10 o test suite dependencies
11 o optional dependencies
16 o Scope of Operating System support
17 o Building GNUnet from source
21 * Running HTTP on port 80 and HTTPS on port 443
28 GNUnet is peer-to-peer framework providing a network abstractions and
29 applications focusing on security and privacy. So far, we have
30 created applications for anonymous file-sharing, decentralized naming
31 and identity management, decentralized and confidential telephony and
32 tunneling IP traffic over GNUnet. GNUnet is currently developed by a
33 worldwide group of independent free software developers. GNUnet is a
34 GNU package (http://www.gnu.org/).
36 This is an ALPHA release. There are known and significant bugs as
37 well as many missing features in this release.
39 GNUnet is free software released under the GNU Affero General Public
40 License (v3 or later). For details see the COPYING file in this
41 directory. If you fork this software, you MUST adjust GNUNET_AGPL_URL
42 in src/include/gnunet_util_lib.h to point to the source code of your
45 Additional documentation about GNUnet can be found at
46 https://gnunet.org/ and in the 'doc/' folder.
47 Online documentation is provided at
48 'https://docs.gnunet.org' and 'https://tutorial.gnunet.org'.
54 These are the direct dependencies for running GNUnet:
55 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
57 - Bash (for some scripts)
59 - gnutls >= 3.2.12 (highly recommended a gnutls
60 linked against libunbound)
61 - A curl build against gnutls, or gnurl:
62 * libgnurl >= 7.35.0 (recommended, available from
63 https://gnunet.org/en/gnurl.html)
65 * libcurl >= 7.35.0 (alternative to libgnurl)
67 - libunistring >= 0.9.2
72 - libmicrohttpd >= 0.9.52 (strongly recommended for
73 a wide range of features)
76 - nss (certutil binary, for
77 gnunet-gns-proxy-setup-ca)
78 - openssl >= 1.0 (binary, used to generate
80 for gnunet-gns-proxy-setup-ca)
81 - A Posix shell (for some scripts)
83 - libltdl >= 2.2 (part of GNU libtool)
84 - 1 or more databases:
85 * sqlite >= 3.8 (default database, required)
87 * mysql >= 5.1 (alternative to sqlite)
89 * postgres >= 9.5 (alternative to sqlite)
90 - which (contrib/apparmor(?), gnunet-bugreport,
94 These are the dependencies for GNUnet's testsuite:
95 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
97 - Bash (for some tests[*4])
98 - A Posix Shell (for some tests)
99 - python >= 3.4 (3.4 and higher technically supported,
100 at least python 3.7 tested to work)
110 These are the optional dependencies:
111 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
113 - awk (for linting tests)
114 - Bash (for Docker and Vagrant)
115 - bluez (for bluetooth support)
116 - grof (for linting of man pages)
117 - guile 1.6.4 (or later up to 1.8?, for
118 gnunet-download-manager (see #5682))
120 - libextractor >= 0.6.1 (highly recommended[*5])
122 - libglpk >= 4.45 (for experimental code)
123 - libopus >= 1.0.1 (for experimental conversation tool)
124 - libpulse >= 2.0 (for experimental conversation tool)
125 - libogg >= 1.3.0 (for experimental conversation tool)
126 - libnss (certtool binary (for convenient
127 installation of GNS proxy))
128 - libzbar >= 0.10 (for gnunet-qr)
129 - libpbc >= 0.5.14 (for Attribute-Based Encryption and
130 Identity Provider functionality)
131 - libgabe (for Attribute-Based Encryption and
132 Identity Provider functionality, from
133 https://github.com/schanzen/libgabe)
134 - mandoc (for linting of man pages, generation of
135 html output of man pages (not part of
138 - perl5 (for some utilities)
139 - TeX Live >= 2012 (for gnunet-bcd[*])
140 - texi2mdoc (for automatic mdoc generation [*2])
142 Recommended autotools for compiling the Git version are:
143 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
150 [*] Mandatory for compiling the info output of the documentation,
151 a limited subset ('texlive-tiny' in Guix) is enough.
