Documentation for this entry is incomplete. Contributions are happily considered!

Potential Issues When using A Custom Gateway[edit]

TODO: document

Gateway IP Change required? See chapter below.
Tor Control Protocol Access. See chapter below.
Custom gateway might not provide all the Tor SocksPorts that Whonix-Gateway ™ provides. Fixable by adjusting Tor configuration of the custom gateway.
Custom gateway might not provide transparent proxying. This might be intended if the user prefers an IsolatingProxy ^[archive] setup.

Gateway IP Change[edit]

grep the Whonix ™ source code for the following search term.

IP HARDCODED

IP HARDCODED

For example. (Creation of the mygrep script is documented in above link.)

mygrep -r "IP HARDCODED"

mygrep -r "IP HARDCODED"

Perhaps IP change can be avoided with some iptables trick?

Forum discussion:

https://forums.whonix.org/t/network-changing-the-complete-16/10586 ^[archive]

Tor Control Protocol Access[edit]

Two options. Either:

Allow filtered Tor control protocol access through onion-grater.
unfiltered Tor control protocol access. A compromised workstation with unfiltered Tor control protocol access can acquire the real external cleranet IP. ^[1]
No Tor control protocol access. This would break some functionality.

Which applications require Tor control protocol access?

Tor Browser new identity feature
A list of applications which are currently require Tor control protocol access can be found here: Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Control_Port_Filter_Python_Profile_Add
onion-grater example profiles ^[archive]
sdwdate ^[2]
whonixcheck ^[2]

Filtered Access using onion-grater[edit]

Undocumented.

Unfiltered Access not using onion-grater[edit]

This setting comes from Debian system Tor upstream package default file /usr/share/tor/tor-service-defaults-torrc.

CookieAuthFile /run/tor/control.authcookie

CookieAuthFile /run/tor/control.authcookie

The file location for this file is non-ideal since it will change at every boot. By re-configuring Tor on the other gateway to use a different file location the contents of this file might be constant. Untested.

On the Whonix-Workstation ™ package anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor script /usr/lib/anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor/state-files copies at boot /usr/share/anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor/control.authcookie to the right places.

By copying the control.authcookie file from the gateway to Whonix-Workstation ™ /usr/share/anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor/control.authcookie one might be able to have Tor cookie authentication. Contents of /usr/share/anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor/control.authcookie will be overwritten when package anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor is upgraded.

Therefore this exercise might be a bit pointless. A better solution might be to use Tor Browser control protocol authentication using a Tor control password rather than Tor control auth cookie.

Open file /etc/X11/Xsession.d/50user in an editor with root rights.

(Qubes-Whonix ™: In TemplateVM)

This box uses sudoedit for better security ^[archive]. This is an example and other tools could also achieve the same goal. If this example does not work for you or if you are not using Whonix, please refer to this link.

sudoedit /etc/X11/Xsession.d/50user

sudoedit /etc/X11/Xsession.d/50user

Paste the following contents.

## see also /usr/lib/anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor/torbrowser.sh

## See workstation file ~/.tb/tor-browser/Browser/start-tor-browser
## or Tor Browser file Browser/start-tor-browser script for comment
## why quoting looks weird.
export TOR_CONTROL_PASSWD='"password"'

## Overwrite what /usr/lib/anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor/torbrowser.sh /
## /etc/X11/Xsession.d/20torbrowser is doing.
export TOR_CONTROL_IPC_PATH="/run/anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor/127.0.0.1_9151.sock"

## see also /usr/lib/anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor/torbrowser.sh

## See workstation file ~/.tb/tor-browser/Browser/start-tor-browser
## or Tor Browser file Browser/start-tor-browser script for comment
## why quoting looks weird.
export TOR_CONTROL_PASSWD='"password"'

## Overwrite what /usr/lib/anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor/torbrowser.sh /
## /etc/X11/Xsession.d/20torbrowser is doing.
export TOR_CONTROL_IPC_PATH="/run/anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor/127.0.0.1_9151.sock"

Save.

This would have to be combined with Tor setting HashedControlPassword on the other gateway. Untested.