1 ======================================================================
3 THIS SVN VERSION OF GNUNET IS INCOMPATIBLE TO ALL PREVIOUS RELEASES.
4 WE ARE WORKING ON CHANGING FUNDAMENTAL PARTS OF THE CRYPTOGRAPHIC
7 You need to install libgcrypt from git master (1.6.0beta93 at least)
8 for the code to compile.
10 =======================================================================
18 GNUnet is peer-to-peer framework focusing on security. The first and
19 primary application for GNUnet is anonymous file-sharing. GNUnet is
20 currently developed by a worldwide group of independent free software
21 developers. GNUnet is a GNU package (http://www.gnu.org/).
23 This is an ALPHA release. There are known and significant bugs as
24 well as many missing features in this release.
26 Additional documentation about GNUnet can be found at
33 Please note that for many of its dependencies GNUnet requires very
34 recent versions of the libraries which are often NOT to be found in
35 stable distributions in 2011. While using older packages may in some
36 cases on some operating systems may seem to work in some limited
37 fashion, we are in many cases aware of serious problems with older
38 packages. Hence please make sure to use the versions listed below.
40 These are the direct dependencies for running GNUnet:
42 - libextractor >= 0.6.1
43 - libmicrohttpd >= 0.9.18
46 - libunistring >= 0.9.2
48 - libltdl >= 2.2 (part of GNU libtool)
49 - sqlite >= 3.0 (default database)
50 - mysql >= 5.1 (alternative to sqLite)
51 - postgres >= 8.3 (alternative to sqLite)
53 Recommended autotools for compiling the SVN version are:
62 The fastest way is to use a binary package if it is available for your
63 system. For a more detailed description, read the installation
64 instructions on the webpage at https://gnunet.org/installation.
66 Note that some functions of GNUnet require "root" access. GNUnet will
67 install (tiny) SUID binaries for those functions is you run "make
68 install" as root. If you do not, GNUnet will still work, but some
69 functionality will not be available (including certain forms of NAT
72 GNUnet requires the GNU MP library (http://www.gnu.org/software/gmp/)
73 and libgcrypt (http://www.gnupg.org/). You can specify the path to
74 libgcrypt by passing "--with-gcrypt=PATH" to configure. You will also
75 need either sqlite (http://www.sqlite.org/), MySQL
76 (http://www.mysql.org/) or PostGres (http://www.postgres.org/).
78 If you install from source, you need to install GNU libextractor first
79 (download from http://www.gnu.org/software/libextractor/). We also
80 recommend installing GNU libmicrohttpd (download from
81 http://www.gnu.org/software/libmicrohttpd/). Then you can start the
82 actual GNUnet compilation and installation process with:
84 $ export GNUNET_PREFIX=/usr/local # or other directory of your choice
86 # adduser gnunet gnunet
87 # ./configure --prefix=$GNUNET_PREFIX --with-extractor=$LE_PREFIX
90 # sudo -u gnunet gnunet-arm -s
92 Note that running the 'configure' and 'make install' steps as
93 root (or with sudo) is required as some parts of the installation
94 require the creation of SUID binaries. The installation will
95 work if you do not run these steps as root, but some components
96 may not be installed in the perfect place or with the right
97 permissions and thus won't work.
99 This will create the users and groups needed for running GNUnet
100 securely and then compile and install GNUnet to $GNUNET_PREFIX/bin/,
101 $GNUNET_PREFIX/lib/ and $GNUNET_PREFIX/share/ and start the system
102 with the default configuration. It is strongly recommended that you
103 add a user "gnunet" to run "gnunet-arm". You can then still run the
104 end-user applications as another user.
106 If you create a system user "gnunet", it is recommended that you edit
107 the configuration file slightly so that data can be stored in the
108 system user home directory at "/var/lib/gnunet". Depending on what
109 the $HOME-directory of your "gnunet" user is, you might need to set
110 the SERVICEHOME option in section "[PATHS]" to "/var/lib/gnunet" to
111 do this. Depending on your personal preferences, you may also want to
112 use "/etc/gnunet.conf" for the location of the configuration file in
113 this case (instead of ~gnunet/.gnunet/gnunet.conf"). In this case,
114 you need to start GNUnet using "gnunet-arm -s -c /etc/gnunet.conf".
