URLs not opening in Tor Browser when passed as command line arguments

[themusicgod1]

themusicgod1@eva1:~$ torbrowser-launcher -h

usage: torbrowser-launcher [-h] [--settings] [url [url ...]]

positional arguments:
  url URL to load

optional arguments:
  -h, --help show this help message and exit
  --settings Open Tor Browser Launcher settings

clearly states that torbrowser-launcher should launch the urls fed into it on the commandline. This is however not what happens when you run torbrowser-launcher followed by urls:

torbrowser-launcher https://www.twitter.com https://www.purple.com https://www.duckduckgo.com

loads my homepage (whether it's a set page or a blank page), that's it.

what should happen:

either

* the usage as specified by -h should not state urls are supported on the commandline

or

* urls should open unless tor browser is already running in which case it can fail with 'tor browser is already running'

or (better yet)

* urls should open in a new tab, whether or not tor browser is already running.

torbrowser-launcher: 0.2.9-1

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: torbrowser-launcher 0.2.9-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-10.11-generic 4.15.3
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-10-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.8-0ubuntu10
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Mar 8 18:12:52 2018
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-05-07 (669 days ago)
InstallationMedia:

JournalErrors:
 Hint: You are currently not seeing messages from other users and the system.
       Users in groups 'adm', 'systemd-journal' can see all messages.
       Pass -q to turn off this notice.
 -- Logs begin at Thu 2018-01-04 17:12:35 UTC, end at Thu 2018-03-08 18:12:42 UTC. --
 -- No entries --
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: torbrowser-launcher
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to bionic on 2017-11-20 (107 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Bill Yikes (yik3s)]

On torbrowser-launcher 0.3.3, same issues persist. URLs passed on the commandline are ignored.

I also concur with the feature request/bug regarding the ability to add tabs to existing sessions. It appears the capability was there at one time but later removed. Specifically, I believe the "-allow-remote" CLI option would allow additional URLs to be passed in to an existing process, but that option is no longer recognized. It would be a useful capability - please restore it.

BTW, I should say the title is a little misleading. It's not only cases of multiple URLs that trigger browser inaction. If one tries to pass just one URL on the commandline, even that is ignored.

[Thomas Ward (teward)]

In 0.3.2, we know that the torbrowser-launcher does not actually launch the URLs.

When executed on the command line directly we see this on a Focal system:

$ torbrowser-launcher https://cnn.com
Tor Browser Launcher
By Micah Lee, licensed under MIT
version 0.3.2
https://github.com/micahflee/torbrowser-launcher
Launching Tor Browser.
Running /home/teward/.local/share/torbrowser/tbb/x86_64/tor-browser_en-US/start-tor-browser.desktop
Launching './Browser/start-tor-browser --detach'...

Based on this, you can see that it's loading *exactly* those commands, and not passing arguments. This makes me believe the Launcher is outdated in a way that it's not designed to pass URLs anymore.

This is an upstream issue that needs raised at https://github.com/micahflee/torbrowser-launcher for fixing, ultimately.

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic) reached end-of-standard-support on May 31, 2023.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it anymore. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test. If you then find the bug is still present in the newer Ubuntu version, please add a comment here telling us which new version it is in.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for torbrowser-launcher (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[themusicgod1 (themusicgod1)]

at least in my case, some combination of -allow-remote and a startup script has made this not a big deal