7 GNUnet is peer-to-peer framework providing a network abstractions and
8 applications focusing on security and privacy. So far, we have
9 created applications for anonymous file-sharing, decentralized naming
10 and identity management, decentralized and confidential telephony and
11 tunneling IP traffic over GNUnet. GNUnet is currently developed by a
12 worldwide group of independent free software developers. GNUnet is a
13 GNU package (http://www.gnu.org/).
15 This is an ALPHA release. There are known and significant bugs as
16 well as many missing features in this release.
18 GNUnet is free software released under the GNU Affero General Public
19 License (v3 or later). For details see the COPYING file in this
20 directory. If you fork this software, you MUST adjust GNUNET_AGPL_URL
21 in src/include/gnunet_util_lib.h to point to the source code of your
24 Additional documentation about GNUnet can be found at
25 https://gnunet.org/ and in the 'doc/' folder.
31 These are the direct dependencies for running GNUnet:
33 - libmicrohttpd >= 0.9.42
35 - libgnurl >= 7.35.0 (recommended, available from https://gnunet.org/gnurl)
36 - libcurl >= 7.35.0 (alternative to libgnurl)
37 - libunistring >= 0.9.2
38 - gnutls >= 3.2.12 (highly recommended a gnutls linked against libunbound)
40 - libextractor >= 0.6.1 (highly recommended)
41 - openssl >= 1.0 (binary, used to generate X.509 certificate)
42 - libltdl >= 2.2 (part of GNU libtool)
43 - sqlite >= 3.8 (default database, required)
44 - mysql >= 5.1 (alternative to sqlite)
45 - postgres >= 9.5 (alternative to sqlite)
47 - which (for the bootstrap script)
53 These are the dependencies for GNUnet's testsuite:
55 - Bash (optional (?), for some tests)
56 - python >= 2.7 (optional, only python 2.7 is supported)
57 - python-future >= 2.7 (optional, only python 2.7 is supported)
60 These are the optional dependencies:
62 - libopus >= 1.0.1 (optional, for experimental conversation tool)
63 - libpulse >= 2.0 (optional, for experimental conversation tool)
64 - libogg >= 1.3.0 (optional, for experimental conversation tool)
65 - libnss (optional, certtool binary (for convenient installation of GNS proxy))
66 - python-future (optional, for some testcases and utilities)
67 - python-zbar >= 0.10 (optional, for gnunet-qr)
68 - TeX Live >= 2012 (optional, for gnunet-bcd[*])
69 - libglpk >= 4.45 (optional, for experimental code)
70 - perl5 (optional, for some utilities)
71 - python >= 2.7 (optional, for gnunet-qr, only python 2.7 is supported)
72 - bluez (optional, for bluetooth support)
74 - libpbc >= 0.5.14 (optional, for Attribute-Based Encryption and Identity Provider functionality)
75 - libgabe (optional, for Attribute-Based Encryption and Identity Provider functionality,
76 from https://github.com/schanzen/libgabe)
78 Recommended autotools for compiling the Git version are:
85 [*] Mandatory for compiling the info output of the documentation,
86 a limited subset ('texlive-tiny' in Guix) is enough.
88 [*1] The default configuration is to build the info output of the
89 documentation, and therefore require texinfo. You can pass
90 '--disable-documentation' to the configure script to change this.
95 GNUnet's directed acyclic graph (DAG) will require around 0.74 GiB
96 Diskspace, with GNUNet itself taking around 9.2 MiB reported by the
106 We recommend to use binary packages provided by your Operating System's
107 package manager. GNUnet is reportedly available for at least:
109 GNU Guix, Nix, Debian, ALT Linux, Archlinux, Deepin, Devuan, Hyperbola,
110 Kali Linux, LEDE/OpenWRT, Manjaro, Parabola, Pardus, Parrot, PureOS,
111 Raspbian, Rosa, Trisquel, and Ubuntu.
113 If GNUnet is available for your Operating System and it is missing,
114 send us feedback so that we can add it to this list. Furthermore, if
115 you are interested in packaging GNUnet for your Operating System,
116 get in touch with us at gnunet-developers@gnu.org if you require
119 If you were using an Operating System with the apt package manager,
120 GNUnet could be installed as simple as:
122 $ apt-get install gnunet
124 Generic installation instructions are in the INSTALL file in this
127 Scope of Operating System support
128 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
129 We actively support GNUnet on a broad range of Free Software Operating
132 For proprietary Operating Systems, like for example Microsoft Windows
133 or Apple OS X, we accept patches if they don't break anything for
134 other Operating Systems.
