On certain networks Brave fails to connect to tor

[riastradh-brave]

Description

The outward-facing symptom is that Brave fails to connect to Tor.

The logs reveal that the tor daemon connects to the Tor network, but then Brave fails to connect to the tor daemon's control channel:

tor: control socket error: Error: getaddrinfo ENOTFOUND localhost undefined:55219
tor: control socket error: Error: getaddrinfo ENOTFOUND localhost undefined:55219
tor: control socket closed early

Steps to Reproduce

1. Break into David's home network.
2. Launch Brave.
3. Open a private tab with Tor and try to use it.

Actual result:
Brave pops up a 'failed to connect to Tor' dialogue box and doesn't work.

Expected result:
Brave successfully uses the Tor network.

Reproduces how often:
Only on David's home network.

Brave Version

about:brave info:
some recent 0.23.x build with Tor support

Reproducible on current live release:
yes

Additional Information

Nobody has seen this outside David's home network. I suspect there is a broken DNS configuration that is causing localhost -- which nodejs socket.connect({port: 12345}) uses by default -- to resolve to something other than 127.0.0.1, or to fail to resolve.

[riastradh-brave]

Possible fix: #14554 Will close this issue if it works.

[riastradh-brave]

(To be clear to any literal-minded readers: I do not actually suggest breaking into David's home network. That would violate a few ethical principles of QA, and it might even violate some broader ethical frameworks too.)

[bsclifton]

Fix verified by @davidtemkin! 😄 👍