Shouldn't ~/.torrc override /etc/torrc ?
if you want to run multiple tor instances on machine then tor should prefer configuration in user home over system wide torrc as documented in man page:
(Default: $HOME/.torrc, or /usr/local/etc/tor/torrc if that file is not found
from ktrace tor reads /usr/local/etc/tor/torrc-defaults first (this is good) but then do not search for .torrc in user $HOME and loads system wide torrc which will fail because other copy of tor is already running.
96532 initial thread NAMI "/usr/local/etc/tor/torrc-defaults"
96532 initial thread NAMI "/usr/local/etc/tor/torrc-defaults"
96532 initial thread NAMI "/usr/local/etc/tor/torrc"
96532 initial thread NAMI "/usr/local/etc/tor/torrc"
96532 initial thread NAMI "/usr/local/etc/tor/torrc"
Trac:
Username: hsn