The exact message is:
Vidalia was unable to start Tor. Check your settings to ensure the correct name and location of your Tor executable is specified.
Tor exists but vidalia couldn't see or read it. I click "Browse" & it says:
Unable to save bookmarks in /home/me/.kde/share/apps/kfileplaces/bookmarks.xml.
Reported error was:
Unable to open temporary file.. This error message will only be shown once. The cause of the error needs to be fixed as quickly as possible, which is most likely a full hard drive.
I added rwx permissions but problem doesn't resolve. I tried to run it as su, but there is problem with fontconfig & vidalia couldn't connect to x-server.
Of course I can use tor with tor-browser.
I use Kubuntu 12.10, vidalia 0.2.2. (I have seen this problem recently in Ubuntu 12.04 as well).
How did you go about "installing" tor / vidalia? I'd recommend these steps:
Launchpad has the entry »Vidalia was unable to start Tor. Check your settings to ensure the correct name and location of your Tor executable is specified.« It seems that you hit the same bug. You can resolve this issue by downloading the AppArmor profile for Vidalia. Copy it to
/etc/apparmor.d/usr.bin.vidalia. Or you can also open the existing file and add the line:See the diff. Now Vidalia is able to start Tor.
However as nutty about natty wrote you should better use the Tor Browser Bundle. Usually this gives you a higher degree of anonymity.
1- open terminal
2- run: # sudo -sH
3- copy the vidalia icon to your Desktop
4- run: # cd Desktop
5- run: # sudo open vidalia
thats it!