7 GNUnet is peer-to-peer framework focusing on security. The first and
8 primary application for GNUnet is anonymous file-sharing. GNUnet is
9 currently developed by a worldwide group of independent free software
10 developers. GNUnet is a GNU package (http://www.gnu.org/).
12 This is an ALPHA release. There are known and significant bugs as
13 well as many missing features in this release.
15 Additional documentation about GNUnet can be found at
22 Please note that for many of its dependencies GNUnet requires very
23 recent versions of the libraries which are often NOT to be found in
24 stable distributions in 2011. While using older packages may in some
25 cases on some operating systems may seem to work in some limited
26 fashion, we are in many cases aware of serious problems with older
27 packages. Hence please make sure to use the versions listed below.
29 These are the direct dependencies for running GNUnet:
31 - libextractor >= 0.6.1
32 - libmicrohttpd >= 0.9.18
35 - libunistring >= 0.9.2
36 - libltdl >= 2.2 (part of GNU libtool)
37 - sqlite >= 3.0 (default database)
38 - mysql >= 5.1 (alternative to sqLite)
39 - postgres >= 8.3 (alternative to sqLite)
41 Recommended autotools for compiling the SVN version are:
50 The fastest way is to use a binary package if it is available for your
51 system. For a more detailed description, read the installation
52 instructions on the webpage at https://gnunet.org/installation.
54 Note that some functions of GNUnet require "root" access. GNUnet will
55 install (tiny) SUID binaries for those functions is you run "make
56 install" as root. If you do not, GNUnet will still work, but some
57 functionality will not be available (including certain forms of NAT
60 GNUnet requires the GNU MP library (http://www.gnu.org/software/gmp/)
61 and libgcrypt (http://www.gnupg.org/). You can specify the path to
62 libgcrypt by passing "--with-gcrypt=PATH" to configure. You will also
63 need either sqlite (http://www.sqlite.org/), MySQL
64 (http://www.mysql.org/) or PostGres (http://www.postgres.org/).
66 If you install from source, you need to install GNU libextractor first
67 (download from http://www.gnu.org/software/libextractor/). We also
68 recommend installing GNU libmicrohttpd (download from
69 http://www.gnu.org/software/libmicrohttpd/). Then you can start the
70 actual GNUnet compilation and installation process with:
72 $ export GNUNET_PREFIX=/usr/local # or other directory of your choice
74 $ adduser gnunet gnunet
75 $ ./configure --prefix=$GNUNET_PREFIX --with-extractor=$LE_PREFIX
78 # sudo -u gnunet mkdir ~/.gnunet/
79 # sudo -u gnunet touch ~/.gnunet/gnunet.conf
80 # sudo -u gnunet gnunet-arm -s
82 This will create the users and groups needed for running GNUnet
83 securely and then compile and install GNUnet to $GNUNET_PREFIX/bin/,
84 $GNUNET_PREFIX/lib/ and $GNUNET_PREFIX/share/ and start the system
85 with the default configuration. It is strongly recommended that you
86 add a user "gnunet" to run "gnunet-arm". You can then still run the
87 end-user applications as another user.
89 If you create a system user "gnunet", it is recommended that you edit
90 the configuration file slightly so that data can be stored in the
91 system user home directory at "/var/lib/gnunet"; you may also want to
92 use "/etc/gnunet.conf" for the location of the configuration file in
95 You can avoid running 'make install' as root if you run configure
96 with the "--with-sudo=yes" option and have extensive sudo rights
97 (can run "chmod +s" and "chown" via 'sudo'). If you run 'make install'
98 as a normal user without sudo rights (or the configure option),
99 certain binaries that require additional priviledges will not be
100 installed properly (and autonomous NAT traversal, WLAN, DNS/GNS and
101 the VPN will then not work).
103 Note that additional, per-user configuration files
104 (~/.gnunet/gnunet.conf) need to be created by each user (for example,
105 by running gnunet-setup). Note that gnunet-setup is a separate
106 download and requires recent versions of GTK+ and Glade; you can also
107 edit the configuration file by hand, but this is not recommended. For
108 more general information about the GNU build process read the INSTALL
111 If you are compiling the code from subversion, you have to run
112 ". bootstrap" before ./configure. If you receive an error during the
113 running of ". bootstrap" that looks like "macro `AM_PATH_GTK' not
114 found in library", you may need to run aclocal by hand with the -I
115 option, pointing to your aclocal m4 macros, i.e.
