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.
26 Online documentation is provided at
27 'https://docs.gnunet.org' and 'https://tutorial.gnunet.org'.
33 These are the direct dependencies for running GNUnet:
35 - libmicrohttpd >= 0.9.42
37 - libgnurl >= 7.35.0 (recommended, available from https://gnunet.org/gnurl)
38 - libcurl >= 7.35.0 (alternative to libgnurl)
39 - libunistring >= 0.9.2
40 - gnutls >= 3.2.12 (highly recommended a gnutls linked against libunbound)
45 - libextractor >= 0.6.1 (highly recommended)
46 - openssl >= 1.0 (binary, used to generate X.509 certificate
47 for gnunet-gns-proxy-setup-ca)
48 - nss (certutil binary, for
49 gnunet-gns-proxy-setup-ca)
50 - libltdl >= 2.2 (part of GNU libtool)
51 - sqlite >= 3.8 (default database, required)
52 - mysql >= 5.1 (alternative to sqlite)
53 - postgres >= 9.5 (alternative to sqlite)
56 - which (bootstrap script and some Makefiles)
62 These are the dependencies for GNUnet's testsuite:
64 - Bash (optional (?), for some tests)
65 - python >= 3.7 (optional, only python 3.7 is supported)
66 - python-future >= 3.7 (optional, only python 3.7 is supported)
69 These are the optional dependencies:
71 - libopus >= 1.0.1 (optional, for experimental conversation tool)
72 - libpulse >= 2.0 (optional, for experimental conversation tool)
73 - libogg >= 1.3.0 (optional, for experimental conversation tool)
74 - libnss (optional, certtool binary (for convenient installation of GNS proxy))
75 - python2.7-future (optional, for gnunet-qr)
76 - python-zbar >= 0.10 (optional, for gnunet-qr)
77 - TeX Live >= 2012 (optional, for gnunet-bcd[*])
78 - texi2mdoc (optional, for automatic mdoc generation [*2])
79 - libglpk >= 4.45 (optional, for experimental code)
80 - perl5 (optional, for some utilities)
81 - guile 1.6.4 (or later up to 1.8?, optional for gnunet-download-manager)
82 - python2.7 >= 2.7 (optional, for gnunet-qr, only python 2.7 is supported)
83 - bluez (optional, for bluetooth support)
85 - libpbc >= 0.5.14 (optional, for Attribute-Based Encryption and Identity Provider functionality)
86 - libgabe (optional, for Attribute-Based Encryption and Identity Provider functionality,
87 from https://github.com/schanzen/libgabe)
89 Recommended autotools for compiling the Git version are:
96 [*] Mandatory for compiling the info output of the documentation,
97 a limited subset ('texlive-tiny' in Guix) is enough.
99 [*1] The default configuration is to build the info output of the
100 documentation, and therefore require texinfo. You can pass
101 '--disable-documentation' to the configure script to change this.
103 [*2] If you still prefer to have documentation, you can pass
104 '--with-section7' to build mdoc documentation (experimental
105 stages in gnunet). If this proves to be reliable, we will
106 include the mdoc output in the release tarballs.
107 Contrary to the name, texi2mdoc does not require texinfo,
108 It is a standalone ISO C utility.
113 GNUnet's directed acyclic graph (DAG) will require around 0.74 GiB
114 Diskspace, with GNUNet itself taking around 9.2 MiB reported by the
124 We recommend to use binary packages provided by your Operating System's
125 package manager. GNUnet is reportedly available for at least:
127 GNU Guix, Nix, Debian, ALT Linux, Archlinux, Deepin, Devuan, Hyperbola,
128 Kali Linux, LEDE/OpenWRT, Manjaro, Parabola, Pardus, Parrot, PureOS,
129 Raspbian, Rosa, Trisquel, and Ubuntu.
131 If GNUnet is available for your Operating System and it is missing,
132 send us feedback so that we can add it to this list. Furthermore, if
133 you are interested in packaging GNUnet for your Operating System,
134 get in touch with us at gnunet-developers@gnu.org if you require
137 If you were using an Operating System with the apt package manager,
138 GNUnet could be installed as simple as:
140 $ apt-get install gnunet
142 Generic installation instructions are in the INSTALL file in this
145 Scope of Operating System support
146 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
147 We actively support GNUnet on a broad range of Free Software Operating
150 For proprietary Operating Systems, like for example Microsoft Windows
151 or Apple OS X, we accept patches if they don't break anything for
152 other Operating Systems.
