Tor controller GUI (tor-control-panel)

Development
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Seconded. We missed you around here :slight_smile:

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Bug report:

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Keeping message Tor control panel Tor Status = Connected to the Tor network is confusing as it doesn’t reflect the actual state. Users expect this to be updated in real time when they open tor-control-panel.

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New tor-control-panel contributor wanted!

tor-control-panel will be deprecated unless a new contributor is found.

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@troubadour @iry anybody gonna work on this? (specially as a plus to support wayland)

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I was looking into tor-control-panel, because it could serve as base for safely editing the tor configuration files.
I am far from ready to contribute to Qt applications but I have some ideas to do long term:

  • let the user edit the torrc with a gui text editor after clicking on the Files (Logs) → torrc. Then it could verify the file and give 3 options → edit again, exit without saving, force save configuration. A gui for vitor
  • would very much like to use this on plain debian, and it currently breaks because it is creating unreadable files on /etc/torrc.d and /usr/local/etc/torrc.d. I read the thread, but I still find creating this folder uncessesary for plain debian, it does not work anyway.
  • it could be a gui send command for tor-ctrl, so user types commands directly on tor-control-panel and see responses on a qt application also.

Anyway, don’t put much hope as I am still learning and this is not my priority.

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Running Tor controller will give message:

user@host:~$ tor-control-panel 
/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/tor_control_panel/tor_bootstrap.py:116: SyntaxWarning: "is" with a literal. Did you mean "=="?
  if self.tor_controller.get_conf('DisableNetwork') is '1':
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Feature Request: Make Tor Control Panel compatible with non-whonix environment otherwise remove from kicksecure repository.

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Actually not yet fixed…

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Debian (Non-Whonix / Non-Kicksecure) support for anon-connection-wizard (ACW) and/or tor-control-panel (TCP) is difficult.

Debian doesn’t support /etc/torrc.d/*.conf drop-in folder yet:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=866187

Adding that folder through ACW / TCP would lead to AppArmor issues and therefore Tor failing to start.

ACW / TCP requires that. An alternative would be directly modifying /etc/tor/torrc but that is complex, error-prone. Therefore I won’t implement that. /etc/torrc.d/*.conf drop-in folder is in my opinion sustainable way forward.

Even if Debian supported /etc/torrc.d/*.conf drop-in folder, Whonix uses /usr/local/etc/torrc.d/*.conf for Qubes(-Whonix) support. Supporting both, /etc/torrc.d and /usr/local/etc/torrc.d folders would also make the code more complex, more time consuming to implement, test. Given that there are no co-maintainers investing brain power into this, Debian (non-Kicksecure) support probably won’t happen.

Kicksecure support is possible. For that the GitHub - Whonix/anon-gw-anonymizer-config (which handles the required AppArmor modifications to allow Tor reading /etc/torrc.d and /usr/local/etc/torrc.d folders) needs to be ported to Kicksecure which will happen at a later time. The name of that package might become anonymizer-config-dist or so. Debian (non-Kicksecure) users being OK with folder /usr/local/etc/torrc.d and installing anonymizer-config-dist could then even use ACW / TCP.

ACW / TCP in the future will probably depend on anonymizer-config-dist.

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tor-control-panel (TCP) and anon-connection-wizard (ACW) have some code duplication.

Also TCP and ACW have different code to generate torrc.

This makes maintenance difficult.

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Merge features of both tools into one. Thats the best thing.

Since they need to be compatible with wayland, so code refurbished need to be done anyway.

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Further development is required. That’s why I mentioned that. TCP package could Depends: on ACW package for shared functionality. The refactoring is easier said than done.

Both, ACW and TCP have been contributed. These contributors are now inactive.

I cannot take over maintenance of all previously contributed functionality. Therefore in the long run, ACW and TCP are at risk of deprecation / removal from Whonix.

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This is a bit better now but the bridge/proxy feature would be better if removed from TCP and solely implemented in ACW to reduce code duplication. That would help so only 1 tool needs to be tested, not both.

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