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/en/gnurl.html)
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)
57 - which (contrib/apparmor(?), gnunet-bugreport,
58 tests (dns, gns, namestore,
59 scalarproduct) and possibly more)
64 These are the dependencies for GNUnet's testsuite:
66 - Bash (optional (?[*4]), for some tests)
67 - python >= 3.7 (only python 3.7 is supported)
68 - python-future >= 3.7 (only python 3.7 is supported)
72 These are the optional dependencies:
74 - libopus >= 1.0.1 (for experimental conversation tool)
75 - libpulse >= 2.0 (for experimental conversation tool)
76 - libogg >= 1.3.0 (for experimental conversation tool)
77 - libnss (certtool binary (for convenient installation of GNS proxy))
78 - libzbar >= 0.10 (for gnunet-qr)
79 - TeX Live >= 2012 (for gnunet-bcd[*])
80 - texi2mdoc (for automatic mdoc generation [*2])
81 - libglpk >= 4.45 (for experimental code)
82 - perl5 (for some utilities)
83 - guile 1.6.4 (or later up to 1.8?, for gnunet-download-manager)
84 - bluez (for bluetooth support)
86 - libpbc >= 0.5.14 (for Attribute-Based Encryption and Identity Provider functionality)
87 - libgabe (for Attribute-Based Encryption and Identity Provider functionality,
88 from https://github.com/schanzen/libgabe)
90 Recommended autotools for compiling the Git version are:
97 [*] Mandatory for compiling the info output of the documentation,
98 a limited subset ('texlive-tiny' in Guix) is enough.
100 [*1] The default configuration is to build the info output of the
101 documentation, and therefore require texinfo. You can pass
102 '--disable-documentation' to the configure script to change this.
104 [*2] If you still prefer to have documentation, you can pass
105 '--with-section7' to build mdoc documentation (experimental
106 stages in gnunet). If this proves to be reliable, we will
107 include the mdoc output in the release tarballs.
108 Contrary to the name, texi2mdoc does not require texinfo,
109 It is a standalone ISO C utility.
111 [*3] GNU make introduced the != operator in version 4.0.
112 GNU make was released in october 2013, reasonable to
113 be widespread by now. If this is not working out for
114 you, open a bug so that we can get a more portable
117 [*4] We are commited to portable tools and solutions
118 where possible. While the shellscripts work with
119 NetBSD's sh, there's no warranty some bashisms
125 GNUnet's directed acyclic graph (DAG) will require around 0.74 GiB
126 Diskspace, with GNUNet itself taking around 9.2 MiB reported by the
136 We recommend to use binary packages provided by your Operating System's
137 package manager. GNUnet is reportedly available for at least:
139 GNU Guix, Nix, Debian, ALT Linux, Archlinux, Deepin, Devuan, Hyperbola,
140 Kali Linux, LEDE/OpenWRT, Manjaro, Parabola, Pardus, Parrot, PureOS,
141 Raspbian, Rosa, Trisquel, and Ubuntu.
143 If GNUnet is available for your Operating System and it is missing,
144 send us feedback so that we can add it to this list. Furthermore, if
145 you are interested in packaging GNUnet for your Operating System,
146 get in touch with us at gnunet-developers@gnu.org if you require
149 If you were using an Operating System with the apt package manager,
150 GNUnet could be installed as simple as:
152 $ apt-get install gnunet
154 Generic installation instructions are in the INSTALL file in this
157 Scope of Operating System support
158 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
159 We actively support GNUnet on a broad range of Free Software Operating
162 For proprietary Operating Systems, like for example Microsoft Windows
163 or Apple OS X, we accept patches if they don't break anything for
164 other Operating Systems.
165 If you are implementing support for a proprietary Operating System,
166 you should be aware that progress in our codebase could break
167 functionality on your OS and cause unpredicted behavior we can
168 not test. However, we do not break support on Operating Systems
169 with malicious intent.
170 Regressions which do occur on these Operating Systems are 3rd
171 class issues and we expect users and developers of these
172 Operating Systems to send proposed patches to fix regressions.
174 For more information about our stand on some of the motivating
175 points here, read the 'Philosophy' Chapter of our handbook.