135 If you are implementing support for a proprietary Operating System,
136 you should be aware that progress in our codebase could break
137 functionality on your OS and cause unpredicted behavior we can
138 not test. However, we do not break support on Operating Systems
139 with malicious intent.
140 Regressions which do occur on these Operating Systems are 3rd
141 class issues and we expect users and developers of these
142 Operating Systems to send proposed patches to fix regressions.
144 For more information about our stand on some of the motivating
145 points here, read the 'Philosophy' Chapter of our handbook.
147 Building GNUnet from source
148 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
150 IMPORTANT: You can read further notes about compilation from source in
151 the 'doc/FILENAME' document, which includes notes about specific
152 requirements for operating systems aswell. If you are a package
153 mantainer for an Operating System we invite you to add your notes if
154 you feel it is necessary and can not be covered in your Operating
155 System's documentation.
157 If you are building GNUnet from source you are either interested
158 in furthering its development (we have further notes for developer
159 builds in our 'GNUnet Developer Handbook') or you don't trust other
160 people's binaries or your Operating System doesn't provide any
161 binary package (at the moment).
163 If you're on Gentoo you can build GNUnet using the recipes provided
164 in the 'youbroketheinternet' overlay. Other Operating Systems may
165 unintentionally require you to build GNUnet from source.
167 Two prominent examples which currently lack cross-compilation
168 support in GNUnet (and native binaries) are MS Windows and Apple macOS.
169 For macOS we recommend you to do the build process via Homebrew and a
170 recent XCode installation. We don't recommend using GNUnet with any
171 recent MS Windows system as it officially spies on its users (according
172 to its T&C), defying some of the purposes of GNUnet.
174 Note that some functions of GNUnet require "root" access. GNUnet will
175 install (tiny) SUID binaries for those functions is you run "make
176 install" as root. If you do not, GNUnet will still work, but some
177 functionality will not be available (including certain forms of NAT
180 GNUnet requires the GNU MP library (https://www.gnu.org/software/gmp/)
181 and libgcrypt (https://www.gnupg.org/). You can specify the path to
182 libgcrypt by passing "--with-gcrypt=PATH" to configure. You will also
183 need either sqlite (http://www.sqlite.org/), MySQL
184 (http://www.mysql.org/) or PostGres (http://www.postgres.org/).
186 If you install from source, you need to install GNU libextractor first
187 (download from https://www.gnu.org/software/libextractor/). We also
188 recommend installing GNU libmicrohttpd (download from
189 https://www.gnu.org/software/libmicrohttpd/). Furthermore we recommend
190 libgnurl (from https://gnunet.org/gnurl).
191 Then you can start the actual GNUnet compilation process with:
194 $ export GNUNET_PREFIX=/usr/local/lib # or other directory of your choice
196 # adduser --system --home "/var/lib/gnunet" --group gnunet --shell /bin/sh
197 # ./configure --prefix=$GNUNET_PREFIX/.. --with-extractor=$LE_PREFIX
200 And finally install GNUnet with:
204 Complete the process by either adjusting one of our example service files
205 in 'contrib/services' or by running:
207 # sudo -u gnunet gnunet-arm -s
210 Note that running the 'configure' and 'make install' steps as
211 root (or with sudo) is required as some parts of the installation
212 require the creation of SUID binaries. The installation will
213 work if you do not run these steps as root, but some components
214 may not be installed in the perfect place or with the right
215 permissions and thus won't work.
217 This will create the users and groups needed for running GNUnet
218 securely and then compile and install GNUnet to $GNUNET_PREFIX/../bin/,
219 $GNUNET_PREFIX/ and $GNUNET_PREFIX/../share/ and start the system
220 with the default configuration. It is strongly recommended that you
221 add a user "gnunet" to run "gnunet-arm". You can then still run the
222 end-user applications as another user.
224 If you create a system user "gnunet", it is recommended that you edit
225 the configuration file slightly so that data can be stored in the
226 system user home directory at "/var/lib/gnunet". Depending on what
227 the $HOME-directory of your "gnunet" user is, you might need to set
228 the SERVICEHOME option in section "[PATHS]" to "/var/lib/gnunet" to
229 do this. Depending on your personal preferences, you may also want to
230 use "/etc/gnunet.conf" for the location of the configuration file in
231 this case (instead of ~gnunet/.config/gnunet.conf"). In this case,
232 you need to start GNUnet using "gnunet-arm -s -c /etc/gnunet.conf" or
233 set "XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/etc/".
