Author: intrigeri Date: To: The Tails public development discussion list Subject: Re: [Tails-dev] Migrating to (something closer to) the regular Tor
Browser
anonym wrote (13 Oct 2014 13:21:28 GMT) : >> # Generate Tor Browser profile at build time so it won't reside in RAM > When it's copied from /etc/skel into /home/amnesia, it will live in RAM.
> What were we thinking here, really? To me it seems the only real use of
> this is so that we can do the persistent bookmarks symlink in
> `15-symlink-places.sqlite`.
That's my understanding too.
>> Also, the generate-tor-browser-profile script is only useful at ISO
>> build time, so it probably shouldn't live in /usr/local/bin/.
>> I'm pretty sure I would easily find more similar issues if I had
>> a look at the other hooks. > Well, it's used in
> `config/chroot_local-includes/usr/local/bin/tor-browser` too so that the
> behaviour is at least more similar to how it was when we had Iceweasel.
> Otherwise, removing ~/.tor-browser means that you cannot just run
> `tor-browser` to get a fresh profile without the bookmarks symlink from
> `15-symlink-places.sqlite`. You need to copy the profile from
> /etc/tor-browser/profile manually. > Feature or regression, I don't know...
Thanks for the explanation!
To put it mildly, I'm not enthusiastic at the idea of maintaining code
that supports this usecase, at all. If someone removes critical files
and want to see them back, they can as well reboot. I would just drop
the part about profile generation from start_browser() in
/usr/local/bin/tor-browser, so that generate-tor-browser-profile
doesn't have to support forever this obscure usecase (of the script)
that will inevitably be broken someday.
> Perhaps 15-symlink-places.sqlite hook should be removed, and some
> adapted persistent bookmarks symlink-creation code put into
> `generate-tor-browser-profile` instead? Then there's no need for for
> /etc/skel/.tor-browser, which may save a few KB from the iso size. The
> bigger benefit is that things gets less confusing and more consistent.
I'm not sure I'm following, but anything that makes all this stuff
less confusing will also make me happier :)