177 Building GNUnet from source
178 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
180 IMPORTANT: You can read further notes about compilation from source in
181 the handbook under doc/handbook/, which includes notes about specific
182 requirements for operating systems aswell. If you are a package
183 mantainer for an Operating System we invite you to add your notes if
184 you feel it is necessary and can not be covered in your Operating
185 System's documentation.
187 Two prominent examples which currently lack cross-compilation
188 support in GNUnet (and native binaries) are MS Windows and Apple macOS.
189 For macOS we recommend you to do the build process via Homebrew and a
190 recent XCode installation. We don't recommend using GNUnet with any
191 recent MS Windows system as it officially spies on its users (according
192 to its T&C), defying some of the purposes of GNUnet.
194 Note that some functions of GNUnet require "root" access. GNUnet will
195 install (tiny) SUID binaries for those functions is you run "make
196 install" as root. If you do not, GNUnet will still work, but some
197 functionality will not be available (including certain forms of NAT
200 GNUnet requires the GNU MP library (https://www.gnu.org/software/gmp/)
201 and libgcrypt (https://www.gnupg.org/). You can specify the path to
202 libgcrypt by passing "--with-gcrypt=PATH" to configure. You will also
203 need either sqlite (http://www.sqlite.org/), MySQL
204 (http://www.mysql.org/) or PostGres (http://www.postgres.org/).
206 If you install from source, you need to install GNU libextractor first
207 (download from https://www.gnu.org/software/libextractor/). We also
208 recommend installing GNU libmicrohttpd (download from
209 https://www.gnu.org/software/libmicrohttpd/). Furthermore we recommend
210 libgnurl (from https://gnunet.org/en/gnurl.html).
211 Then you can start the actual GNUnet compilation process with:
214 $ export GNUNET_PREFIX=/usr/local/lib # or other directory of your choice
216 # adduser --system --home "/var/lib/gnunet" --group gnunet --shell /bin/sh
217 # ./configure --prefix=$GNUNET_PREFIX/.. --with-extractor=$LE_PREFIX
220 And finally install GNUnet with:
224 Complete the process by either adjusting one of our example service files
225 in 'contrib/services' or by running:
227 # sudo -u gnunet gnunet-arm -s
230 Note that running the 'configure' and 'make install' steps as
231 root (or with sudo) is required as some parts of the installation
232 require the creation of SUID binaries. The installation will
233 work if you do not run these steps as root, but some components
234 may not be installed in the perfect place or with the right
235 permissions and thus won't work.
237 This will create the users and groups needed for running GNUnet
238 securely and then compile and install GNUnet to $GNUNET_PREFIX/../bin/,
239 $GNUNET_PREFIX/ and $GNUNET_PREFIX/../share/ and start the system
240 with the default configuration. It is strongly recommended that you
241 add a user "gnunet" to run "gnunet-arm". You can then still run the
242 end-user applications as another user.
244 If you create a system user "gnunet", it is recommended that you edit
245 the configuration file slightly so that data can be stored in the
246 system user home directory at "/var/lib/gnunet". Depending on what
247 the $HOME-directory of your "gnunet" user is, you might need to set
248 the SERVICEHOME option in section "[PATHS]" to "/var/lib/gnunet" to
249 do this. Depending on your personal preferences, you may also want to
250 use "/etc/gnunet.conf" for the location of the configuration file in
251 this case (instead of ~gnunet/.config/gnunet.conf"). In this case,
252 you need to start GNUnet using "gnunet-arm -s -c /etc/gnunet.conf" or
253 set "XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/etc/".
255 You can avoid running 'make install' as root if you run configure
256 with the "--with-sudo=yes" option and have extensive sudo rights
257 (can run "chmod +s" and "chown" via 'sudo'). If you run 'make install'
258 as a normal user without sudo rights (or the configure option),
259 certain binaries that require additional priviledges will not be
260 installed properly (and autonomous NAT traversal, WLAN, DNS/GNS and
261 the VPN will then not work).
