Setting torcontrol overrides proxy address

[kroese]

When using Bitcoin in combination with Tor, to generate a hidden service to allow for inbound connections, it is needed to add torcontrol like this:

proxy=1.2.3.4:9050
torcontrol=1.2.3.4:29501

The problem is that adding torcontrol results in overriding the proxy address with 127.0.0.1 and the end-result is that Bitcoin cannot connect to Tor any longer:

connect() to 127.0.0.1:9050 failed after wait: Connection refused (111)

It should have connected to 1.2.3.4 instead.

So why does adding torcontrol overrides the configured address for proxy?

[fjahr]

@kroese can you share any relevant logs outputs and also what other settings you are using that are networking related?

[laanwj]

So why does adding torcontrol overrides the configured address for proxy?

To be precise, it overrides the specific proxy for NET_ONION, e.g. -onion.
See https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/torcontrol.cpp#L385

I guess it shouldn't be doing so if an explicit one was provided on the command line.

[fjahr]

So why does adding torcontrol overrides the configured address for proxy?

To be precise, it overrides the specific proxy for NET_ONION, e.g. -onion. See https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/torcontrol.cpp#L385

I guess it shouldn't be doing so if an explicit one was provided on the command line.

That's a good hint! I will look into it unless you have already started working on it.

[laanwj]

No I haven't, feel free to pick it up!

[luke-jr]

If you want to override -torcontrol, you should be using -onion. Overriding -proxy is expected behaviour (otherwise why use -torcontrol at all?).

[fjahr]

If you want to override -torcontrol, you should be using -onion. Overriding -proxy is expected behaviour (otherwise why use -torcontrol at all?).

To me, this doesn't make sense. -onion is the more specific version of -proxy, so it makes sense that -onion overrides -proxy. But the interactions with any other parameter should be consistent between the two. Everything else is very confusing.

[vasild]

This was briefly discussed in #15423 (comment).
Related PR: #22830.

IMO it is ok that the auto-discovered Tor proxy overrides the generic one from -proxy because -proxy could be just an ordinary SOCKS5 proxy unrelated to the Tor network. If that is not ok, then the user has the option to override the auto-discovered one by using -onion. That is,
-proxy < -torcontrol (auto-discover) < -onion
looks reasonable to me.

If it is changed to
-torcontrol (auto-discover) < -proxy < -onion
then there is no way for the user to setup a configuration that uses auto-discovery + a manually specified non-Tor-related SOCKS5 proxy (with -proxy). The auto-discovery is nice because it returns a correct location, even after configuration changes in the network or the Tor daemon, without user interaction.