Ubuntu – way to use Tor system-wide

System wide proxy settings are just another consolidated place for proxy settings. It actually modifies the places where different apps' config files. Have you noticed, system wide proxy setting asks for password 2 times? This is mainly because of the modification of two admin files which corresponds to config file.

And yes, from 10.10 and 11.10, some apps have been left out of system wide proxy setting most notable among them is the synaptic.

and moreover, apps can bypass the system wide setting and make use of their own setting again most notable synaptics and Mozilla Firefox(which contains system settings option as well).

What you need to configure is polipo/privoxy for tor as your are using http proxy. Tor doesnot use 8118 as its port it uses 9050 and it is a socks proxy. You can use this configuration for polipo to use with tor. Just do:

sudo wget https://gitweb.torproject.org/torbrowser.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/build-scripts/config/polipo.conf -O /etc/polipo/config

sudo service tor stop && sudo service polipo stop

sudo service tor start && sudo service polipo start

tor needs to start before polipo, or else polipo will occupy the 9050 port and tor will start with errors

I am giving much focus here on polipo because tor itself recommends polipo and is installed by default on tor installation. You can use privoxy in place of polipo as well. Most of the tor users recommend using the default socks proxy if the application handles it.

Go to the Network settings and select the proxy method to Manual. Set all addresses to 127.0.0.1 and all ports to 8118, except for the socket port which needs to be 9050. With this setup, the following components are not necessary and not encouraged:

• Browser proxy plugins
• Vidalia

Whenever you want to use your direct connection again, refer to the Network settings and change the proxy method to None.