Is there a way to persist Tor Browser bookmarks in Whonix disposable VMs?

General Discussion
1

I tried:

  • Creating template clones of Whonix-Workstation & Workstation-dvm
  • Use these in place of the defaults in my disposable AppVM
  • Add bookmarks to Tor Browser in Whonix-dvm clone (which is my AppVM template)
  • Launch new disposables off of that AppVM

That doesn’t work. The bookmarks don’t show up in the AppVM.

I also tried:

  • Creating new AppVM w/ Whonix-Workstation template + Workstation-dvm as disposable template
  • Adding Tor Browser bookmarks to that AppVM
  • Setting it as disposable

This also doesn’t work. While disposable is unchecked, the bookmarks persist. But when that box is checked, the bookmarks are not there.

It would appear this is hard-coded into Whonix (or Qubes) and no matter what you do, it’s going to give a fresh Tor Browser install when you launch a disposable VM. Is there any way around it? Whatever risk this introduces I’d be ok with taking it on. It’s really the only thing stopping me from using disposables 100% of the time.

2

You can use Firefox policies for this:
http://forums.dds6qkxpwdeubwucdiaord2xgbbeyds25rbsgr73tbfpqpt4a6vjwsyd.onion/t/change-default-preferences-for-tor-browser-in-dispvm-using-policies-json/16722
Clearnet link:
Change default preferences for Tor Browser in DispVM using policies.json - Qubes-Whonix - Whonix Forum

3

Thank you.

That isn’t working either.

Something in Qubes or Whonix seems to be overriding any changes that are made and always loading a fresh Tor Browser when the disposable box is checked.

4

It worked for me:

{
  "policies": {
    "Bookmarks": [
      {
        "Title": "Example",
        "URL": "https://example.com",
        "Favicon": "https://example.com/favicon.ico",
        "Folder": "FolderName"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Just remove:

        "Placement": "toolbar" | "menu",

Or set:

        "Placement": "toolbar",

or:

        "Placement": "menu",

The only required fields are Title and URL:

{
  "policies": {
    "Bookmarks": [
      {
        "Title": "Example",
        "URL": "https://example.com"
      }
    ]
  }
}

UPD:
No, it didn’t work for disposable, will check further.

5

It seems that Tor Browser removes default bookmarks on the first start.
But ManagedBookmarks works:

6

This works for me.

In the vm you use as the template, set up the bookmarks and copy the places.sqlite to /user/home

From rc.local copy the file back to the profile folder, and fix ownership.

cp /home/user/places.sqlite /home/user/.tb/tor-browser/Browser/TorBrowser/Data/Browser/profile.default
chown user /home/user/.tb/tor-browser/Browser/TorBrowser/Data/Browser/profile.default/places.sqlite
chgrp user /home/user/.tb/tor-browser/Browser/TorBrowser/Data/Browser/profile.default/places.sqlite
3 Likes
7

It took awhile to get this to work as I had to learn several things about Qubes but it finally did.

Thanks!

1 Like
8

If anyone solves updating the bookmarks like I have - this tidbit may save you the 5+ hours I put into figuring it out the hard way:

Tor Browser (Firefox) only saves your changes to places.sqlite when you close the browser. So you’ll need to do that before updating your saved copy.