I’ve just downloaded and installed tor from the tor debian repo. It automatically set-up a systemd service, so if I systemctl status tor@default it prints the standard output, amongst them:
Process: 25947 ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/tor --defaults-torrc /usr/share/tor/tor-service-defaults-torrc -f /etc/tor/torrc --RunAsDaemon 0 --verify-config (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)>
So Tor is humming away and through enabling it as a systemd service also starts automatically if I reboot the machine.
Now I have following questions:
- in the
tor-service-default-torrcRunAsDaemon is set to 1. I have nothing changed in thetorrc, so RunAsDaemon is by default commented out. But why is the flag in the above service command--RunAsDaemonset to 0? I though a daemon is a program running in the background and this seems to be exactly what systemd should tor want to do? On what occasion should the flag be set to 1? - there seem to be multiple systemd services:
tor@default.service, tor@.serviceandtor.service. Can somebody explain to me what they are, why they are needed and how they interact?
Your help is really appreciated and I’m always thankful for resources which can bridge the gap between non-technical and technical explanations.