153 If you are implementing support for a proprietary Operating System,
154 you should be aware that progress in our codebase could break
155 functionality on your OS and cause unpredicted behavior we can
156 not test. However, we do not break support on Operating Systems
157 with malicious intent.
158 Regressions which do occur on these Operating Systems are 3rd
159 class issues and we expect users and developers of these
160 Operating Systems to send proposed patches to fix regressions.
162 For more information about our stand on some of the motivating
163 points here, read the 'Philosophy' Chapter of our handbook.
165 Building GNUnet from source
166 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
168 IMPORTANT: You can read further notes about compilation from source in
169 the 'doc/FILENAME' document, which includes notes about specific
170 requirements for operating systems aswell. If you are a package
171 mantainer for an Operating System we invite you to add your notes if
172 you feel it is necessary and can not be covered in your Operating
173 System's documentation.
175 If you are building GNUnet from source you are either interested
176 in furthering its development (we have further notes for developer
177 builds in our 'GNUnet Developer Handbook') or you don't trust other
178 people's binaries or your Operating System doesn't provide any
179 binary package (at the moment).
181 If you're on Gentoo you can build GNUnet using the recipes provided
182 in the 'youbroketheinternet' overlay. Other Operating Systems may
183 unintentionally require you to build GNUnet from source.
185 Two prominent examples which currently lack cross-compilation
186 support in GNUnet (and native binaries) are MS Windows and Apple macOS.
187 For macOS we recommend you to do the build process via Homebrew and a
188 recent XCode installation. We don't recommend using GNUnet with any
189 recent MS Windows system as it officially spies on its users (according
190 to its T&C), defying some of the purposes of GNUnet.
192 Note that some functions of GNUnet require "root" access. GNUnet will
193 install (tiny) SUID binaries for those functions is you run "make
194 install" as root. If you do not, GNUnet will still work, but some
195 functionality will not be available (including certain forms of NAT
198 GNUnet requires the GNU MP library (https://www.gnu.org/software/gmp/)
199 and libgcrypt (https://www.gnupg.org/). You can specify the path to
200 libgcrypt by passing "--with-gcrypt=PATH" to configure. You will also
201 need either sqlite (http://www.sqlite.org/), MySQL
202 (http://www.mysql.org/) or PostGres (http://www.postgres.org/).
204 If you install from source, you need to install GNU libextractor first
205 (download from https://www.gnu.org/software/libextractor/). We also
206 recommend installing GNU libmicrohttpd (download from
207 https://www.gnu.org/software/libmicrohttpd/). Furthermore we recommend
208 libgnurl (from https://gnunet.org/gnurl).
209 Then you can start the actual GNUnet compilation process with:
212 $ export GNUNET_PREFIX=/usr/local/lib # or other directory of your choice
214 # adduser --system --home "/var/lib/gnunet" --group gnunet --shell /bin/sh
215 # ./configure --prefix=$GNUNET_PREFIX/.. --with-extractor=$LE_PREFIX
218 And finally install GNUnet with:
222 Complete the process by either adjusting one of our example service files
223 in 'contrib/services' or by running:
225 # sudo -u gnunet gnunet-arm -s
228 Note that running the 'configure' and 'make install' steps as
229 root (or with sudo) is required as some parts of the installation
230 require the creation of SUID binaries. The installation will
231 work if you do not run these steps as root, but some components
232 may not be installed in the perfect place or with the right
233 permissions and thus won't work.
235 This will create the users and groups needed for running GNUnet
236 securely and then compile and install GNUnet to $GNUNET_PREFIX/../bin/,
237 $GNUNET_PREFIX/ and $GNUNET_PREFIX/../share/ and start the system
238 with the default configuration. It is strongly recommended that you
239 add a user "gnunet" to run "gnunet-arm". You can then still run the
240 end-user applications as another user.
242 If you create a system user "gnunet", it is recommended that you edit
243 the configuration file slightly so that data can be stored in the
244 system user home directory at "/var/lib/gnunet". Depending on what
245 the $HOME-directory of your "gnunet" user is, you might need to set
246 the SERVICEHOME option in section "[PATHS]" to "/var/lib/gnunet" to
247 do this. Depending on your personal preferences, you may also want to
248 use "/etc/gnunet.conf" for the location of the configuration file in
249 this case (instead of ~gnunet/.config/gnunet.conf"). In this case,
250 you need to start GNUnet using "gnunet-arm -s -c /etc/gnunet.conf" or
251 set "XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/etc/".
