Tor Browser refuses to start / XDG_CONFIG_DIRS environment variable segfaults Tor Browser
More than 6 entries (each entry is devices by a colon) will segfault Tor Browser. Here is a simplified minimal example that shows how to trigger this bug.
Happening with both, Tor Browser 7.5 and 8.0a1 on Debian stretch.
segfaults:
XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=x:x:x:x:x:x:x ./start-tor-browser.desktop --debug./Browser/start-tor-browser: line 370: 3249 Segmentation fault TOR_CONTROL_PASSWD=${TOR_CONTROL_PASSWD} ./firefox --class "Tor Browser" -profile TorBrowser/Data/Browser/profile.default "${@}" < /dev/null
working:
XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=x:x:x:x:x:x ./start-tor-browser.desktop --debugThis is to show that the existence or content of the folder is unrelated here.
Relevance:
Of course nobody uses XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=x:x:x:x:x:x as their XDG_CONFIG_DIRS.
Real world example that is failing is in Whonix, where settings are pre-configured. Whonix is using:
XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=/usr/share/torbrowser-default-browser/:/usr/share/security-misc/:/usr/share/kde-apper-no-autoupdate/:/usr/share/anon-ws-kde-startmenu/:/usr/share/anon-apps-config/:/usr/share/open-link-confirmation/:/etc/xdgThat segfaults Tor Browser.
firefox-esr (from Debian stretch) does not have this issue.
#21804 (moved) was a similar issue where a long XDG_CONFIG_DIRS environment variable resulted in Tor Browser refusing to start.