235 You can avoid running 'make install' as root if you run configure
236 with the "--with-sudo=yes" option and have extensive sudo rights
237 (can run "chmod +s" and "chown" via 'sudo'). If you run 'make install'
238 as a normal user without sudo rights (or the configure option),
239 certain binaries that require additional priviledges will not be
240 installed properly (and autonomous NAT traversal, WLAN, DNS/GNS and
241 the VPN will then not work).
243 If you run 'configure' and 'make install' as root or use the '--with-sudo'
244 option, GNUnet's build system will install "libnss_gns*" libraries to
245 "/lib/" regardless (!) of the $GNUNET_PREFIX you might have specified,
246 as those libraries must be in "/lib/". If you are packaging GNUnet
247 for binary distribution, this may cause your packaging script to miss
248 those plugins, so you might need to do some additional manual work to
249 include those libraries in your binary package(s). Similarly, if you
250 want to use the GNUnet naming system and did NOT run GNUnet's 'make
251 install' process with sudo rights, the libraries will be installed to
252 "$GNUNET_PREFIX" and you will have to move them to "/lib/"
255 Finally, if you are compiling the code from git, you have to
256 run "sh ./bootstrap" before running "./configure". If you receive an error during
257 the running of "sh ./bootstrap" that looks like "macro `AM_PATH_GTK'
258 not found in library", you may need to run aclocal by hand with the -I
259 option, pointing to your aclocal m4 macros, i.e.
261 $ aclocal -I /usr/local/share/aclocal
267 Note that additional, per-user configuration files can be created by
268 each user. However, this is usually not necessary as there are few
269 per-user options that normal users would want to modify. The defaults
270 that are shipped with the installation are usually just fine.
272 The gnunet-setup tool is particularly useful to generate the master
273 configuration for the peer. gnunet-setup can be used to configure and
274 test (!) the network settings, choose which applications should be run
275 and configure databases. Other options you might want to control
276 include system limitations (such as disk space consumption, bandwidth,
277 etc). The resulting configuration files are human-readable and can
278 theoretically be created or edited by hand.
280 gnunet-setup is a separate download and requires somewhat recent
281 versions of GTK+ and Glade. You can also create the configuration file
282 by hand, but this is not recommended. For more general information
283 about the GNU build process read the INSTALL file.
285 GNUnet uses two types of configuration files, one that specifies the
286 system-wide defaults (typically located in
287 $GNUNET_PREFIX/../share/gnunet/config.d/) and a second one that overrides
288 default values with user-specific preferences. The user-specific
289 configuration file should be located in "~/.config/gnunet.conf" or its
290 location can be specified by giving the "-c" option to the respective
293 For more information about the configuration (as well as usage) refer
294 to the 'GNUnet User Handbook' chapter of the documentation, included
295 in this software distribution.
301 For detailed usage notes, instructions and examples, refer to the
302 included 'GNUnet User Handbook'.
304 First, you must obtain an initial list of GNUnet hosts. Knowing a
305 single peer is sufficient since after that GNUnet propagates
306 information about other peers. Note that the default configuration
307 contains URLs from where GNUnet downloads an initial hostlist
308 whenever it is started. If you want to create an alternative URL for
309 others to use, the file can be generated on any machine running
310 GNUnet by periodically executing
312 $ cat $SERVICEHOME/data/hosts/* > the_file
314 and offering 'the_file' via your web server. Alternatively, you can
315 run the build-in web server by adding '-p' to the OPTIONS value
316 in the "hostlist" section of gnunet.conf and opening the respective
317 HTTPPORT to the public.
319 If the solution with the hostlist URL is not feasible for your
320 situation, you can also add hosts manually. Simply copy the hostkeys
321 to "$SERVICEHOME/data/hosts/" (where $SERVICEHOME is the directory
322 specified in the gnunet.conf configuration file). You can also use
323 "gnunet-peerinfo -g" to GET a URI for a peer and "gnunet-peerinfo -p
324 URI" to add a URI from another peer. Finally, GNUnet peers that use
325 UDP or WLAN will discover each other automatically (if they are in the
326 vicinity of each other) using broadcasts (IPv4/WLAN) or multicasts
329 The local node is started using "gnunet-arm -s". We recommend to run
330 GNUnet 24/7 if you want to maximize your anonymity, as this makes
331 partitioning attacks harder.
