v32.0: Connection to tor control port cannot be disabled #36691

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Current behaviour

I noticed this log line after upgrading to v32.0:

2026-10-29T02:34:01Z [warning] tor: Error connecting to address 127.0.0.1:9051
2026-10-29T02:34:01Z [warning] tor: Initiating connection to Tor control port 127.0.0.1:9051 failed

Expected behaviour

I have not configured a tor control port, so I would prefer if Core did not attempt to connect to one.

My clanker tells me that this has been the behavior for years, and all that changed is the log level was changed to a warning.

I do have an onion address specified with externalip, and I would like to continue accepting incoming connections to that onion, but I would like to avoid using the tor control for this.

Steps to reproduce

1. Run bitcoind
2. Observe logs

Relevant log output

No response

How did you obtain Bitcoin Core

Compiled from source

What version of Bitcoin Core are you using?

v32.0

Operating system and version

Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS

Machine specifications

No response

Apparently this works:

listenonion=0 bind=127.0.0.1:8334=onion

I will close this.