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Re: Configuration errors using tor, privoxy & polipo



On 16/05/10 22:13, Juan R. de Silva wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2010 07:52:06 -0400, Snood wrote:

On 05/16/2010 11:34 AM, Juan R. de Silva wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2010 08:35:29 +0100, AG wrote:

Dear all

On an up-to-date testing machine, I am using Iceweasel + tor + privoxy.
Florian helped me with an issue like this sometime back, but revisiting
his helpful advice has not helped on this occasion.

The situation is as follows:

Using Iceweasel, I enable the tor button and receive a warning message
"Tor proxy test: local HTTP proxy is unreachable. Is polipo running
properly?"
I used Ubuntu 8.04 with Firefox 3.0.19 and the same + tor + privoxy
configuration.

After upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 Firefox get upgraded to v. 3.6 and all at
a
sudden I get the same error message as you describe.

In my case the problem was resolved by a number of random setting
manipulations within Tor Button Properties:

- open Tor Button Properties window;
- run Test Settings (it will fail);
- check "Use custom proxy settings" radio button instead of the default
"Use the recommended settings..."
- run Test Settings (in my case it failed again)
- check "Use the recommended settings..." back and run Test Settings
again. At this point all at sudden I get a positive test result and
since
than everything works just fine.

I know all of it does not make much sense but in my case I get it fixed.
Mystery. :-)

It looks like this is a bug in Tor Button (or could be in FF itself?)

PS. I do not remember exactly but it could be that in addition of all of
the above I unchecked the Use Polipo button and than after a test
checked
it back again.
I'm sure it's possible to still use privoxy, but I believy that the Tor
project people are recommending polipo instead.
It's better if we keep conversation in public. :-)

Currently, yes - Tor provides configuration instructions mentioning
Polipo instead of Privoxy.  But just a year ago they mentioned Privoxy
instead. I do not know why is the change. As far as I know Privoxy is
superior to Polipo.  Unless things changed in the last year, that I'm not
aware of.

And actually to me it does not look as a "recommendation" but rather a
promotion of one project in favour of another.

IMHO it's more some sort of "politics" than a recommendation. It's the
same as Ubuntu all at as sudden damped GIMP, Pidgin, xsane, etc in favour
of other worse and some times (like in case of Simple Scan) completely
useless applications. I do believe Canonical had their reasons. But I
also believe that they are based on the actual application virtues and
value.

I do not argue that Tor would work just fine with Polipo. I'm sure it
will.  I just do not see enough reason for me or any one else to change
existing and perfectly functioning configuration, just because Tor
decided to promote Polipo.



Juan

This is what I found too. The IW add-on "tor button" configuration located at

<right mouse click> Preferences/ Proxy Settings

lists 2 options:

(a) Use the recommended proxy settings for my version of Firefox (and a checkbox is marked next to the only sub-option "Use Polipo" by default) or
(b) Use custom proxy settings

Hand on heart I could not say when this change took place as I haven't been using IW + tor + privoxy for a while, so this came as quite a surprise. There was a recent update to tor though, IIRC, so it may well have been during that.

AG


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