263 If you run 'configure' and 'make install' as root or use the '--with-sudo'
264 option, GNUnet's build system will install "libnss_gns*" libraries to
265 "/lib/" regardless (!) of the $GNUNET_PREFIX you might have specified,
266 as those libraries must be in "/lib/". If you are packaging GNUnet
267 for binary distribution, this may cause your packaging script to miss
268 those plugins, so you might need to do some additional manual work to
269 include those libraries in your binary package(s). Similarly, if you
270 want to use the GNUnet naming system and did NOT run GNUnet's 'make
271 install' process with sudo rights, the libraries will be installed to
272 "$GNUNET_PREFIX" and you will have to move them to "/lib/"
275 Finally, if you are compiling the code from git, you have to
276 run "sh ./bootstrap" before running "./configure". If you receive an error during
277 the running of "sh ./bootstrap" that looks like "macro `AM_PATH_GTK'
278 not found in library", you may need to run aclocal by hand with the -I
279 option, pointing to your aclocal m4 macros, i.e.
281 $ aclocal -I /usr/local/share/aclocal
287 Note that additional, per-user configuration files can be created by
288 each user. However, this is usually not necessary as there are few
289 per-user options that normal users would want to modify. The defaults
290 that are shipped with the installation are usually just fine.
292 The gnunet-setup tool is particularly useful to generate the master
293 configuration for the peer. gnunet-setup can be used to configure and
294 test (!) the network settings, choose which applications should be run
295 and configure databases. Other options you might want to control
296 include system limitations (such as disk space consumption, bandwidth,
297 etc). The resulting configuration files are human-readable and can
298 theoretically be created or edited by hand.
300 gnunet-setup is a separate download and requires somewhat recent
301 versions of GTK+ and Glade. You can also create the configuration file
302 by hand, but this is not recommended. For more general information
303 about the GNU build process read the INSTALL file.
305 GNUnet uses two types of configuration files, one that specifies the
306 system-wide defaults (typically located in
307 $GNUNET_PREFIX/../share/gnunet/config.d/) and a second one that overrides
308 default values with user-specific preferences. The user-specific
309 configuration file should be located in "~/.config/gnunet.conf" or its
310 location can be specified by giving the "-c" option to the respective
313 For more information about the configuration (as well as usage) refer
314 to the 'GNUnet User Handbook' chapter of the documentation, included
315 in this software distribution.
321 For detailed usage notes, instructions and examples, refer to the
322 included 'GNUnet Handbook'.
324 First, you must obtain an initial list of GNUnet hosts. Knowing a
325 single peer is sufficient since after that GNUnet propagates
326 information about other peers. Note that the default configuration
327 contains URLs from where GNUnet downloads an initial hostlist
328 whenever it is started. If you want to create an alternative URL for
329 others to use, the file can be generated on any machine running
330 GNUnet by periodically executing
332 $ cat $SERVICEHOME/data/hosts/* > the_file
334 and offering 'the_file' via your web server. Alternatively, you can
335 run the build-in web server by adding '-p' to the OPTIONS value
336 in the "hostlist" section of gnunet.conf and opening the respective
337 HTTPPORT to the public.
339 If the solution with the hostlist URL is not feasible for your
340 situation, you can also add hosts manually. Simply copy the hostkeys
341 to "$SERVICEHOME/data/hosts/" (where $SERVICEHOME is the directory
342 specified in the gnunet.conf configuration file). You can also use
343 "gnunet-peerinfo -g" to GET a URI for a peer and "gnunet-peerinfo -p
344 URI" to add a URI from another peer. Finally, GNUnet peers that use
345 UDP or WLAN will discover each other automatically (if they are in the
346 vicinity of each other) using broadcasts (IPv4/WLAN) or multicasts
349 The local node is started using "gnunet-arm -s". We recommend to run
350 GNUnet 24/7 if you want to maximize your anonymity, as this makes
351 partitioning attacks harder.
