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)
79 These are the direct dependencies for running GNUnet:
81 - libmicrohttpd >= 0.9.52
83 - libgnurl >= 7.35.0 (available from https://gnunet.org/gnurl)
84 - libunistring >= 0.9.2
87 - libextractor >= 0.6.1 (highly recommended)
88 - openssl >= 1.0 (binary, used to generate X.509 certificate)
89 - libltdl >= 2.2 (part of GNU libtool)
90 - sqlite >= 3.8 (default database, required)
91 - mysql >= 5.1 (alternative to sqlite)
92 - postgres >= 9.5 (alternative to sqlite)
93 - libopus >= 1.0.1 (optional for experimental conversation tool)
94 - libpulse >= 2.0 (optional for experimental conversation tool)
95 - libogg >= 1.3.0 (optional for experimental conversation tool)
96 - python-zbar >= 0.10 (optional for gnunet-qr)
97 - TeX Live >= 2012 (optional for gnunet-bcd[*])
99 - libglpk >= 4.45 (optional for experimental code)
101 Recommended autotools for compiling the git version are:
108 [*] Mandatory for compiling the info output of the documentation,
109 a limited subset ('texlive-tiny' in Guix) is enough.
111 [*1] The default configuration is to build the info output of the
112 documentation, and therefore require texinfo. You can pass
113 '--disable-documentation' to the configure script to change this.
118 GNUnet's directed acyclic graph (DAG) will require around 0.74 GiB
119 Diskspace, with GNUNet itself taking around 9.2 MiB reported by the
129 We recommend to use binary packages provided by your Operating System's
130 package manager. GNUnet is reportedly available for at least:
132 GNU Guix, Nix, Debian, ALT Linux, Archlinux, Deepin, Devuan, Hyperbola,
133 Kali Linux, LEDE/OpenWRT, Manjaro, Parabola, Pardus, Parrot, PureOS,
134 Raspbian, Rosa, Trisquel, and Ubuntu.
136 If GNUnet is available for your Operating System and it is missing,
137 send us feedback so that we can add it to this list. Furthermore, if
138 you are interested in packaging GNUnet for your Operating System,
139 get in touch with us at gnunet-developers@gnu.org if you require
142 If you were using an Operating System with the apt package manager,
143 GNUnet could be installed as simple as:
145 $ apt-get install gnunet
147 Generic installation instructions are in the INSTALL file in this
150 Scope of Operating System support
151 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
152 We actively support GNUnet on a broad range of Free Software Operating
155 For proprietary Operating Systems, like for example Microsoft Windows
156 or Apple OS X, we accept patches if they don't break anything for
157 other Operating Systems.
158 If you are implementing support for a proprietary Operating System,
159 you should be aware that progress in our codebase could break
160 functionality on your OS and cause unpredicted behavior we can
161 not test. However, we do not break support on Operating Systems
162 with malicious intent.
163 Regressions which do occur on these Operating Systems are 3rd
164 class issues and we expect users and developers of these
165 Operating Systems to send proposed patches to fix regressions.
167 For more information about our stand on some of the motivating
168 points here, read the 'Philosophy' Chapter of our handbook.
170 Building GNUnet from source
171 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
173 IMPORTANT: You can read further notes about compilation from source in
174 the 'doc/FILENAME' document, which includes notes about specific
175 requirements for operating systems aswell. If you are a package
176 mantainer for an Operating System we invite you to add your notes if
177 you feel it is necessary and can not be covered in your Operating
178 System's documentation.
180 If you are building GNUnet from source you are either interested
181 in furthering its development (we have further notes for developer
182 builds in our 'GNUnet Developer Handbook') or you don't trust other
183 people's binaries or your Operating System doesn't provide any
184 binary package (at the moment).
186 If you're on Gentoo you can build GNUnet using the recipes provided
187 in the 'youbroketheinternet' overlay. Other Operating Systems may
188 unintentionally require you to build GNUnet from source.
