[tor-talk] Use of socat and tor-resolve with Tor

[whistler]

I have been using socat to torify connections.  Since I was unsure
where a network address was being translated, I supposed that I could
avoid the issue by first using tor-resolve to translate the address to
a numerical IPV4 address, and then pass that to socat. 

I have now been told that this use of tor-resolve is unnecessary, and
am hoping that a knowledgeable member of this list will confirm or
deny this, and perhaps explain what is going on. 

To be specific, I have been using:

SERVER="`tor-resolve news.mixmin.net`"
PORT=563
LISTEN_PORT=$STUNNEL_PORT

socat TCP4-LISTEN:${LISTEN_PORT},bind=localhost,range=127.0.0.1/32,fork \
  SOCKS4A:127.0.0.1:${SERVER}:${PORT},socksport=9050 > ${TMP}/socat_log.$$ 2>&1 &

whereas it has been suggested that I just use:

socat TCP4-LISTEN:${LISTEN_PORT},bind=localhost,range=127.0.0.1/32,fork \
  SOCKS4A:127.0.0.1:news.mixmin.net:${PORT},socksport=9050 > ${TMP}/socat_log.$$ 2>&1 &

Thanks

Whistler