153 [*1] The default configuration is to build the info output of the
154 documentation, and therefore require texinfo. You can pass
155 '--disable-documentation' to the configure script to change this.
157 [*2] If you still prefer to have documentation, you can pass
158 '--with-section7' to build mdoc documentation (experimental
159 stages in gnunet). If this proves to be reliable, we will
160 include the mdoc output in the release tarballs.
161 Contrary to the name, texi2mdoc does not require texinfo,
162 It is a standalone ISO C utility.
164 [*3] GNU make introduced the != operator in version 4.0.
165 GNU make was released in october 2013, reasonable to
166 be widespread by now. If this is not working out for
167 you, open a bug so that we can get a more portable
170 [*4] We are commited to portable tools and solutions
171 where possible. New scripts should be Posix SH
172 compatible, current and older scripts are
173 in the process of being rewritten to comply
174 with this requirement.
176 [*5] While libextractor is optional, it is recommended to
177 build gnunet against it. If you install it later,
178 you won't benefit from libextractor.
179 If you are a distributor, we recommend to split
180 LE into basis + plugins rather than making LE
181 an option as an afterthought by the user.
182 LE itself is very small, but its dependency chain
183 on first, second, third etc level can be big.
184 There is a small effect on privacy if your LE build
185 differs from one which includes all
186 plugins (plugins are build as shared objects):
187 if users publish a directory with a mixture of file
188 types (for example mpeg, jpeg, png, gif) the
189 configuration of LE could leak which plugins are
190 installed for which filetypes are not providing
192 However, this leak is just a minor concern.
197 GNUnet's directed acyclic graph (DAG) will require around 0.74 GiB
198 Diskspace, with GNUNet itself taking around 8 - 9.2 MiB reported by
199 the build on GNU Guix.
208 We recommend to use binary packages provided by your Operating System's
209 package manager. GNUnet is reportedly available for at least:
211 GNU Guix, Nix, Debian, ALT Linux, Archlinux, Deepin, Devuan, Hyperbola,
212 Kali Linux, LEDE/OpenWRT, Manjaro, Parabola, Pardus, Parrot, PureOS,
213 Raspbian, Rosa, Trisquel, and Ubuntu.
215 If GNUnet is available for your Operating System and it is missing,
216 send us feedback so that we can add it to this list. Furthermore, if
217 you are interested in packaging GNUnet for your Operating System,
218 get in touch with us at gnunet-developers@gnu.org if you require
221 If you were using an Operating System with the apt package manager,
222 GNUnet could be installed as simple as:
224 $ apt-get install gnunet
226 Generic installation instructions are in the INSTALL file in this
229 Scope of Operating System support
230 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
231 We actively support GNUnet on a broad range of Free Software Operating
234 For proprietary Operating Systems, like for example Microsoft Windows
235 or Apple OS X, we accept patches if they don't break anything for
236 other Operating Systems.
237 If you are implementing support for a proprietary Operating System,
238 you should be aware that progress in our codebase could break
239 functionality on your OS and cause unpredicted behavior we can
240 not test. However, we do not break support on Operating Systems
241 with malicious intent.
242 Regressions which do occur on these Operating Systems are 3rd
243 class issues and we expect users and developers of these
244 Operating Systems to send proposed patches to fix regressions.
246 For more information about our stand on some of the motivating
247 points here, read the 'Philosophy' Chapter of our handbook.
249 Building GNUnet from source
250 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
252 IMPORTANT: You can read further notes about compilation from source in
253 the handbook under doc/handbook/, which includes notes about specific
254 requirements for operating systems aswell. If you are a package
255 mantainer for an Operating System we invite you to add your notes if
256 you feel it is necessary and can not be covered in your Operating
257 System's documentation.
259 Two prominent examples which currently lack cross-compilation
260 support in GNUnet (and native binaries) are MS Windows and Apple macOS.