253 You can avoid running 'make install' as root if you run configure
254 with the "--with-sudo=yes" option and have extensive sudo rights
255 (can run "chmod +s" and "chown" via 'sudo'). If you run 'make install'
256 as a normal user without sudo rights (or the configure option),
257 certain binaries that require additional priviledges will not be
258 installed properly (and autonomous NAT traversal, WLAN, DNS/GNS and
259 the VPN will then not work).
261 If you run 'configure' and 'make install' as root or use the '--with-sudo'
262 option, GNUnet's build system will install "libnss_gns*" libraries to
263 "/lib/" regardless (!) of the $GNUNET_PREFIX you might have specified,
264 as those libraries must be in "/lib/". If you are packaging GNUnet
265 for binary distribution, this may cause your packaging script to miss
266 those plugins, so you might need to do some additional manual work to
267 include those libraries in your binary package(s). Similarly, if you
268 want to use the GNUnet naming system and did NOT run GNUnet's 'make
269 install' process with sudo rights, the libraries will be installed to
270 "$GNUNET_PREFIX" and you will have to move them to "/lib/"
273 Finally, if you are compiling the code from git, you have to
274 run "sh ./bootstrap" before running "./configure". If you receive an error during
275 the running of "sh ./bootstrap" that looks like "macro `AM_PATH_GTK'
276 not found in library", you may need to run aclocal by hand with the -I
277 option, pointing to your aclocal m4 macros, i.e.
279 $ aclocal -I /usr/local/share/aclocal
285 Note that additional, per-user configuration files can be created by
286 each user. However, this is usually not necessary as there are few
287 per-user options that normal users would want to modify. The defaults
288 that are shipped with the installation are usually just fine.
290 The gnunet-setup tool is particularly useful to generate the master
291 configuration for the peer. gnunet-setup can be used to configure and
292 test (!) the network settings, choose which applications should be run
293 and configure databases. Other options you might want to control
294 include system limitations (such as disk space consumption, bandwidth,
295 etc). The resulting configuration files are human-readable and can
296 theoretically be created or edited by hand.
298 gnunet-setup is a separate download and requires somewhat recent
299 versions of GTK+ and Glade. You can also create the configuration file
300 by hand, but this is not recommended. For more general information
301 about the GNU build process read the INSTALL file.
303 GNUnet uses two types of configuration files, one that specifies the
304 system-wide defaults (typically located in
305 $GNUNET_PREFIX/../share/gnunet/config.d/) and a second one that overrides
306 default values with user-specific preferences. The user-specific
307 configuration file should be located in "~/.config/gnunet.conf" or its
308 location can be specified by giving the "-c" option to the respective
311 For more information about the configuration (as well as usage) refer
312 to the 'GNUnet User Handbook' chapter of the documentation, included
313 in this software distribution.
319 For detailed usage notes, instructions and examples, refer to the
320 included 'GNUnet User Handbook'.
322 First, you must obtain an initial list of GNUnet hosts. Knowing a
323 single peer is sufficient since after that GNUnet propagates
324 information about other peers. Note that the default configuration
325 contains URLs from where GNUnet downloads an initial hostlist
326 whenever it is started. If you want to create an alternative URL for
327 others to use, the file can be generated on any machine running
328 GNUnet by periodically executing
330 $ cat $SERVICEHOME/data/hosts/* > the_file
332 and offering 'the_file' via your web server. Alternatively, you can
333 run the build-in web server by adding '-p' to the OPTIONS value
334 in the "hostlist" section of gnunet.conf and opening the respective
335 HTTPPORT to the public.
337 If the solution with the hostlist URL is not feasible for your
338 situation, you can also add hosts manually. Simply copy the hostkeys
339 to "$SERVICEHOME/data/hosts/" (where $SERVICEHOME is the directory
340 specified in the gnunet.conf configuration file). You can also use
341 "gnunet-peerinfo -g" to GET a URI for a peer and "gnunet-peerinfo -p
342 URI" to add a URI from another peer. Finally, GNUnet peers that use
343 UDP or WLAN will discover each other automatically (if they are in the
344 vicinity of each other) using broadcasts (IPv4/WLAN) or multicasts
347 The local node is started using "gnunet-arm -s". We recommend to run
348 GNUnet 24/7 if you want to maximize your anonymity, as this makes
349 partitioning attacks harder.
