[graphical gui] Whonix Setup Wizard / Anon Connection Wizard - Technical Discussion

Patrick · January 21, 2018, 12:45pm

/etc/torrc.d/torrc.examples won’t fly. Tor parses it and errors out.

Patrick · January 21, 2018, 12:59pm

Please review.

iry · January 21, 2018, 6:03pm

Do we have a way to fix this?

Maybe not declare anon-connection-wizard as a dependency of whonix-setup-wizard? Both of them will be installed by default in Whonix 14 anyway, therefore, it is really rare that anon-connection-wizard does not exist when using whonox-setup-wizard.

iry · January 21, 2018, 6:09pm

Therefore, shall we only put torrc.example in /etc/tor directory instead?

Also, I find that Tor will also parse filename~, which is a backup created by some editor. Problem with that is it is too hard to realize for a user. Users think they have changed the Tor settings but actually not, they may result in using the old settings.

Shall I do a proposal to TPO to strictly parse .torrc files only?

Patrick · January 21, 2018, 6:33pm

iry:

Patrick:

Happening because anon-connection-wizard is a dependency of whonix-setup-wizard which get installed in the workstation as well.

Do we have a way to fix this?

Yes. Otherwise confuses workstation users.

Maybe not declare anon-connection-wizard as a dependency of whonix-setup-wizard? Both of them will be installed by default in Whonix 14 anyway, therefore, it is really rare that anon-connection-wizard does not exist when using whonox-setup-wizard.

Sorted in Whonix 14. Removed dependency and added to anon-meta-packages.

Patrick · January 21, 2018, 6:34pm

iry:

Patrick:

/etc/torrc.d/torrc.examples won’t fly. Tor parses it and errors out.

Therefore, shall we only put torrc.example in /etc/tor directory
instead?

Sorted. See anon-gw-anonymizer-config package.

Also, I find that Tor will also parse filename~, which is a backup
created by some editor. Problem with that is it is too hard to
realize for a user. Users think they have changed the Tor settings
but actually not, they may result in using the old settings.

Shall I do a proposal to TPO to strictly parse .torrc files only?

Yes, please. That seems more consistent. They also wouldn’t want to
parse files ending ‘.dpkg-old’ (not uncommon…).

iry · January 21, 2018, 8:42pm

Patrick Schleizer:>> Please review.>>
add new lines at the end · Kicksecure/anon-connection-wizard@b1b5c50 · GitHub>

Thank you so much for your help, Patrick!

I did a small fix:

iry · January 22, 2018, 11:55pm

It can not be reproduced when starting Tor with command: tor rather than systemd.

I will do a further investigation on it.

Patrick · January 24, 2018, 8:39pm

All the try/except blocks could use a catch-all exception at the end to handle unforeseen issues causing crashes.

except:
    print "Unexpected error:", sys.exc_info()[0]

(Not just print to console, also showing the error in the gui window to make debugging easier. Initially first perhaps verbatim, later perhaps with a “debugging information” drop-down button.)

iry · January 24, 2018, 10:02pm

https://github.com/Whonix/whonix-setup-wizard/pull/4

replace connection page with anon-connection-wizard
Remove FinishPage
Remove unused variables and logics
Avoid showing up empty page

iry · January 24, 2018, 10:16pm

Currently, there are three options use in whonix-setup-wizard: setup, repository, locale_settings.

Shall we run whonixcheck after the GUI configurations for each option? Specifically, does it make sense to run whonixcheck even after user simply change locale_settings?

iry · January 24, 2018, 10:21pm

TODO for whonix-setup-wizard:

better man and help page
autocompletion for different command line arguments

iry · January 24, 2018, 10:21pm

For long term, separate locale_settings into a standalone application.

( Hi @troubadour ! Are you interested in implementing this?! )

This may be good for Whonix internationalization in the future.

Patrick · January 24, 2018, 10:19pm

iry:

Currently, there are three options use in whonix-setup-wizard: setup, repository, locale_settings.

Shall we run whonixcheck after the GUI configurations for each option?

No. Only useful after setup.

Any maybe after repository? (Due to whonixcheck apt-get update check?)

Specifically, does it make sense to run whonixcheck even after user simply change locale_settings?

I don’t see how this makes sense.

troubadour · January 24, 2018, 10:39pm

It looks like anon-connection-wizard is broken in the last Whonix update.
At line 1456, there is a f.write('\n') which crash the script when pressing the Next button.

Yes, why not. But this might be really long term.

Patrick · January 24, 2018, 10:40pm

Possible Whonix 14 blocker:

After https://github.com/Whonix/whonix-setup-wizard/pull/4 do we now effectively auto start whonixcheck unconditionally at first boot through whonix-setup-wizard?

This very very much unwanted by Qubes for Whonix-Workstation by Joanna. (Too many popups.)
Also in Non-Qubes-Whonix we shouldn’t introduce autostart of whonixcheck in Whonix-Workstation through whonix-setup-wizard (wsw).

Patrick · January 24, 2018, 11:29pm

Minor:

https://github.com/Whonix/whonix-setup-wizard/commit/497c4aaa3f438fedf1778e10aa70a4fc4c5f75b3

Patrick · January 24, 2018, 11:43pm

from whonix_setup_wizard.tor_status import tor_status is a bug.

Untested fix.

https://github.com/Whonix/whonix-setup-wizard/commit/d61cbd76eb17c74011e41d24608ca09a2b5543dd

Please review. This may or may not also be the cause of not auto-starting acw on gateway at first boot.

Patrick · January 24, 2018, 11:45pm

        if (tor_status == 'tor_disabled' or tor_status == 'no_torrc'
or tor_status == 'bad_torrc'):

Would if not tor_status == 'tor_enabled' make sense?

Patrick · January 24, 2018, 11:55pm

We should probably remove if not whonix_setup_wizard == "":? If whonix-setup-wizard binary is no where to be found but the whonixsetup_check_for_start (same package) script is running, we should probably error out with a unhandled python exception rather than doing nothing?