190 Two prominent examples which currently lack cross-compilation
191 support in GNUnet (and native binaries) are MS Windows and Apple macOS.
192 For macOS we recommend you to do the build process via Homebrew and a
193 recent XCode installation. We don't recommend using GNUnet with any
194 recent MS Windows system as it officially spies on its users (according
195 to its T&C), defying some of the purposes of GNUnet.
197 Note that some functions of GNUnet require "root" access. GNUnet will
198 install (tiny) SUID binaries for those functions is you run "make
199 install" as root. If you do not, GNUnet will still work, but some
200 functionality will not be available (including certain forms of NAT
203 GNUnet requires the GNU MP library (https://www.gnu.org/software/gmp/)
204 and libgcrypt (https://www.gnupg.org/). You can specify the path to
205 libgcrypt by passing "--with-gcrypt=PATH" to configure. You will also
206 need either sqlite (http://www.sqlite.org/), MySQL
207 (http://www.mysql.org/) or PostGres (http://www.postgres.org/).
209 If you install from source, you need to install GNU libextractor first
210 (download from https://www.gnu.org/software/libextractor/). We also
211 recommend installing GNU libmicrohttpd (download from
212 https://www.gnu.org/software/libmicrohttpd/). Furthermore we recommend
213 libgnurl (from https://gnunet.org/gnurl).
214 Then you can start the actual GNUnet compilation process with:
217 $ export GNUNET_PREFIX=/usr/local/lib # or other directory of your choice
219 # adduser --system --home "/var/lib/gnunet" --group gnunet --shell /bin/sh
220 # ./configure --prefix=$GNUNET_PREFIX/.. --with-extractor=$LE_PREFIX
223 And finally install GNUnet with:
227 Complete the process by either adjusting one of our example service files
228 in 'contrib/services' or by running:
230 # sudo -u gnunet gnunet-arm -s
233 Note that running the 'configure' and 'make install' steps as
234 root (or with sudo) is required as some parts of the installation
235 require the creation of SUID binaries. The installation will
236 work if you do not run these steps as root, but some components
237 may not be installed in the perfect place or with the right
238 permissions and thus won't work.
240 This will create the users and groups needed for running GNUnet
241 securely and then compile and install GNUnet to $GNUNET_PREFIX/../bin/,
242 $GNUNET_PREFIX/ and $GNUNET_PREFIX/../share/ and start the system
243 with the default configuration. It is strongly recommended that you
244 add a user "gnunet" to run "gnunet-arm". You can then still run the
245 end-user applications as another user.
247 If you create a system user "gnunet", it is recommended that you edit
248 the configuration file slightly so that data can be stored in the
249 system user home directory at "/var/lib/gnunet". Depending on what
250 the $HOME-directory of your "gnunet" user is, you might need to set
251 the SERVICEHOME option in section "[PATHS]" to "/var/lib/gnunet" to
252 do this. Depending on your personal preferences, you may also want to
253 use "/etc/gnunet.conf" for the location of the configuration file in
254 this case (instead of ~gnunet/.config/gnunet.conf"). In this case,
255 you need to start GNUnet using "gnunet-arm -s -c /etc/gnunet.conf" or
256 set "XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/etc/".
258 You can avoid running 'make install' as root if you run configure
259 with the "--with-sudo=yes" option and have extensive sudo rights
260 (can run "chmod +s" and "chown" via 'sudo'). If you run 'make install'
261 as a normal user without sudo rights (or the configure option),
262 certain binaries that require additional priviledges will not be
263 installed properly (and autonomous NAT traversal, WLAN, DNS/GNS and
264 the VPN will then not work).