351 Once your peer is running, you should then be able to access GNUnet
354 $ gnunet-search KEYWORD
356 This will display a list of results to the console. You can abort
357 the command using "CTRL-C". Then use
359 $ gnunet-download -o FILENAME GNUNET_URI
361 to retrieve a file. The GNUNET_URI is printed by gnunet-search
362 together with a description. To publish files on GNUnet, use the
363 "gnunet-publish" command.
366 The GTK+ (or: Gimp Toolkit) user interface is shipped separately.
367 After installing gnunet-gtk, you can invoke the setup tool and
368 the file-sharing GUI with:
373 For further documentation, see our webpage or the 'GNUnet User Handbook',
374 included in this software distribution.
380 Contributions are welcome. Please submit bugs you find to
381 https://bugs.gnunet.org/ or our bugs mailinglist.
382 Please make sure to run the script "contrib/scripts/gnunet-bugreport"
383 and include the output with your bug reports. More about how to
384 report bugs can be found in the GNUnet FAQ on the webpage. Submit
385 patches via E-Mail to gnunet-developers@gnu.org, formated with
388 In order to run the unit tests by hand (instead of using "make check"),
389 you need to set the environment variable "GNUNET_PREFIX" to the
390 directory where GNUnet's libraries are installed.
391 Before running any testcases, you must complete the installation.
395 $ ./configure --prefix=$SOMEWHERE
398 $ export $GNUNET_PREFIX=$SOMEWHERE
401 Some of the testcases require python >= 3.7, and the python modules
402 "python-future" (http://python-future.org/) and "pexpect" to be installed.
403 If any testcases fail to pass on your system, run
404 "contrib/scripts/gnunet-bugreport" (in the repository) or "gnunet-bugreport"
405 when you already have GNUnet installed and report its output together with
406 information about the failing testcase(s) to the Mantis bugtracking
407 system at https://gnunet.org/bugs/.
410 Running HTTP on port 80 and HTTPS on port 443
411 =============================================
413 In order to hide GNUnet's HTTP/HTTPS traffic perfectly, you might
414 consider running GNUnet's HTTP/HTTPS transport on port 80/443.
415 However, we do not recommend running GNUnet as root. Instead, forward
416 port 80 to say 1080 with this command (as root, in your startup
419 # iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 1080
423 # iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 4433
425 Then set in the HTTP section of gnunet.conf the "ADVERTISED_PORT" to
426 "80" and "PORT" to 1080 and similarly in the HTTPS section the
427 "ADVERTISED_PORT" to "443" and "PORT" to 4433.
429 You can do the same trick for the TCP and UDP transports if you want
430 to map them to a priviledged port (from the point of view of the
431 network). However, we are not aware of this providing any advantages
434 If you are already running an HTTP or HTTPS server on port 80 (or 443),
435 you may be able to configure it as a "ReverseProxy". Here, you tell
436 GNUnet that the externally visible URI is some sub-page on your website,
437 and GNUnet can then tunnel its traffic via your existing HTTP server.
438 This is particularly powerful if your existing server uses HTTPS, as
439 it makes it harder for an adversary to distinguish normal traffic to
440 your server from GNUnet traffic. Finally, even if you just use HTTP,
441 you might benefit (!) from ISP's traffic shaping as opposed to being
442 throttled by ISPs that dislike P2P. Details for configuring the
443 reverse proxy are documented on our website.
451 A HTML version of the new GNUnet manual is deployed at
453 https://docs.gnunet.org
455 which currently displays just GNUnet documentation. Until 2019
456 we will add more reading material.
460 In almost 20 years various people in our community have written and
461 collected a good number of papers which have been implemented in
462 GNUnet or projects around GNUnet.
463 There are currently 2 ways to get them:
466 git clone https://gnunet.org/git/bibliography.git
468 https://old.gnunet.org/bibliography
470 The Drupal access will be replaced by a new interface to our
471 bibliography in 2019.
477 * https://gnunet.org/
478 * https://bugs.gnunet.org
479 * https://git.gnunet.org
480 * http://www.gnu.org/software/gnunet/
481 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnunet-developers
482 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnunet
483 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnunet
484 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnunet-svn