - 
> "you must start tor as root" !!!!????  I read that it is a bad idea and 
> totally unnecessary to run tor as root and here this message is telling me I 
> MUST run it as root all of a sudden.  
> 
> I want vidalia to start tor when I run it as a mere user who happens to be a 
> member of the toruser group.  How do I do this?  Nothing I do with the vidalia 
> settings changes anything and I am still prevented from running tor and I will 
> not run it as root.  
> 
> Someone, please explain/help?
> 
> thx
> praedor
> 

If you set the "User" option in torrc, Tor will try to change uid to
that user. That capability is only available to the root user. If you
want to run Tor as a lower user from the start, unset the "User" option.
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