Subject: bug#35417: closed (Re: Tor Service)

From: Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:31:53 +0200

Raghav,

Raghav Gururajan wrote:
> DOUBT!

  ‘Doubt is an uncomfortable condition,
   but certainty is a ridiculous one.’
     — Voltaire, more or less

> So the package "tor" actually used when using the service 
> "tor-service-type". Then why the package "tor" isn't added to 
> the system as it is not showing up in the system packages list?

‘…why should it be’? :-)

I think the confusion here stems from vague terms like ‘added to 
the system’.  It sounds like you're still adjusting to Guix 
vs. traditional FHS distributions where everything is thrown into 
one big pile — which is completely understandable!

As you found out, all the Tor service really does is start the 
‘tor’ binary.  Hence, Tor is indeed installed to your store 
(/gnu/store/*-tor-*/bin/tor) and is invoked by the Shepherd when 
your system starts.

But that's completely unrelated to your system profile (which is 
what I think you mean by ‘system packages list’; the profile 
generated from the SYSTEM-PACKAGES field of your 
OPERATING-SYSTEM).  To use Tor from the command line, simply add 
‘tor’ to that field.

Unlike other distributions, Guix System doesn't make a package's 
binaries available to *all users* merely because a *service* 
depends on them.  The two steps are (rightly) completely separate.

Does that help?

Kind regards,

T G-R