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First off, I'm new to linux but I'm learning fast. I've been trying to install tor and privoxy just to see how things work and stuff I tried with the terminal at first but it keeps failing, I tried using synaptic but it didn't work either.

Sometimes I get close and even get to see a shortcut on dash home and open it but tor & doesn't work and when I click the shortcut I get this

Vidalia detected that the Tor software exited unexpectedly. Please check the message log for recent warning or error messages.

error log

Jul 16 20:47:12.935 [Warning] /home/analytic4l/.tor-browser/Data/Tor is not owned by this user (analytic4l, 1000) but by root (0). Perhaps you are running Tor as the wrong user?
Jul 16 20:47:12.935 [Warning] Failed to parse/validate config: Couldn't access/create private data directory "/home/analytic4l/.tor-browser/Data/Tor"
Jul 16 20:47:12.935 [Error] Reading config failed--see warnings above.

chmod wont work

analytic4l@analytic4l-ER190AA-ABA-s7420n:~$ sudo chmod -R analytic4l: /home/analytic4l/.tor-browser
chmod: invalid mode: `analytic4l:'
Try `chmod --help' for more information.
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  • 5
    "Please check the message log for recent warning or error messages." <-- So, what does the message log say?
    – gertvdijk
    Jul 17, 2013 at 0:42

1 Answer 1

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You've probably started Tor browser as root some time earlier. This has created files with owner root as you can see in the error output. Because you now run it as a different user, the files are not accessible/writeable by the user analytic4l and that's why it fails to start.

Fix this by changing ownership. Run in a terminal:

sudo chown -R analytic4l: /home/analytic4l/.tor-browser
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  • it says invalid mode
    – temporary
    Jul 17, 2013 at 1:41
  • @temporary Whoops! Fixed it. chmod should have been chown. Sorry.
    – gertvdijk
    Jul 17, 2013 at 11:45

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