266 If you run 'configure' and 'make install' as root or use the '--with-sudo'
267 option, GNUnet's build system will install "libnss_gns*" libraries to
268 "/lib/" regardless (!) of the $GNUNET_PREFIX you might have specified,
269 as those libraries must be in "/lib/". If you are packaging GNUnet
270 for binary distribution, this may cause your packaging script to miss
271 those plugins, so you might need to do some additional manual work to
272 include those libraries in your binary package(s). Similarly, if you
273 want to use the GNUnet naming system and did NOT run GNUnet's 'make
274 install' process with sudo rights, the libraries will be installed to
275 "$GNUNET_PREFIX" and you will have to move them to "/lib/"
278 Finally, if you are compiling the code from git, you have to
279 run "sh ./bootstrap" before running "./configure". If you receive an error during
280 the running of "sh ./bootstrap" that looks like "macro `AM_PATH_GTK'
281 not found in library", you may need to run aclocal by hand with the -I
282 option, pointing to your aclocal m4 macros, i.e.
284 $ aclocal -I /usr/local/share/aclocal
290 Note that additional, per-user configuration files can be created by
291 each user. However, this is usually not necessary as there are few
292 per-user options that normal users would want to modify. The defaults
293 that are shipped with the installation are usually just fine.
295 The gnunet-setup tool is particularly useful to generate the master
296 configuration for the peer. gnunet-setup can be used to configure and
297 test (!) the network settings, choose which applications should be run
298 and configure databases. Other options you might want to control
299 include system limitations (such as disk space consumption, bandwidth,
300 etc). The resulting configuration files are human-readable and can
301 theoretically be created or edited by hand.
303 gnunet-setup is a separate download and requires somewhat recent
304 versions of GTK+ and Glade. You can also create the configuration file
305 by hand, but this is not recommended. For more general information
306 about the GNU build process read the INSTALL file.
308 GNUnet uses two types of configuration files, one that specifies the
309 system-wide defaults (typically located in
310 $GNUNET_PREFIX/../share/gnunet/config.d/) and a second one that overrides
311 default values with user-specific preferences. The user-specific
312 configuration file should be located in "~/.config/gnunet.conf" or its
313 location can be specified by giving the "-c" option to the respective
316 For more information about the configuration (as well as usage) refer
317 to the 'GNUnet User Handbook' chapter of the documentation, included
318 in this software distribution.
324 For detailed usage notes, instructions and examples, refer to the
325 included 'GNUnet User Handbook'.
327 First, you must obtain an initial list of GNUnet hosts. Knowing a
328 single peer is sufficient since after that GNUnet propagates
329 information about other peers. Note that the default configuration
330 contains URLs from where GNUnet downloads an initial hostlist
331 whenever it is started. If you want to create an alternative URL for
332 others to use, the file can be generated on any machine running
333 GNUnet by periodically executing
335 $ cat $SERVICEHOME/data/hosts/* > the_file
337 and offering 'the_file' via your web server. Alternatively, you can
338 run the build-in web server by adding '-p' to the OPTIONS value
339 in the "hostlist" section of gnunet.conf and opening the respective
340 HTTPPORT to the public.
342 If the solution with the hostlist URL is not feasible for your
343 situation, you can also add hosts manually. Simply copy the hostkeys
344 to "$SERVICEHOME/data/hosts/" (where $SERVICEHOME is the directory
345 specified in the gnunet.conf configuration file). You can also use
346 "gnunet-peerinfo -g" to GET a URI for a peer and "gnunet-peerinfo -p
347 URI" to add a URI from another peer. Finally, GNUnet peers that use
348 UDP or WLAN will discover each other automatically (if they are in the
349 vicinity of each other) using broadcasts (IPv4/WLAN) or multicasts
352 The local node is started using "gnunet-arm -s". We recommend to run
353 GNUnet 24/7 if you want to maximize your anonymity, as this makes
354 partitioning attacks harder.
356 Once your peer is running, you should then be able to access GNUnet
359 $ gnunet-search KEYWORD
361 This will display a list of results to the console. You can abort
362 the command using "CTRL-C". Then use
364 $ gnunet-download -o FILENAME GNUNET_URI
366 to retrieve a file. The GNUNET_URI is printed by gnunet-search
367 together with a description. To publish files on GNUnet, use the
368 "gnunet-publish" command.