261 For macOS we recommend you to do the build process via Homebrew and a
262 recent XCode installation. We don't recommend using GNUnet with any
263 recent MS Windows system as it officially spies on its users (according
264 to its T&C), defying some of the purposes of GNUnet.
266 Note that some functions of GNUnet require "root" access. GNUnet will
267 install (tiny) SUID binaries for those functions is you run "make
268 install" as root. If you do not, GNUnet will still work, but some
269 functionality will not be available (including certain forms of NAT
272 GNUnet requires the GNU MP library (https://www.gnu.org/software/gmp/)
273 and libgcrypt (https://www.gnupg.org/). You can specify the path to
274 libgcrypt by passing "--with-gcrypt=PATH" to configure. You will also
275 need either sqlite (http://www.sqlite.org/), MySQL
276 (http://www.mysql.org/) or PostGres (http://www.postgres.org/).
278 If you install from source, you need to install GNU libextractor first
279 (download from https://www.gnu.org/software/libextractor/). We also
280 recommend installing GNU libmicrohttpd (download from
281 https://www.gnu.org/software/libmicrohttpd/). Furthermore we recommend
282 libgnurl (from https://gnunet.org/en/gnurl.html).
283 Then you can start the actual GNUnet compilation process with:
286 $ export GNUNET_PREFIX=/usr/local/lib # or other directory of your choice
288 # adduser --system --home "/var/lib/gnunet" --group gnunet --shell /bin/sh
289 # ./configure --prefix=$GNUNET_PREFIX/.. --with-extractor=$LE_PREFIX
292 And finally install GNUnet with:
296 Complete the process by either adjusting one of our example service files
297 in 'contrib/services' or by running:
299 # sudo -u gnunet gnunet-arm -s
302 Note that running the 'configure' and 'make install' steps as
303 root (or with sudo) is required as some parts of the installation
304 require the creation of SUID binaries. The installation will
305 work if you do not run these steps as root, but some components
306 may not be installed in the perfect place or with the right
307 permissions and thus won't work.
309 This will create the users and groups needed for running GNUnet
310 securely and then compile and install GNUnet to $GNUNET_PREFIX/../bin/,
311 $GNUNET_PREFIX/ and $GNUNET_PREFIX/../share/ and start the system
312 with the default configuration. It is strongly recommended that you
313 add a user "gnunet" to run "gnunet-arm". You can then still run the
314 end-user applications as another user.
316 If you create a system user "gnunet", it is recommended that you edit
317 the configuration file slightly so that data can be stored in the
318 system user home directory at "/var/lib/gnunet". Depending on what
319 the $HOME-directory of your "gnunet" user is, you might need to set
320 the SERVICEHOME option in section "[PATHS]" to "/var/lib/gnunet" to
321 do this. Depending on your personal preferences, you may also want to
322 use "/etc/gnunet.conf" for the location of the configuration file in
323 this case (instead of ~gnunet/.config/gnunet.conf"). In this case,
324 you need to start GNUnet using "gnunet-arm -s -c /etc/gnunet.conf" or
325 set "XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/etc/".
327 You can avoid running 'make install' as root if you run configure
328 with the "--with-sudo=yes" option and have extensive sudo rights
329 (can run "chmod +s" and "chown" via 'sudo'). If you run 'make install'
330 as a normal user without sudo rights (or the configure option),
331 certain binaries that require additional priviledges will not be
332 installed properly (and autonomous NAT traversal, WLAN, DNS/GNS and
333 the VPN will then not work).
