Tor Control Panel

Qubes-Whonix
1

The Tor Control Panel won’t open anymore after the update.

1 Like
2

Cannot reproduce issue here on Whonix-Gateway on VirtualBox. Could you try running tor-control-panel from a terminal window and share the text printed in the terminal window after you do that?

1 Like
3

Thanks. I investigated the issue further and found several related problems after the recent update.

First, tor-control-panel was crashing with:

File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/tor_control_panel/torrc_gen.py”, line 136, in parse_torrc
if line[1].startswith(‘meek_lite’):
IndexError: list index out of range

The cause was an incomplete line in:

/usr/local/etc/torrc.d/40_tor_control_panel.conf

It contained:

Bridge

with no bridge data after it. After deleting only that empty Bridge line, tor-control-panel started normally again.

However, I then noticed that my previously configured custom obfs4 bridges had disappeared after the update and had been replaced by a list of built-in obfs4 bridges. I did not add those bridges manually.

I also tried to restore my custom bridges through Anon Connection Wizard:

  1. Selected custom bridges.
  2. Added the full obfs4 bridge lines.
  3. Clicked “Next”.

The wizard then closed immediately without saving the configuration. There was no visible error message. tor-control-panel also did not apply the custom bridges.

As a workaround, I manually restored my bridges in:

/usr/local/etc/torrc.d/40_tor_control_panel.conf

The current working configuration is:

DisableNetwork 0
UseBridges 1
ClientTransportPlugin obfs4 exec /usr/bin/obfs4proxy
Bridge obfs4 [redacted custom bridge 1]
Bridge obfs4 [redacted custom bridge 2]

After restoring the custom bridges manually, Tor connects successfully and the control panel opens normally.

So there appear to be three related issues:

  1. tor-control-panel crashes on an incomplete Bridge directive instead of reporting an invalid configuration.
  2. Custom bridges were replaced by the built-in bridge list after the update.
  3. Anon Connection Wizard closes after pressing “Next” and does not save custom bridges.
4

Valid point. @troubadour is this something you could look into?

I’ll try to reproduce this.

I tested this before the tor-control-panel update was allowed through and was not able to reproduce this issue. I’ll test again just in case though.

1 Like
5

It happened here, although with different symptoms.

Was fixed with installing to-control-panel from the Whonix testers repository.

Not sure that will work, but it’s worth a try. If you don’t how to do it, you can ask, but preferably, search in the documentation.

Then:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install tor-control-panel

Once done, you can revert to the stable repository (recommended).

1 Like
6

@troubadour

Do I understand correctly that I need to enable Community testing templates and update only tor-control-panel?
Do I understand correctly that I will only update tor-control-panel? And then I will return to the stable repository without unnecessary software?

Or should I wait for the stable repository to be updated, since at the moment I am not experiencing difficulties with this, the bridges I integrated via the config file

7

Unspecific to Qubes.

Stable repository has latest version.