TorCtl and Socksipy library raises exception in python

Question

I'm writing a script in python.
My script uses urllib2 to read web pages.
I'm using Socksipy to force urllib2 to use socks proxy (TOR).
My problem is after setting socket.socket TorCtl doesn't work and raises exception.
the code that doesn't work is (first newTorId() works and second fails!):

  newTorId()      #This works
  import socks
  import socket
  socks.setdefaultproxy(socks.PROXY_TYPE_SOCKS5, "localhost", 9050)
  socket.socket = socks.socksocket
  newTorId()     #this Fails!

newTorId is defined as this:

from TorCtl import TorCtl
def newTorId():
    conn = TorCtl.connect(passphrase="test")
    conn.send_signal("NEWNYM")

The exception is:

__init__() takes exactly 2 arguments (3 given)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "script.py", line 97, in <module>
    newTorId()
  File "script.py", line 27, in newTorId
    conn.send_signal("NEWNYM")
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'send_signal'

What is the problem?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:29

1

It's your own code raising the exception, not the library. Particularly,

TorCtl.connect(passphrase="test")

is returning None the second time, resulting in an error when you call .send_signal on the result.

I assume newTorId() is intended to request a new Tor identity. You should probably just call TorCtl.Connection.send_signal(conn, "NEWNYM") to get a new identity, rather than trying to create a new connection each time. See Python - Controlling Tor.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:29

Community

1
1

answered Jun 05 '12 at 08:13

Mechanical snail

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You're right about coding standards but This is not the problem (and doesn't solve it); because if each time `TorCtl.connect` should create a new object of `TorCtl.Connection` so there shouldn't be problem! (Except unclosed system sockets that i think python will close them after `newTorId()`) After that if I remove the `socket.socket = socks.socksocket` line the problem will be solved! so it seems assigning Tor to SocksiPY socket makes the problem! – Ariyan Jun 05 '12 at 08:23
I'm not talking about coding standards. Clearly `TorCtl.connect()` is returning `None`, regardless of what it "should" be doing. – Mechanical snail Jun 05 '12 at 08:26
Clearly ;-) You're right!! I don't know why it works in this manner but your solution works; Thanks – Ariyan Jun 05 '12 at 08:34
How does this solve the problem? `TorCtl.Connection.send_signal(conn, "NEWNYM")` relies on the same `conn` object as `conn.send_signal("NEWNYM")`. If it is `None` then both solutions won't work. – Desprit Jan 19 '17 at 16:49

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:34

As previously mentioned TorCtl's connect() method provides None if it fails to connect.

That aside, this question seems to come up pretty frequently (1, 2) so I just added a FAQ entry for it. TorCtl is deprecated, so here's an example using stem...

from stem import Signal
from stem.control import Controller

with Controller.from_port(port = 9051) as controller:
  controller.authenticate()
  controller.signal(Signal.NEWNYM)

TorCtl and Socksipy library raises exception in python

2 Answers2