Does QupZilla work with Tor
I'm a recent convert to Triskel from Kubuntu. Most of my system is running well and I can do almost everything I need. My Tor browser is running and Vidalia shows I'm connected to the Tor net.
A commenter on this forum suggested I check out QupZilla, and there are definitely things to like about it. Is it possible to set up QupZilla to browse through the Tor network?
More generally, can someone explain what's happening when Tor is running on my computer? I understand about the network, the random path, the separate keys at each connection, and so on. But what happens locally? If Vidalia is running and my Tor browser says it's on the Tor network, is all other network traffic unaffected by Tor?
For example, I've been using Mendeley, a tool to organize reference libraries and PDFs. It does net communications for various purposes. I'm assuming that those communications are not being routed through the Tor network. Could they be? My impression is that using Tor requires the ability to use SOCKS 5 proxies, which Mendeley can do; but I imagine there's more to it than that...
Finally, is there any reason Vidalia should be running after I kill my Tor browser? I quit the browser and the green onion stays in my system tray until I quit it too. Does that matter?
On 07/12/2013 11:07 PM, name at domain wrote:
> A commenter on this forum suggested I check out QupZilla, and there are
> definitely things to like about it. Is it possible to set up QupZilla
> to browse through the Tor network?
Yes, just set the SOCKS Proxy for QupZilla to 127.0.0.1 and 9150 for the
port.
> More generally, can someone explain what's happening when Tor is running
> on my computer? I understand about the network, the random path, the
> separate keys at each connection, and so on. But what happens locally?
> If Vidalia is running and my Tor browser says it's on the Tor network,
> is all other network traffic unaffected by Tor?
Tor makes all connections going through a certain port (9150 by default)
go through the random path. All other connections aren't going through
tor unless you have the proxy settings set up for them.
> For example, I've been using Mendeley, a tool to organize reference
> libraries and PDFs. It does net communications for various purposes.
> I'm assuming that those communications are not being routed through the
> Tor network. Could they be? My impression is that using Tor requires
> the ability to use SOCKS 5 proxies, which Mendeley can do; but I imagine
> there's more to it than that...
It should work as long as you can set the SOCKS proxy.
> Finally, is there any reason Vidalia should be running after I kill my
> Tor browser? I quit the browser and the green onion stays in my system
> tray until I quit it too. Does that matter?
Unless you are using other programs through the tor proxy, then there is
no need to have Vidalia open.
Oralfloss, this is extremely helpful and I appreciate it! You explained exactly what I wanted to know. As a result I've been successful in setting up Mendeley and another non-free browser to use Tor, which is super cool.
Oddly enough, though, the same method doesn't seem to work on QupZilla. This is not a killer because QupZilla is third on my browser depth chart, but it's puzzling now that I've made the other programs work. I set the SOCKS 5 proxy to 127.0.0.1 and the port to 9150 as with the other programs, but it fails. I also cleared the Exceptions list and tried it that way, but no luck. I'm attaching a screenshot of what I did in QupZilla just to check that it looks like you'd expect.
Again, many thanks! My understanding was greatly increased by your concise explanation. And no worries on QupZilla, it's not important, it's just a curiosity. What I really wanted to Torify has been Torified.
On 07/13/2013 02:27 PM, name at domain wrote:
> Oddly enough, though, the same method doesn't seem to work on QupZilla.
> This is not a killer because QupZilla is third on my browser depth
> chart, but it's puzzling now that I've made the other programs work. I
> set the SOCKS 5 proxy to 127.0.0.1 and the port to 9150 as with the
> other programs, but it fails. I also cleared the Exceptions list and
> tried it that way, but no luck. I'm attaching a screenshot of what I
> did in QupZilla just to check that it looks like you'd expect.
I too tried it on Qupzilla just a few minutes ago to see what happens.
It appears to not work on my computer either, so it is probably a proxy
problem with Qupzilla. Not sure what you can do about it other than
reporting a bug to the devs.
> Again, many thanks! My understanding was greatly increased by your
> concise explanation. And no worries on QupZilla, it's not important,
> it's just a curiosity. What I really wanted to Torify has been Torified.
You're welcome.
It sounds like Qupzilla can't handle direct connections to tor. Install privoxy, and point privoxy to tor via the following line in privoxy config:
# forward-socks5 / 127.0.0.1:9050 .
Removing the "#" sign in the above line in the privoxy config will allow privoxy to serve as an http proxy, and in turn hand off web requests to tor.
The resulting connection will look like this:
PC--->Privoxy--->Tor--->Internet
Once that is done, change your proxy settings in Qupzilla to point to port 8118 on locahost and you should be able to surf via tor.
Do note, privoxy can also be used as a web filter, and can remove all kinds of nasty things from web pages, including ads and web bugs, greatly increasing your online privacy. It's worth checking out in it's own right and can enhance online privacy when combined with tor.