[Whonix-devel] python-stem might mess up permissions in /var/lib/tor folder?

Sat Jun 11 15:59:08 CEST 2016

It doesn't chown, but it also does not write into /var/lib/tor at all?

Cheers,
Patrick

Damian Johnson:
> Hi Patrick. Naturally I don't have information on either your script
> or system setup but nope, Stem doesn't chown anything. The only caveat
> I can think of is that if you run launch_tor_with_config() with a
> really, really old version of tor then stem will write a torrc to disk
> but that's about it.
> 
> Cheers! -Damian
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 2:05 PM, Patrick Schleizer <adrelanos at riseup.net> wrote:
>> Hello Damian,
>>
>> I would very much appreciate your help. I may have a misunderstanding of
>> how python-stem works or perhaps found a bug. It is race condition
>> happening in Qubes-Whonix related to backups. I might be able to
>> reproduce it in plain Debian, but perhaps you already know what is going
>> on here.
>>
>> Steps to reproduce:
>>
>> sudo su
>>
>> service tor at default stop
>>
>> rm /var/lib/tor/*
>>
>> run a small python-stem based script [1] as user "user":
>>
>> /usr/lib/anon-shared-helper-scripts/tor_bootstrap_check.py 127.0.0.1 9050 1
>>
>> Unexpected behavior:
>>
>> sudo ls -la /var/lib/tor
>>
>> total 10988
>> drwx--S---  3 sdwdate kvm     4096 Jun 10 20:28 .
>> drwxr-xr-x 50 root    root    4096 Jun 10 20:50 ..
>> -rw-------  1 sdwdate kvm    20442 Jun  5 05:14 cached-certs
>> -rw-------  1 sdwdate kvm  1405911 Jun 10 20:25 cached-microdesc-consensus
>> -rw-------  1 sdwdate kvm  7440585 Jun  6 19:11 cached-microdescs
>> -rw-------  1 sdwdate kvm  2359137 Jun 10 20:25 cached-microdescs.new
>> -rw-------  1 sdwdate kvm        0 Jun 10 18:58 lock
>> -rw-------  1 sdwdate kvm     3535 Jun 10 20:28 state
>> drwxrwsr-x  2 sdwdate kvm     4096 Jun 10 18:31 .tor
>>
>> Why of everything it picks sdwdate:kvm as owner:group is a mystery to
>> me. Folder /var/lib/tor/.tor is entirely undesired. Worse are the messed
>> up folder permissions.
>>
>> python-stem should not result in changes in the file system? It should
>> just connect to Tor using ControlPort / ControlSocket? How can these
>> permission issues be avoided?
>>
>> By answering to this mail, your reply will be shown on the whonix-devel
>> public mailing list for others to profit from it.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Patrick
>>
>> [1]
>> https://github.com/Whonix/anon-shared-helper-scripts/blob/master/usr/lib/anon-shared-helper-scripts/tor_bootstrap_check.py
> 