How to "flush tor circuit"

On Windows I have used XBBrowser, which provides a custom version of Firefox suited to using Tor.

XBBrowser provides a button, flush tor circuit, which will setup an entirely new connection and exit node.

I am wondering how to do the equivalent thing on Linux. ALl I can do is restart tor, which does not seem to make any difference.

So, on Linux, how would I flush the circuit?

Solution 1:

The solution is to enable the control port in torrc

It is also important to set a password for the control port with tor --hash-password password

You can then connect to the control port and issue a NEWNYM commands.

printf "AUTHENTICATE \"password\"\r\nSIGNAL NEWNYM\r\n" | nc 127.0.0.1 9051

Solution 2:

If you use the Vidalia GUI, you can use the Network map to close all circuits. It's not as fast, but does the same thing.