Mageia forum

I installed Tor package with graphical fronted application Vidalia. In the latter by attempting to start Tor? I get notification
Vidalia detected that the Tor software exited unexpectedly.
Please check the message log for recent warning or error messages".
Here is log:
апр. 28 00:12:18.684 [Notice] Tor v0.2.1.30. This is experimental software. Do not rely on it for strong anonymity. (Running on Linux i686)
апр. 28 00:12:18.684 [Notice] Initialized libevent version 2.0.10-stable using method epoll. Good.
апр. 28 00:12:18.684 [Notice] Opening Socks listener on 127.0.0.1:9050
апр. 28 00:12:18.684 [Notice] Opening Control listener on 127.0.0.1:9051
апр. 28 00:12:18.685 [Warning] /var/lib/tor is not owned by this user (atrelatensis, 500) but by toruser (482). Perhaps you are running Tor as the wrong user?
апр. 28 00:12:18.685 [Warning] Failed to parse/validate config: Couldn't access/create private data directory "/var/lib/tor"
апр. 28 00:12:18.685 [Error] Reading config failed--see warnings above.

u can use tor portable for linux https://www.torproject.org/download/dow ... l.en#linux
or change the owner /var/lib/tor

Hi,

I had this similar issue in mandriva 2011 and MGA1. Nothing new in MGA2 there
It sounds to me like the packaging is qomehow faulty as it does not create the directories needed for Tor to be usable by end user, or it doesn't do the correct sudo stuff when starting ...
I never found what was the good solution and generally ran this tool as root.... (yes, you can kill me, men ! ) Quite annoying for a sofware available from the repo....

At least it's not .... end user friendly .... This kind of stuff is what make linux afwull to newbies...
I now almost never use tor anymore so .... no more worries ...

regards.

Maybe just add your normal user to the group "toruser" or read some documentation how it should be setup or how it should work instead of complaining that it's not friendly for endusers? Being an enduser doesn't mean you don't need to read any documentation. Also probably newbies don't normally run tor on their own machines, and if you want to run something like that, you should have at least a basic knowledge and know what you're doing.

Apart from that, maybe all of you want to take a look at vidalia

Also, none of you told what you want to setup, a normal relay or a bridge relay?

as a client only Tor(and for info to others reading this) i would stick to what Doktor has already suggested, use the portable version of Tor.

Tor is great for good anonymity, but there are weaknesses.

those weaknesses are easily exposed if you use tor as an optional item to your existing browser, ie tor button.

also the Mageia version may not be the latests version, and you have to wait for updates.

The portable version stops this being a problem, and runs a private version of the browser, and vadalia client.

you can update it regularly (its just a tarball that untars to a usb stick)

You can remove it from your system, and use it elsewhere. (PS with many governments (UK and US) now planning to implement web monitoring we should all be thinking of using Tor) the perception of if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear is simply not true.

regards peter

I agree, if you do not setup a bridge relay, so using a portable Tor Browser Bundle is a best solution. It is independent from distribution, many ones (Mageia, Ubuntu) have an older version in their repositories. You receive yet one item of Firefox with TBB,clear of any personal setting, so haven't to worry concerning reveling personal dates, which may be stored in your main Firefox instance.
What concerning Vidalia, so it was indeed the source of any trouble in Mageia (both 1 and 2), package was taken from Mageia's repo. It must connect you to Tor as soon as you start it, but it didn't so.

Tor Browser Bundle works great when run off a thumb drive as well!

Excellent step-by-step information on how to configure Vidalia and use Opera with it can be found here:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=559

Having been unable to find any Mageia-specific TOR HOWTOs, I have written a HOWTO for configuring a TOR relay at my MaximumHoyt blog at https://maximumhoyt.blogspot.com/2019/11/setting-up-tor-server-on-mageia6.html.

Feedback is appreciated.

I chain both tor and privoxy on my system. I run tor as my normal user (not root). Just add your normal user to the toruser group and you should be good to go.

I start tor using vidalia. It is in the repos and it is very convenient.

Thanks!