335 If you run 'configure' and 'make install' as root or use the '--with-sudo'
336 option, GNUnet's build system will install "libnss_gns*" libraries to
337 "/lib/" regardless (!) of the $GNUNET_PREFIX you might have specified,
338 as those libraries must be in "/lib/". If you are packaging GNUnet
339 for binary distribution, this may cause your packaging script to miss
340 those plugins, so you might need to do some additional manual work to
341 include those libraries in your binary package(s). Similarly, if you
342 want to use the GNUnet naming system and did NOT run GNUnet's 'make
343 install' process with sudo rights, the libraries will be installed to
344 "$GNUNET_PREFIX" and you will have to move them to "/lib/"
347 Finally, if you are compiling the code from git, you have to
348 run "sh ./bootstrap" before running "./configure". If you receive an error during
349 the running of "sh ./bootstrap" that looks like "macro `AM_PATH_GTK'
350 not found in library", you may need to run aclocal by hand with the -I
351 option, pointing to your aclocal m4 macros, i.e.
353 $ aclocal -I /usr/local/share/aclocal
359 Note that additional, per-user configuration files can be created by
360 each user. However, this is usually not necessary as there are few
361 per-user options that normal users would want to modify. The defaults
362 that are shipped with the installation are usually just fine.
364 The gnunet-setup tool is particularly useful to generate the master
365 configuration for the peer. gnunet-setup can be used to configure and
366 test (!) the network settings, choose which applications should be run
367 and configure databases. Other options you might want to control
368 include system limitations (such as disk space consumption, bandwidth,
369 etc). The resulting configuration files are human-readable and can
370 theoretically be created or edited by hand.
372 gnunet-setup is a separate download and requires somewhat recent
373 versions of GTK+ and Glade. You can also create the configuration file
374 by hand, but this is not recommended. For more general information
375 about the GNU build process read the INSTALL file.
377 GNUnet uses two types of configuration files, one that specifies the
378 system-wide defaults (typically located in
379 $GNUNET_PREFIX/../share/gnunet/config.d/) and a second one that overrides
380 default values with user-specific preferences. The user-specific
381 configuration file should be located in "~/.config/gnunet.conf" or its
382 location can be specified by giving the "-c" option to the respective
385 For more information about the configuration (as well as usage) refer
386 to the 'GNUnet User Handbook' chapter of the documentation, included
387 in this software distribution.
393 For detailed usage notes, instructions and examples, refer to the
394 included 'GNUnet Handbook'.
396 First, you must obtain an initial list of GNUnet hosts. Knowing a
397 single peer is sufficient since after that GNUnet propagates
398 information about other peers. Note that the default configuration
399 contains URLs from where GNUnet downloads an initial hostlist
400 whenever it is started. If you want to create an alternative URL for
401 others to use, the file can be generated on any machine running
402 GNUnet by periodically executing
404 $ cat $SERVICEHOME/data/hosts/* > the_file
406 and offering 'the_file' via your web server. Alternatively, you can
407 run the build-in web server by adding '-p' to the OPTIONS value
408 in the "hostlist" section of gnunet.conf and opening the respective
409 HTTPPORT to the public.
411 If the solution with the hostlist URL is not feasible for your
412 situation, you can also add hosts manually. Simply copy the hostkeys
413 to "$SERVICEHOME/data/hosts/" (where $SERVICEHOME is the directory
414 specified in the gnunet.conf configuration file). You can also use
415 "gnunet-peerinfo -g" to GET a URI for a peer and "gnunet-peerinfo -p
416 URI" to add a URI from another peer. Finally, GNUnet peers that use
417 UDP or WLAN will discover each other automatically (if they are in the
418 vicinity of each other) using broadcasts (IPv4/WLAN) or multicasts
421 The local node is started using "gnunet-arm -s". We recommend to run
422 GNUnet 24/7 if you want to maximize your anonymity, as this makes
423 partitioning attacks harder.
425 Once your peer is running, you should then be able to access GNUnet
428 $ gnunet-search KEYWORD
430 This will display a list of results to the console. You can abort
431 the command using "CTRL-C". Then use
433 $ gnunet-download -o FILENAME GNUNET_URI
435 to retrieve a file. The GNUNET_URI is printed by gnunet-search
436 together with a description. To publish files on GNUnet, use the
437 "gnunet-publish" command.
