[tor-talk] Any problem installing TBB & Vidalia bundle on same machine?

[Justin Aplin]

On Aug 15, 2011, at 9:37 AM, Joe Btfsplk wrote:

> On 8/14/2011 7:47 PM, Justin Aplin wrote:
>>> something like an option / preference "don't close TBB when Firefox closes" sounds like a solution.  Technically, it'd be "don't close Tor / Vidalia" wouldn't it, because "TBB" includes Tor?
>>> Firefox in TBB is dependent on Tor, but Tor (in TBB) doesn't necessarily have to be dependent on Firefox running.
>>> 
>>> Installing both,&  running one, shutting it down, starting the other is doable, but kinda pain.
>> Alternatively, as a hackish fix, you could modify your "permanent" installation to bind to ports that won't conflict with TBB. Off the top of my head, I think you'd want to pick non-default values for ControlPort and SocksPort in your torrc (with matching values in Vidalia), as well as a non-default value for proxyPort in Polipo's config file, and changing socksParentProxy (also in Polipo's config file) to point to the new value you've given to torrc's SocksPort.
>> 
>> I don't have TorButton to fenangle with on this computer, but I'm sure somewhere in its options or in about:config you can change the port it looks for Polipo on, or plug it directly into Tor's socks port if you're not using Polipo.
>> 
>> The ultimate goal here is to have your "permanent" installation of Tor/Vidalia/Polipo/Firefox/Torbutton use a completely different set of ports than TBB. Like I said, hackish, but the result should be worth it if you use both often.
>> 
>> ~Justin Aplin
> Thanks JA, that seems a possible work around (hopefully needed only temporarily - until TBB options are added).
> 
> Maybe I misunderstand, but aren't THE ports Tor uses for HTTP / SSL = 8118 and SOCKS= 9050.  So when you  say "Use a completely diff. set of ports than TBB," please elaborate for me & others.

They are the defaults, yes, but they can be overridden. You can use either SocksPort or SocksListenAddress in your torrc to specify a different port (other than 9050) for Tor to listen for SOCKS connections, and you can use proxyPort in Polio's config file to specify a different port (other than 8118) for Polipo to listen for HTTP/SSL connections on. The Polipo config option socksParentProxy specifies *where* the data received from proxyPort should be fed to, so in this case you would want it to match SocksPort, so that your HTTP/SSL data gets fed into the Tor SOCKS port.

The idea is that you could use TBB "stock", without editing any options (ie, all default ports: 8118, 9050, 9051, etc), where all data from the TBB instance of Firefox is fed into the TBB instance of Polipo on 8118, piped to the TBB instance of Tor on 9050, and controlled on port 9051 by the TBB instance of Vidalia.

What you're trying to edit is your "permanent" installations of these programs, where the data from the permanent instance of Firefox is fed into the permanent instance of Polipo on a custom port you define, piped to the permanent instance of Tor on a custom port you define, and controlled by the permanent instance of Vidalia on a custom port you define.

What you end up with is two different "sets" of Firefox/Polipo/Tor/Vidalia operating independently, which I think is what you were trying to accomplish in the first place. The only thing I'm not sure of is where Torbutton fits into all this, but I get the feeling that it shouldn't require too much fenangling with the options in the "permanent" instance's options to get things up and running.

~Justin Aplin