torsocks: tor package recommended, but should be a dependency

[Dantes]

Hi,

 

The package torsocks wasn't working and I could not understand why it was not.

 

Torsocks configuration file: /etc/tor/torsocks.conf (default) specifies port 9050

# Default Tor address and port. By default, Tor will listen on localhost for
# any SOCKS connection and relay the traffic on the Tor network.
TorAddress 127.0.0.1
TorPort 9050

 

So port 9050 should be visible with netstat, but it was not:

$ netstat -at
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.53:domain       0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.54:domain       0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN
$

 

Then I tried to enable tor.service, but got an error:

$ systemctl enable tor.service
Failed to enable unit: Unit file tor.service does not exist.

 

Maybe the tor package was not installed

$ dpkg --get-selections | grep '^tor'
torsocks                    install

 

After installing the tor package:

$ apt install tor

 

Netstat should now show the port 9050 to be listening:

$ netstat -at
tcp        0      0 localhost:9050          0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.53:domain       0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.54:domain       0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN  

 

Why is "tor" listed as a "recommended" package? Should this not be a dependency?

$ sudo apt install torsocks
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Recommended packages:
  tor
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  torsocks
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 74,7 kB of archives.
After this operation, 416 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm/main arm64 torsocks arm64 2.4.0-1 [74,7 kB]
Fetched 74,7 kB in 0s (202 kB/s)  
Selecting previously unselected package torsocks.
(Reading database ... 117684 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../torsocks_2.4.0-1_arm64.deb ...
Unpacking torsocks (2.4.0-1) ...
Setting up torsocks (2.4.0-1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.11.2-2) ...
$

 

 

 

 

[Dantes]

Running Debian on an x86/64 you can clearly see that "tor" is one of the dependencies for "torsocks"

$ uname -a
Linux TEST-MACHINE 6.1.0-25-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.106-3 (2024-08-26) x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ sudo apt install torsocks
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  runit-helper tor tor-geoipdb
Suggested packages:
  mixmaster torbrowser-launcher socat apparmor-utils nyx obfs4proxy
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  runit-helper tor tor-geoipdb torsocks
0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 3.624 kB of archives.
After this operation, 17,6 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

 

Found the problem, yay!

 

Is this something Armbian fixes, or must this be reported upstream ?

Edited September 19 by Dantes

[SteeMan]

All of the userspace packages come directly from upstream repositories.

[Dantes]

Reported the bug (and solution)  upstream to  <pkg-privacy-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org>.

I wonder how long it will take