440 The GTK user interface is shipped separately.
441 After installing gnunet-gtk, you can invoke the setup tool and
442 the file-sharing GUI with:
447 For further documentation, see our webpage or the 'GNUnet User Handbook',
448 included in this software distribution.
454 Contributions are welcome. Please submit bugs you find to
455 https://bugs.gnunet.org/ or our bugs mailinglist.
456 Please make sure to run the script "contrib/scripts/gnunet-bugreport"
457 and include the output with your bug reports. More about how to
458 report bugs can be found in the GNUnet FAQ on the webpage. Submit
459 patches via E-Mail to gnunet-developers@gnu.org, formated with
462 In order to run the unit tests by hand (instead of using "make check"),
463 you need to set the environment variable "GNUNET_PREFIX" to the
464 directory where GNUnet's libraries are installed.
465 Before running any testcases, you must complete the installation.
469 $ ./configure --prefix=$SOMEWHERE
472 $ export $GNUNET_PREFIX=$SOMEWHERE
475 Some of the testcases require python >= 3.7, and the python module
476 "pexpect" to be installed.
477 If any testcases fail to pass on your system, run
478 "contrib/scripts/gnunet-bugreport" (in the repository) or "gnunet-bugreport"
479 when you already have GNUnet installed and report its output together with
480 information about the failing testcase(s) to the Mantis bugtracking
481 system at https://bugs.gnunet.org/.
484 Running HTTP on port 80 and HTTPS on port 443
485 =============================================
487 In order to hide GNUnet's HTTP/HTTPS traffic perfectly, you might
488 consider running GNUnet's HTTP/HTTPS transport on port 80/443.
489 However, we do not recommend running GNUnet as root. Instead, forward
490 port 80 to say 1080 with this command (as root, in your startup
493 # iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 1080
497 # iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 4433
499 Then set in the HTTP section of gnunet.conf the "ADVERTISED_PORT" to
500 "80" and "PORT" to 1080 and similarly in the HTTPS section the
501 "ADVERTISED_PORT" to "443" and "PORT" to 4433.
503 You can do the same trick for the TCP and UDP transports if you want
504 to map them to a priviledged port (from the point of view of the
505 network). However, we are not aware of this providing any advantages
508 If you are already running an HTTP or HTTPS server on port 80 (or 443),
509 you may be able to configure it as a "ReverseProxy". Here, you tell
510 GNUnet that the externally visible URI is some sub-page on your website,
511 and GNUnet can then tunnel its traffic via your existing HTTP server.
512 This is particularly powerful if your existing server uses HTTPS, as
513 it makes it harder for an adversary to distinguish normal traffic to
514 your server from GNUnet traffic. Finally, even if you just use HTTP,
515 you might benefit (!) from ISP's traffic shaping as opposed to being
516 throttled by ISPs that dislike P2P. Details for configuring the
517 reverse proxy are documented on our website.
525 A HTML version of the new GNUnet manual is deployed at
527 https://docs.gnunet.org
529 which currently displays just GNUnet documentation. Until 2019
530 we will add more reading material.
534 In almost 20 years various people in our community have written and
535 collected a good number of papers which have been implemented in
536 GNUnet or projects around GNUnet.
537 There are currently 2 ways to get them:
539 * Using git (NOTE: 1.1 GiB as of 2019-03-09):
540 git clone https://git.gnunet.org/bibliography.git
542 https://old.gnunet.org/bibliography
544 The Drupal access will be replaced by a new interface to our
545 bibliography in the foreseeable future.
551 * https://gnunet.org/
552 * https://bugs.gnunet.org
553 * https://git.gnunet.org
554 * http://www.gnu.org/software/gnunet/
555 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnunet-developers
556 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnunet
557 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnunet
558 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnunet-svn