353 Once your peer is running, you should then be able to access GNUnet
356 $ gnunet-search KEYWORD
358 This will display a list of results to the console. You can abort
359 the command using "CTRL-C". Then use
361 $ gnunet-download -o FILENAME GNUNET_URI
363 to retrieve a file. The GNUNET_URI is printed by gnunet-search
364 together with a description. To publish files on GNUnet, use the
365 "gnunet-publish" command.
368 The GTK+ (or: Gimp Toolkit) user interface is shipped separately.
369 After installing gnunet-gtk, you can invoke the setup tool and
370 the file-sharing GUI with:
375 For further documentation, see our webpage or the 'GNUnet User Handbook',
376 included in this software distribution.
382 Contributions are welcome. Please submit bugs you find to
383 https://bugs.gnunet.org/ or our bugs mailinglist.
384 Please make sure to run the script "contrib/scripts/gnunet-bugreport"
385 and include the output with your bug reports. More about how to
386 report bugs can be found in the GNUnet FAQ on the webpage. Submit
387 patches via E-Mail to gnunet-developers@gnu.org, formated with
390 In order to run the unit tests by hand (instead of using "make check"),
391 you need to set the environment variable "GNUNET_PREFIX" to the
392 directory where GNUnet's libraries are installed.
393 Before running any testcases, you must complete the installation.
397 $ ./configure --prefix=$SOMEWHERE
400 $ export $GNUNET_PREFIX=$SOMEWHERE
403 Some of the testcases require python >= 3.7, and the python modules
404 "python-future" (http://python-future.org/) and "pexpect" to be installed.
405 If any testcases fail to pass on your system, run
406 "contrib/scripts/gnunet-bugreport" (in the repository) or "gnunet-bugreport"
407 when you already have GNUnet installed and report its output together with
408 information about the failing testcase(s) to the Mantis bugtracking
409 system at https://gnunet.org/bugs/.
412 Running HTTP on port 80 and HTTPS on port 443
413 =============================================
415 In order to hide GNUnet's HTTP/HTTPS traffic perfectly, you might
416 consider running GNUnet's HTTP/HTTPS transport on port 80/443.
417 However, we do not recommend running GNUnet as root. Instead, forward
418 port 80 to say 1080 with this command (as root, in your startup
421 # iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 1080
425 # iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 4433
427 Then set in the HTTP section of gnunet.conf the "ADVERTISED_PORT" to
428 "80" and "PORT" to 1080 and similarly in the HTTPS section the
429 "ADVERTISED_PORT" to "443" and "PORT" to 4433.
431 You can do the same trick for the TCP and UDP transports if you want
432 to map them to a priviledged port (from the point of view of the
433 network). However, we are not aware of this providing any advantages
436 If you are already running an HTTP or HTTPS server on port 80 (or 443),
437 you may be able to configure it as a "ReverseProxy". Here, you tell
438 GNUnet that the externally visible URI is some sub-page on your website,
439 and GNUnet can then tunnel its traffic via your existing HTTP server.
440 This is particularly powerful if your existing server uses HTTPS, as
441 it makes it harder for an adversary to distinguish normal traffic to
442 your server from GNUnet traffic. Finally, even if you just use HTTP,
443 you might benefit (!) from ISP's traffic shaping as opposed to being
444 throttled by ISPs that dislike P2P. Details for configuring the
445 reverse proxy are documented on our website.
453 A HTML version of the new GNUnet manual is deployed at
455 https://docs.gnunet.org
457 which currently displays just GNUnet documentation. Until 2019
458 we will add more reading material.
462 In almost 20 years various people in our community have written and
463 collected a good number of papers which have been implemented in
464 GNUnet or projects around GNUnet.
465 There are currently 2 ways to get them:
468 git clone https://git.gnunet.org/bibliography.git
470 https://old.gnunet.org/bibliography
472 The Drupal access will be replaced by a new interface to our
473 bibliography in 2019.
479 * https://gnunet.org/
480 * https://bugs.gnunet.org
481 * https://git.gnunet.org
482 * http://www.gnu.org/software/gnunet/
483 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnunet-developers
484 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnunet
485 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnunet
486 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnunet-svn