Hi Patrick!
I did some testing and I think I have some findings now.
First, the default value of DisableNetwork is 0.
As per: How can we help? | Tor Project | Support
DisableNetwork 0|1
When this option is set, we don’t listen for or accept any connections other than controller connections, and we close (and don’t reattempt) any outbound connections. Controllers sometimes use this option to avoid using the network until Tor is fully configured. (Default: 0)
This means there is no different between DisableNetwork 0
and
#DisableNetwork 0
.
Second, no matter the value of DisableNetwork is 0/1, when we want to
disable Tor, we can always disable it successfully without any complain.
Third, the only problem is, when DisableNetwork 1
is the final value
which will be used by Tor, we will fail to start Tor (it totally makes
sense) and cause a crash on anon-connection-wizard.
If all my findings above are correct, I propose to at least partly
forget about the DisableNetwork
in Whonix, including but not limited
to anon-connection-wizard
and whonixsetup
.
Since DisableNetwork 1
is not a value that is commonly found on the
internet, we may assume whoever uses this line has full understanding on
what it means. Thus, anon-connection-wizard does not take care of
prefixing # to all the DisableNetwork 1
lines.
Although DisableNetwork 0
is default, anon-connection-wizard may still
add DisableNetwork 0
to 40_anon_connection_wizard.torrc
when Tor
will be enabled. Why? Because it will let Tor work even there is a
DisableNetwork 1
in files which have lower priority than
40_anon_connection_wizard.torrc
.
How do you like this proposal, Patrick?