[guardian-dev] idea for a start intent for orbot

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

Having Orbot broadcast that info would cover the case of notifying apps of the
status.

.hc

On 08/28/2013 07:20 PM, Natanael wrote:
> This isn't really about *starting* Tor, but here's some other relevant thoughts:
> 
> Should the apps that call it maybe be able to ask for network status
> info? Like knowing the number of connected nodes and things like that.
> If the Tor connection is unstable then the user might want to know why
> and be told in a simple manner by the app they are currently using,
> otherwise they might think it's the service they are accessing that is
> malfunctioning, so the app can tell the users "Tor is having network
> connectivity issues" or something like it. And maybe the app should be
> able to pick allowed Exit nodes, individually or by country, via the
> Intent call (I'm not entirely sure on this one).
> 
> 2013/8/29 Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans at guardianproject.info>:
>>
>> We're hear working with Benetech and we were talking about how to smooth out
>> the user experience of apps that want to use Orbot.  The big issue is that you
>> can only make Orbot show its GUI, but no make it start tor, nor get
>> programmatic feedback about the state of tor.
>>
>> It seemed clear to us that there should be no issue automatically starting up
>> tor if Orbot has a "simple config", i.e. no root access nor hidden services.
>> The issues would come if the user has configured Orbot to use root access or
>> setup hidden services.
>>
>> Here is the flow that we figured out:
>>
>> - app that needs Tor sends start intent to Orbot with startActivityWithResult()
>> - Orbot checks if root and/or hidden services are enabled
>> - if no root or hidden services, Orbot starts tor without showing a GUI
>> - if there is root or hidden services, Orbot GUI shows and prompts user to
>> start it
>> - Orbot broadcasts progress messages to any app registered to receive it
>> - once tor is started, it sets a return result and calls finish()
>>
>> Anyone have any objections, ideas, comments, attacks?
>>
>> .hc
>>
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