117 $ aclocal -I /usr/local/share/aclocal
123 GNUnet uses two types of configuration files, one that specifies the
124 system-wide defaults (typically located in
125 $GNUNET_PREFIX/share/gnunet/config.d/) and a second one that overrides
126 default values with user-specific preferences. The user-specific
127 configuration file should be located in "~/.gnunet/gnunet.conf" or its
128 location can be specified by giving the "-c" option to the respective
131 The defaults that are shipped with the installation are usually ok,
132 you may want to adjust the limitations (space consumption, bandwidth,
133 etc.) though. The configuration files are human-readable. Note that
134 you MUST create "~/.gnunet/gnunet.conf" explicitly before starting
135 GNUnet. You can either run gnunet-setup (available as part of the
136 gnunet-gtk source package) or simply create an empty file.
142 First, you must obtain an initial list of GNUnet hosts. Knowing a
143 single peer is sufficient since after that GNUnet propagates
144 information about other peers. Note that the default "gnunet.conf"
145 contains URLs from where GNUnet downloads an initial hostlist
146 whenever it is started. If you want to create an alternative URL for
147 others to use, the file can be generated on any machine running
148 GNUnet by periodically executing
150 $ cat $SERVICEHOME/data/hosts/* > the_file
152 and offering 'the_file' via your web server. Alternatively, you can
153 run the build-in web server by adding '-p' to the OPTIONS value
154 in the "hostlist" section of gnunet.conf and opening the respective
155 HTTPPORT to the public.
157 If the solution with the hostlist URL is not feasible for your
158 situation, you can also add hosts manually. Simply copy the hostkeys
159 to "$SERVICEHOME/data/hosts/" (where $SERVICEHOME is the directory
160 specified in the gnunet.conf configuration file).
162 Now start the local node using "gnunet-arm -s". GNUnet should run 24/7 if
163 you want to maximize your anonymity.
165 You should then be able to access GNUnet using the shell:
167 $ gnunet-search KEYWORD
169 This will display a list of results to the console. Then use
171 $ gnunet-download -o FILENAME GNUNET_URI
173 to retrieve a file. The GNUNET_URI is printed by gnunet-search
174 together with a description. To publish files on GNUnet, use the
175 "gnunet-publish" command.
178 The GTK user interface is shipped separately. After downloading and
179 installing gnunet-gtk, you can invoke the setup tool and the
180 file-sharing GUI with:
185 For further documentation, see our webpage.
191 Contributions are welcome, please submit bugs to
192 https://gnunet.org/bugs/. Please make sure to run contrib/report.sh
193 and include the output with your bug reports. More about how to
194 report bugs can be found in the GNUnet FAQ on the webpage. Submit
195 patches via E-Mail to gnunet-developers@gnu.org.
197 In order to run the unit tests with "make check", you need to
198 set an environment variable ("GNUNET_PREFIX") to the directory
199 where GNUnet is installed (usually, GNUnet will use OS specific
200 tricks in order to try to figure out the PREFIX, but since the
201 testcase binaries are not installed, that trick does not work
202 for them). Also, before running any testcases, you must
203 complete the installation first. Quick summary:
205 $ ./configure --prefix=$SOMEWHERE
208 $ export GNUNET_PREFIX=$SOMEWHERE
211 Some of the testcases require python >= 2.6 and pexpect to be
212 installed. If any testcases fail to pass on your system, run
213 "contrib/report.sh" and report the output together with
214 information about the failing testcase to the Mantis bugtracking
215 system at https://gnunet.org/bugs/.
218 Running http on port 80 and https on port 443
219 =============================================
221 In order to hide GNUnet's HTTP/HTTPS traffic perfectly, you might
222 consider running GNUnet's HTTP/HTTPS transport on port 80/443.
223 However, we do not recommend running GNUnet as root. Instead, forward
224 port 80 to say 1080 with this command (as root, in your startup
227 # iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 1080
231 # iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 4433
233 Then set in the HTTP section of gnunet.conf the "ADVERTISED_PORT" to
234 "80" and "PORT" to 1080 and similarly in the HTTPS section the
235 "ADVERTISED_PORT" to "443" and "PORT" to 4433.
237 You can do the same trick for the TCP and UDP transports if you want
238 to map them to a priviledged port (from the point of view of the
239 network). However, we are not aware of this providing any advantages
246 * https://gnunet.org/
247 * https://gnunet.org/bugs/
248 * https://gnunet.org/svn/
249 * http://www.gnu.org/software/gnunet/
250 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnunet-developers
251 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnunet
252 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnunet
253 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnunet-svn