Freebsd tor log file

Question

On my FreeBSD tor isn't working correctly. But I can't see what is wrong because there is no log file. There is a tor directory in /var/log/ but this doesn't contain any files. Does any know what the location of the tor log file is on freebsd?

I installed tor via cd /usr/ports/security/tor && make install clean

Answer 1

According to the FAQ:

If you compiled Tor from source, by default your Tor logs to "stdout" at log-level notice. If you enable logs in your torrc file, they default to /usr/local/var/log/tor/.

You have a couple of options:

• Run Tor from the terminal and pass it the -v flag to output logs to the console. (Though from the above description you should see them anyway.)
• Enable them in your .torrc file, following the instructions here. (Basically in the same part of the FAQ.)

Answer 2

You may not have /usr/local/var created in you system. I am on a sysvinit-based Linux and that was the reason why my init script was failing to bootstrap Tor network when each time I started tor with service tor start

Starting Tor...
Feb 09 09:19:25.965 [notice] Tor 0.4.8.10 running on Linux with Libevent 2.1.12-stable, OpenSSL 3.0.11, Zlib 1.2.13, Liblzma N/A, Libzstd N/A and Glibc 2.36 as libc.
Feb 09 09:19:25.965 [notice] Tor can't help you if you use it wrong! Learn how to be safe at https://support.torproject.org/faq/staying-anonymous/
Feb 09 09:19:25.965 [notice] Read configuration file "/usr/local/etc/tor/torrc.sample".
Feb 09 09:19:25.966 [warn] Couldn't find $HOME environment variable while expanding "~/.tor"; defaulting to "".
Feb 09 09:19:25.966 [warn] Default DataDirectory is "~/.tor".  This expands to "/.tor", which is probably not what you want.  Using "/usr/local/var/tor" instead
Feb 09 09:19:25.966 [notice] Opening Socks listener on 127.0.0.1:9050
Feb 09 09:19:25.966 [notice] Opened Socks listener connection (ready) on 127.0.0.1:9050
Feb 09 09:19:25.966 [warn] Error creating directory /usr/local/var/tor: No such file or directory
Feb 09 09:19:25.966 [notice] Closing partially-constructed Socks listener connection (ready) on 127.0.0.1:9050
Feb 09 09:19:25.966 [warn] Failed to parse/validate config: Couldn't create private data directory "/usr/local/var/tor"
Feb 09 09:19:25.966 [err] Reading config failed--see warnings above.

Starting tor without giving it the configuration file does not help - tor will default to reasonable defaults:

Starting Tor...
Feb 09 09:56:21.102 [notice] Tor 0.4.8.10 running on Linux with Libevent 2.1.12-stable, OpenSSL 3.0.11, Zlib 1.2.13, Liblzma N/A, Libzstd N/A and Glibc 2.36 as libc.
Feb 09 09:56:21.102 [notice] Tor can't help you if you use it wrong! Learn how to be safe at https://support.torproject.org/faq/staying-anonymous/
Feb 09 09:56:21.102 [warn] Couldn't find $HOME environment variable while expanding "~/.torrc"; defaulting to "".
Feb 09 09:56:21.102 [notice] Configuration file "/usr/local/etc/tor/torrc" not present, using reasonable defaults.
Feb 09 09:56:21.103 [warn] Couldn't find $HOME environment variable while expanding "~/.tor"; defaulting to "".
Feb 09 09:56:21.103 [warn] Default DataDirectory is "~/.tor".  This expands to "/.tor", which is probably not what you want.  Using "/usr/local/var/tor" instead
Feb 09 09:56:21.103 [notice] Opening Socks listener on 127.0.0.1:9050
Feb 09 09:56:21.103 [notice] Opened Socks listener connection (ready) on 127.0.0.1:9050
Feb 09 09:56:21.103 [warn] Error creating directory /usr/local/var/tor: No such file or directory
Feb 09 09:56:21.103 [notice] Closing partially-constructed Socks listener connection (ready) on 127.0.0.1:9050
Feb 09 09:56:21.103 [warn] Failed to parse/validate config: Couldn't create private data directory "/usr/local/var/tor"
Feb 09 09:56:21.103 [err] Reading config failed--see warnings above.

I got this output when trying to start tor with /etc/init.d/tor (disabling configuration file with commenting out TOR_OPTIONS does not resolve the issue:

#!/bin/sh

TOR_BIN=/usr/local/bin/tor
#TOR_OPTIONS="-f /usr/local/etc/tor/torrc.sample"  # Specify the path to your torrc file

start() {
    echo "Starting Tor..."
    "$TOR_BIN" &
    #"$TOR_BIN" "$TOR_OPTIONS" &
}
stop() {
    echo "Stopping Tor..."
    killall tor  
}

status() {
    if pgrep -x "tor" > /dev/null
    then
        echo "Tor is running."
    else
        echo "Tor is not running."
    fi
}

case "$1" in
    start)
        start
        ;;
    stop)
        stop
        ;;
    restart)
        stop
        sleep 1
        start
        ;;
    status)
        status
        ;;
    *)
        echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|status}"
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

exit 0

As of time of the relase 0.4.8.10, if you want to run tor as a service in the background, having /usr/local/var/ in your system is a prerequisite. This directory somehow doesn't get created in the process of compiling tor from source. There is a mention and reference to /usr/local/var/ in Makefile but I have not noticed any mkdir command creating it.

mkdir -p /usr/local/var/as root solves the issue.

As an alternative that does not require creating /usr/local/var/ you can manually launch tor in the background with nohup tor>/tmp/tor.log 2>&1 &. To view its status you would then have to use tail -n 20 /tmp/tor.log and killall tor to stop it.