PT are not working with tor-browser deb/rpm

assigned to @boklm

Looking at https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/blob/tor-browser-115.12.0esr-13.5-1/toolkit/components/tor-launcher/TorLauncherUtil.sys.mjs?ref_type=heads#L138 it seems that tor-launcher is looking at the torrc-default file in the torDataDir, which is relative to the profile directory.

@pierov: how does this work on Windows when using system installs?

We don't have system installs on Windows.

Also, your investigation reminded me that this is a known issue.

System installs aren't actually supported and you're supposed to bring your own tor daemon, configure it externally from the browser and configure the browser to use that.

After creating the patch to look for system-install (tor-browser#20497 (closed), tor-browser!541 (merged)), we created tor-browser#41630, but we never had the time to fix it.

Also, it would be worth fixing torrc-defaults (#40892) while we're at it (it'll probably be necessary).

If it's going to take some time to fix this, should we enable deb/rpm packages only for nightly, until this is fixed?

Yes, that would work for me.

Also, related is the issue of using the pt_config.json instead of providing torrc-defaults (tor-browser#42357).

marked this issue as related to #40892

marked this issue as related to tor-browser#41630

marked this issue as related to tor-browser#42357

We may also run into issues with tpo/core/tor#40606 (closed) as well, unless we can force the tor daemon's working directory and use relative dir for the PTs

We may also run into issues with tpo/core/tor#40606 (closed) as well, unless we can force the tor daemon's working directory and use relative dir for the PTs

The PTs binaries are installed under /usr/lib/tor-browser so there should not be spaces in their paths. So I think we can use full path in torrc-default if needed.