[tor-talk] DisableNetwork and ControlSocket

[Stef Heibs]

Dear tor-talkers,

I run tor on a x86_64 linux. I start tor at system-startup with a torrc
nothing overly complicated, unusual is DisableNetwork 1, tor states:
DisableNetwork is set. Tor will not make or accept non-control network
connections. Shutting down all existing connections.

torrc:
ClientOnly 1
DisableNetwork 1
User tor
DataDirectory /var/lib/tor/data
ControlSocket /var/lib/tor/control
CookieAuthentication 1
CookieAuthFile /var/lib/tor/cookie
CookieAuthFileGroupReadable 1

Filesystem:
/var/lib/tor 750 owned by tor:tor
/var/lib/tor/data 700 and owned by tor:tor

The general idea  is to access /var/lib/tor/control,cookie
and employ socat as a very generic tor-controller from
wpa_cli -a to tell tor DisableNetwork 0 when wpa_supplicant
associates to a given network and vice versa.

Observation:
If tor starts with DisableNetwork 1 it creates no control
socket, which defeats the purpose of configuring it.
Switching to the default (DisableNetwork 0), the socket appears
when tor is started. I haven't looked at the source, or traced
any further. This seems like a logical flaw (if tor isn't connected
there is no need for a ControlSocket?) to me.

I am using 2.8.7, do I miss something like a security
feature? I don't use a ControlPort in this setup and
prefer to use a very generic tor-controller using filesystem
security instead of the default ControlPort at 9051.

Can someone reproduce and maybe justify?

Thanks,
S.