Re: tor web-browser doesn't work on musl

[Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org>]

On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 04:46:32PM -0300, Daniel Simon wrote:
> Hi, Rich. Did you receive my other email that was sent to both mailing
> lists (Tor and Musl)?
> In it I listed a few possibilities and 1 of them was to
> statically-link the binaries to musl.
> Between other possibilities I included having separate binaries for
> glibc and musl, but you show that's a bad idea.
> Could you comment on the other email too, letting the Tor developers
> also aware of this and showing that the best outcome would be
> static-link to musl?
> I wonder if there would be any difficulty for them to do so... Or
> rather no difficulty, but lack of desire for change. I hope they're
> flexible.

I just tried to but my message was apparently rejected (not just held
for moderation) for not being a subscriber.

Rich


> On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 1:48 PM, Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org> wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 01:02:24PM -0300, Daniel Simon wrote:
> >> By what I could find, nobody has compiled the tor web-browser from
> >> source on musl before.
> >> I can't find any packages for it...
> >> I'll try to make a new email and send it to both mailing lists (musl
> >> and tor) then we can talk to them directly.
> >> Thanks for all help so far.
> >
> > One thing to note: the whole point of Tor Browser Bundle is to avoid
> > all sorts of side-channel/information-leak risks associated with just
> > using a normal web browser build on Tor. If anything showing that your
> > Tor Browser Bundle is built against musl rather than glibc leaks out
> > to the network, this would compromise much of the benefit of the
> > package -- there are relatively few musl desktop users, and even fewer
> > who use Tor Browser, so it becomes much easier to identify you. Of
> > course it would be ideal if they _always_ used musl, and fully
> > static-linked, so that there wouldn't even be any risk of glibc
> > version information (from the system-wide glibc) leaking over the
> > network.
> >
> > Rich
> >
> >
> >> On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 7:07 AM, Alba Pompeo <albapompeo@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > How could I build the Tor Browser Bundle from source?
> >> > I can't find any guide for it.
> >> > If someone has ever done this, could you share the binary that works on musl?
> >> > Could TBB be packaged to musl systems (void, alpine, etc) or is it
> >> > only available as a downloadable binary?
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 6:45 AM, Natanael Copa <ncopa@alpinelinux.org> wrote:
> >> >> On Sun, 24 Apr 2016 11:01:12 -0300
> >> >> Daniel Simon <ddanielsimonn@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >>> Hi, I face a bug when running tor-web-browser from my new system that uses musl.
> >> >>>
> >> >>> 1) wget https://www.torproject.org/dist/torbrowser/5.5.4/tor-browser-linux64-5.5.4_en-US.tar.xz
> >> >>> 2) tar zxvf ./tor-browser-linux64-5.5.4_en-US.tar.xz
> >> >>> 3) cd tor-browser-linux64-5.5.4_en-US
> >> >>> 4) ./start-tor-browser.desktop
> >> >>>
> >> >>> EXPECTED: tor web browser launches as it does on glibc systems
> >> >>> WHAT HAPPENS: Nothing
> >> >>>
> >> >>> I assume there is a fix...
> >> >>> Thank you very much.
> >> >>
> >> >> You can not really expect a precompiled binary that is linked against
> >> >> glibc work on a musl libc system.
> >> >>
> >> >> There are 3 possible solutions:
> >> >> - run the pre-compiled binary on a glibc system
> >> >> - ask the tor browser developers to provide a binary built with musl libc
> >> >> - build it from source yourself
> >> >>
> >> >> -nc