Show Tor log in TorBrowser

[bastik]

There has been no reply to ​my email to tor-talk, so I assume that one can not access a log or gets aware of important things going on.

I don't know what component to pick.

Two options that come directly to my mind are:

• Make Tor log to about:log and add an entry to TorButton to allow accessing it.
• Create an add-on that reads the log and provides access to it and also informs the user that something requires his/hers attention.

[bastik]

See #9675 for the second part. (Include this functionality into Tor Lauchner, rather than just another add-on)

[brade]

Tor Launcher monitors and collects log messages from tor. If an ERR or WARN message is generated, a "Copy Tor Log To Clipboard" button is made available on the Network Settings dialog. However, it would be nice to have a built-in log viewer.

[brade]

Ticket #12733 captures the idea that messages should be available as they come in (for real-time monitoring of the tor log messages).

[brade]

One approach would be to log tor messages to Firefox's Browser Console. That would give us filtering and other nice features without any additional development effort. Unfortunately, so far mcs and I have not found a way to open the console when the Tor Network Settings wizard is open (during initial startup). More research is required.

[mcs]

In light of the recent "relay early" attack, some users will really want a way to monitor the tor log in real time. We just committed a stopgap change that additionally routes all of the tor messages received by Tor Launcher to Firefox's Browser Console (I will attach a screenshot to show what the output looks like).

Commit:
​https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor-launcher.git/commit/423552fe7009ebe8bd61f92ca525018c124a1b56

Advantages:

• Much more convenient than "Copy to Clipboard" for real-time monitoring.
• Can apply a filter.
• Can copy individual messages.

Disadvantages:

• Tor messages are mixed in with other messages and not categorized nicely.
• Cannot open the Browser Console during browser startup.

If other people like this stopgap solution, it should be merged into maint-0.2.5 for TB 3.6.4 (assuming that train has not already left the station).

[mcs]

Browser Console with Tor messages

[mcs]

I merged the recent stopgap fix into Tor Launcher's maint-0.2.5 branch.

[bastik]

This is nice, I do like the stopgap fix, for what it does. (My opinion doesn't seem relevant)

Tor messages are mixed in with other messages and not categorized nicely.

Is it easily possible to add a category?

I see "error", "warning" and "log" for the JavaScript entries, maybe Tor could get its own category.

[mcs]

Replying to bastik:

Is it easily possible to add a category?
I see "error", "warning" and "log" for the JavaScript entries, maybe Tor could get its own category.

I don't think so. Looking at the Firefox code, it looks like the set of available categories is fixed. This is a little disappointing. We could switch to the newer console.info(), console.warn() and console.error() API to get the messages broken out by type, but I do not see a way to add a completely new category.

For the record, reason we did not use console.info() and the related function is because they cause the output to include extraneous double quotes which is confusing. See ​https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=977586

[nickm]

One case where this would be helpful: In #22730, a smart user had a warning about a bogus torrc option, but apparently didn't see it, and therefore thought that Tor hadn't given them a warning at all.