Please add Control Socket support

Since 0.2.2.29-beta, last remaining details to enable "Control Socket" by default on Tor have been sorted out.

This feature enables users inside Tor's group to establish a local unix socket connection to control or monitor its behavior, with no extra authentication required above basic POSIX permissions.

This is mayor feature for everyone attempting to experience or bring a painless-almost-zero-conf integration with Tor.

Since this introduces the capability to start arm with no configuration, adding Control Socket support would definitely be a great goal for end users.

added arm component::torctl controlsocket owner::aagbsn priority::high resolution::wontfix status::closed type::enhancement labels

Agreed, this would be great to have. Does the tor deb have a control socket available by default? When I asked Peter he mentioned '/var/lib/tor/control' but I'm not spotting any references to it in the debian package for experimental (tor_0.2.2.30-rc-1_i386.deb).

Regardless, we'll need to first support this in torctl (it's a simple addition). Mike, please see the bug3638 branch of my repo. In particular... https://gitweb.torproject.org/atagar/pytorctl.git/commitdiff/51508fe8573d029b231682b402c75f66e248f458

If you merge this then please assign the ticket back to me. I'll then add arm support for the option.

Cheers! -Damian

Trac:
Status: new to assigned
Owner: atagar to mikeperry

I've added control socket support to arm, putting a copy of this torctl patch into its torTools util (I'll swap to using torctl when it's available): https://gitweb.torproject.org/arm.git/commit/cca2aae001bab0e6bb09e81a4e9df11bec2bc2bb

Switching the component since the arm portion of the work is done.

Trac:
Status: assigned to needs_review
Component: arm to Torctl

I will review your tickets next week. Is that OK? Do you have more changes to make? I'd like to review them in a batch.

Is that OK?

Yup. No rush on my part, this isn't impacting arm in any way.

Do you have more changes to make?

Nope. This, 3679, and a ticket by Kamran are the only torctl changes I'm aware of. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/3679 https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/3724

Replying to atagar:

Agreed, this would be great to have. Does the tor deb have a control socket available by default? When I asked Peter he mentioned '/var/lib/tor/control' but I'm not spotting any references to it in the debian package for experimental (tor_0.2.2.30-rc-1_i386.deb).

The first release on Debian carrying the required changes to activate Control Socket by default were seen on 0.2.2.29-beta-1. Socket path itself is at '/var/run/tor/control' and, as a color note, Vidalia version on Debian experimental is also using it by default.

Thanks! Corrected the control socket path for both the torctl patch and arm.

After looking at this I'm not sure why ConnClass was added. What does it do? Is this used in arm? However, connect_socket() looks reasonable (with or without ConnClass).

Trac:
Username: robinson

After looking at this I'm not sure why ConnClass was added. What does it do?

This connect_socket method is like connect and preauth_connect which include a ConnClass in case the user wants to instantiate something other than 'TorCtl.Connection'. Iirc PathSupport has an alternative (the ConnClass argument was an addition by Mike, not me).

Is this used in arm?

Nope

Trac:
Status: needs_review to assigned
Owner: mikeperry to aagbsn

returning to needs_review

Trac:
Status: assigned to needs_review

Control socket support isn't necessary for TorFlow. Resolving.

https://blog.torproject.org/blog/torctl-deprecation-and-stem-plans

Trac:
Resolution: N/A to wontfix
Status: needs_review to closed

closed

mentioned in issue #4003 (moved)

mentioned in issue tpo/network-health/torflow#4003 (closed)