[tor-talk] Tor already running

adrelanos adrelanos at riseup.net
Fri Aug 24 21:51:52 UTC 2012


Robert Ransom:
> On 8/24/12, Aaron Paden <aaronbpaden at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Sorry about that. I would have searched the tracker, but I didn't see
>> it. I was thinking for a second there that you didn't have one.
>> Sometimes I fail at using the Internet.
> 
> It took me several minutes of reading the list of tickets in that
> ‘component’ to find that ticket.
> 
>> So I'm not an expert in shell or anything. I know there are a lot of
>> gotchas. It seems like it should be possible, though. Is there something
>> wrong with using pgrep or something?
> 
> Several things:
> 
> * pgrep isn't POSIX, and it isn't in GNU coreutils (as of version
> 8.13), so it probably won't exist on someone's Linux system.

That's a really esoteric thing. Any half recent Linux system will have
it installed?

If not, in long run there will (hopefully) be packages and TBB should
depend on pgrep (if decided to use it).
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/5236
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/3994

If Mike wants to fulfill the esoteric requirement to POSIX and coreutils
pre 8.13 compatible, the script could test if pgrep exists and leave
them with the current behavior.

> * pgrep only indicates that there is some process named “tor” (or
> “vidalia”) running, not that the specific Tor or Vidalia shipped in
> TBB is running.

I fail to see the problem? Please elaborate. Tor Browser should also be
compatible with system wide installed Tor/Vidalia. (i.e. apt-get install
tor vidalia)

> * There is currently no way for any program not started by TBB-Vidalia
> to determine which ports TBB-Tor is listening on, and there is no way
> for any such program to determine what control-port password Torbutton
> will need in order to send TBB-Tor a ‘SIGNAL NEWNYM’ command (required
> for the ‘New Identity’ command to work).  (See also
> https://bugs.torproject.org/6609 .)

What's the suggested solution here? Why not write those data into a file
or environment variable?


More information about the tor-talk mailing list