371 The GTK+ (or: Gimp Toolkit) user interface is shipped separately.
372 After installing gnunet-gtk, you can invoke the setup tool and
373 the file-sharing GUI with:
378 For further documentation, see our webpage or the 'GNUnet User Handbook',
379 included in this software distribution.
385 Contributions are welcome. Please submit bugs you find to
386 https://gnunet.org/bugs/.
387 Please make sure to run the script "contrib/scripts/gnunet-bugreport"
388 and include the output with your bug reports. More about how to
389 report bugs can be found in the GNUnet FAQ on the webpage. Submit
390 patches via E-Mail to gnunet-developers@gnu.org, formated with
393 In order to run the unit tests by hand (instead of using "make check"),
394 you need to set the environment variable "GNUNET_PREFIX" to the
395 directory where GNUnet's libraries are installed.
396 Before running any testcases, you must complete the installation.
400 $ ./configure --prefix=$SOMEWHERE
403 $ export $GNUNET_PREFIX=$SOMEWHERE
406 Some of the testcases require python >= 2.7, and the python modules
407 "python-future" (http://python-future.org/) and "pexpect" to be installed.
408 If any testcases fail to pass on your system, run
409 "contrib/scripts/gnunet-bugreport" (in the repository) or "gnunet-bugreport"
410 when you already have GNUnet installed and report its output together with
411 information about the failing testcase(s) to the Mantis bugtracking
412 system at https://gnunet.org/bugs/.
415 Running HTTP on port 80 and HTTPS on port 443
416 =============================================
418 In order to hide GNUnet's HTTP/HTTPS traffic perfectly, you might
419 consider running GNUnet's HTTP/HTTPS transport on port 80/443.
420 However, we do not recommend running GNUnet as root. Instead, forward
421 port 80 to say 1080 with this command (as root, in your startup
424 # iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 1080
428 # iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 4433
430 Then set in the HTTP section of gnunet.conf the "ADVERTISED_PORT" to
431 "80" and "PORT" to 1080 and similarly in the HTTPS section the
432 "ADVERTISED_PORT" to "443" and "PORT" to 4433.
434 You can do the same trick for the TCP and UDP transports if you want
435 to map them to a priviledged port (from the point of view of the
436 network). However, we are not aware of this providing any advantages
439 If you are already running an HTTP or HTTPS server on port 80 (or 443),
440 you may be able to configure it as a "ReverseProxy". Here, you tell
441 GNUnet that the externally visible URI is some sub-page on your website,
442 and GNUnet can then tunnel its traffic via your existing HTTP server.
443 This is particularly powerful if your existing server uses HTTPS, as
444 it makes it harder for an adversary to distinguish normal traffic to
445 your server from GNUnet traffic. Finally, even if you just use HTTP,
446 you might benefit (!) from ISP's traffic shaping as opposed to being
447 throttled by ISPs that dislike P2P. Details for configuring the
448 reverse proxy are documented on our website.
456 A preliminary rendering of the new GNUnet manual is deployed at
458 https://d.n0.is/pub/doc/gnunet/manual/
460 we plan to have a complete new gnunet.org up and running in 2019.
461 This website output exists as a convenience solution until then.
465 In almost 20 years various people in our community have written and
466 collected a good number of papers which have been implemented in
467 GNUnet or projects around GNUnet.
468 There are currently 2 ways to get them:
471 git clone https://gnunet.org/git/bibliography.git
473 https://gnunet.org/bibliography
475 The Drupal access will be replaced by a new interface to our
476 bibliography in 2019.
482 * https://gnunet.org/
483 * https://gnunet.org/bugs/
484 * https://gnunet.org/git/
485 * http://www.gnu.org/software/gnunet/
486 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnunet-developers
487 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnunet
488 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnunet
489 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnunet-svn