Ubuntu – Tor check failed though Vidalia shows green onion

OP posted:

I tried to manually start Tor (by typing /usr/sbin/tor in the terminal) and afterwards Vidalia and it works perfectly.

From the documentation of Vidalia:

I Can't Start Tor

The most likely reason that Vidalia could not start Tor is because Vidalia is looking for your Tor installation in the wrong directory. You can tell Vidalia where Tor is located by updating the Tor Executable option in the general configuration settings. Another possible reason that Tor cannot start is because there is already another Tor process running. Check your list of running process and stop the previous Tor process, if you find one. Then, try running Tor again.

If that did not help, check your message log to see if Tor printed any information about errors it encountered while trying to start.

Vidalia Can't Connect to Tor

Vidalia manages Tor by communicating with it via Tor's control port.

The most common reason that Vidalia cannot connect to Tor is because Tor started, but encountered an error and exited immediately. You should check your message log to see if Tor reported any errors while it started.

If Tor is listening on a different port than Vidalia expects, Vidalia will be unable to connect to Tor. You rarely need to change this setting, but if there is another service running on your machine that conflicts with Tor's control port, you will need to specify a different port. You can change this setting in Vidalia's advanced configuration settings.

Tor Exited Unexpectedly

If Tor exits immediately after trying to start, you most likely have another Tor process already running. Check the message log to see if any of the last few messages in the list are highlighted in yellow and contain a message similar to the following:

connection_create_listener(): Could not bind to 127.0.0.1:9050: Address already in use. 
Is Tor already running?

If you find an error message like the one above, you will need to stop the other Tor process before starting a new one with Vidalia. On Windows, you would need to look for tor.exe in your Task Manager. On most other operating systems, the ps command can help you find the other Tor process.

If Tor had been running successfully for awhile (that is, longer than a few seconds), then you should check the message log for information about any errors Tor experienced before it exited. Such errors will be highlighted in either red or yellow.

Digging around, I've found one possible solution. This involves setting two hotkeys, and the usage of gsettings.

After configuring your proxy settings, you will need to go to Settings > Devices > Keyboard and create one custom hotkey that initiates the following command:

gsettings set org.gnome.system.proxy mode manual

Then create a second one for:

gsettings set org.gnome.system.proxy mode none

As the proxy settings remain saved whether enabled or not, you can then assign an 'enable' key for the first command, and a 'disable' key for the second.

Confirm the change by pressing your first hotkey and navigating to Settings > Network, then navigating away, pressing your second hotkey, and returning to the network settings. Assuming Tor is set up correctly, and passes https://check.torproject.org, this should be all that's needed.

Perhaps not the most ideal solution, but it will do for now, unless someone comes up with a toggle on the activity bar or something.

EDIT:

A slight improvement on the above, is to use one hotkey that checks the current state of the proxy mode, then sets it to the opposite. Grab your text editor and create a new file with the following contents:

case "$(gsettings get org.gnome.system.proxy mode)" in
"'none'") gsettings set org.gnome.system.proxy mode "'manual'" 
notify-send "Tor Enabled";;
"'manual'") gsettings set org.gnome.system.proxy mode  "'none'"
notify-send "Tor Disabled" ;;
esac

This will also display a message showing the current state of your proxy settings.

Save the script somewhere, then reference the file location when creating a custom hotkey.