333 Once your peer is running, you should then be able to access GNUnet
336 $ gnunet-search KEYWORD
338 This will display a list of results to the console. You can abort
339 the command using "CTRL-C". Then use
341 $ gnunet-download -o FILENAME GNUNET_URI
343 to retrieve a file. The GNUNET_URI is printed by gnunet-search
344 together with a description. To publish files on GNUnet, use the
345 "gnunet-publish" command.
348 The GTK+ (or: Gimp Toolkit) user interface is shipped separately.
349 After installing gnunet-gtk, you can invoke the setup tool and
350 the file-sharing GUI with:
355 For further documentation, see our webpage or the 'GNUnet User Handbook',
356 included in this software distribution.
362 Contributions are welcome. Please submit bugs you find to
363 https://gnunet.org/bugs/.
364 Please make sure to run the script "contrib/scripts/gnunet-bugreport"
365 and include the output with your bug reports. More about how to
366 report bugs can be found in the GNUnet FAQ on the webpage. Submit
367 patches via E-Mail to gnunet-developers@gnu.org, formated with
370 In order to run the unit tests by hand (instead of using "make check"),
371 you need to set the environment variable "GNUNET_PREFIX" to the
372 directory where GNUnet's libraries are installed.
373 Before running any testcases, you must complete the installation.
377 $ ./configure --prefix=$SOMEWHERE
380 $ export $GNUNET_PREFIX=$SOMEWHERE
383 Some of the testcases require python >= 2.7, and the python modules
384 "python-future" (http://python-future.org/) and "pexpect" to be installed.
385 If any testcases fail to pass on your system, run
386 "contrib/scripts/gnunet-bugreport" (in the repository) or "gnunet-bugreport"
387 when you already have GNUnet installed and report its output together with
388 information about the failing testcase(s) to the Mantis bugtracking
389 system at https://gnunet.org/bugs/.
392 Running HTTP on port 80 and HTTPS on port 443
393 =============================================
395 In order to hide GNUnet's HTTP/HTTPS traffic perfectly, you might
396 consider running GNUnet's HTTP/HTTPS transport on port 80/443.
397 However, we do not recommend running GNUnet as root. Instead, forward
398 port 80 to say 1080 with this command (as root, in your startup
401 # iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 1080
405 # iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 4433
407 Then set in the HTTP section of gnunet.conf the "ADVERTISED_PORT" to
408 "80" and "PORT" to 1080 and similarly in the HTTPS section the
409 "ADVERTISED_PORT" to "443" and "PORT" to 4433.
411 You can do the same trick for the TCP and UDP transports if you want
412 to map them to a priviledged port (from the point of view of the
413 network). However, we are not aware of this providing any advantages
416 If you are already running an HTTP or HTTPS server on port 80 (or 443),
417 you may be able to configure it as a "ReverseProxy". Here, you tell
418 GNUnet that the externally visible URI is some sub-page on your website,
419 and GNUnet can then tunnel its traffic via your existing HTTP server.
420 This is particularly powerful if your existing server uses HTTPS, as
421 it makes it harder for an adversary to distinguish normal traffic to
422 your server from GNUnet traffic. Finally, even if you just use HTTP,
423 you might benefit (!) from ISP's traffic shaping as opposed to being
424 throttled by ISPs that dislike P2P. Details for configuring the
425 reverse proxy are documented on our website.
433 A HTML version of the new GNUnet manual is deployed at
435 https://docs.gnunet.org
437 which currently displays just GNUnet documentation. Until 2019
438 we will add more reading material.
442 In almost 20 years various people in our community have written and
443 collected a good number of papers which have been implemented in
444 GNUnet or projects around GNUnet.
445 There are currently 2 ways to get them:
448 git clone https://gnunet.org/git/bibliography.git
450 https://gnunet.org/bibliography
452 The Drupal access will be replaced by a new interface to our
453 bibliography in 2019.
459 * https://gnunet.org/
460 * https://gnunet.org/bugs/
461 * https://gnunet.org/git/
462 * http://www.gnu.org/software/gnunet/
463 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnunet-developers
464 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnunet
465 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnunet
466 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnunet-svn