116 You can avoid running 'make install' as root if you run configure
117 with the "--with-sudo=yes" option and have extensive sudo rights
118 (can run "chmod +s" and "chown" via 'sudo'). If you run 'make install'
119 as a normal user without sudo rights (or the configure option),
120 certain binaries that require additional priviledges will not be
121 installed properly (and autonomous NAT traversal, WLAN, DNS/GNS and
122 the VPN will then not work).
124 If you run 'configure' and 'make install' as root or use the SUDO
125 option, GNUnet's build system will install "libnss_gns*" libraries to
126 "/lib/" regardless (!) of the $GNUNET_PREFIX you might have specified,
127 as those libraries must be in "/lib/". If you are packaging GNUnet
128 for binary distribution, this may cause your packaging script to miss
129 those plugins, so you might need to do some additional manual work to
130 include those libraries in your binary package(s). Similarly, if you
131 want to use the GNUnet naming system and did NOT run GNUnet's 'make
132 install' process with SUDO rights, the libraries will be installed to
133 "$GNUNET_PREFIX/lib" and you will have to move them to "/lib/"
136 Finally, if you are compiling the code from subversion, you have to
137 run ". bootstrap" before ./configure. If you receive an error during
138 the running of ". bootstrap" that looks like "macro `AM_PATH_GTK' not
139 found in library", you may need to run aclocal by hand with the -I
140 option, pointing to your aclocal m4 macros, i.e.
142 $ aclocal -I /usr/local/share/aclocal
148 Note that additional, per-user configuration files can be created by
149 each user. However, this is usually not necessary as there are few
150 per-user options that normal users would want to modify. The defaults
151 that are shipped with the installation are usually just fine.
153 The gnunet-setup tool is particularly useful to generate the master
154 configuration for the peer. gnunet-setup can be used to configure and
155 test (!) the network settings, choose which applications should be run
156 and configure databases. Other options you might want to control
157 include system limitations (such as disk space consumption, bandwidth,
158 etc.). The resulting configuration files are human-readable and can
159 theoretically be created or edited by hand.
161 gnunet-setup is a separate download and requires somewhat recent
162 versions of GTK+ and Glade. You can also create the configuration file
163 by hand, but this is not recommended. For more general information
164 about the GNU build process read the INSTALL file.
166 GNUnet uses two types of configuration files, one that specifies the
167 system-wide defaults (typically located in
168 $GNUNET_PREFIX/share/gnunet/config.d/) and a second one that overrides
169 default values with user-specific preferences. The user-specific
170 configuration file should be located in "~/.gnunet/gnunet.conf" or its
171 location can be specified by giving the "-c" option to the respective
178 First, you must obtain an initial list of GNUnet hosts. Knowing a
179 single peer is sufficient since after that GNUnet propagates
180 information about other peers. Note that the default configuration
181 contains URLs from where GNUnet downloads an initial hostlist
182 whenever it is started. If you want to create an alternative URL for
183 others to use, the file can be generated on any machine running
184 GNUnet by periodically executing
186 $ cat $SERVICEHOME/data/hosts/* > the_file
188 and offering 'the_file' via your web server. Alternatively, you can
189 run the build-in web server by adding '-p' to the OPTIONS value
190 in the "hostlist" section of gnunet.conf and opening the respective
191 HTTPPORT to the public.
193 If the solution with the hostlist URL is not feasible for your
194 situation, you can also add hosts manually. Simply copy the hostkeys
195 to "$SERVICEHOME/data/hosts/" (where $SERVICEHOME is the directory
196 specified in the gnunet.conf configuration file). You can also use
197 "gnunet-peerinfo -g" to GET a URI for a peer and "gnunet-peerinfo -p
198 URI" to add a URI from another peer. Finally, GNUnet peers that use
199 UDP or WLAN will discover each other automatically (if they are in the
200 vicinity of each other) using broadcasts (IPv4/WLAN) or multicasts
203 The local node is started using "gnunet-arm -s". GNUnet should run
204 24/7 if you want to maximize your anonymity, as this makes partitioning
207 Once your peer is running, you should then be able to access GNUnet
210 $ gnunet-search KEYWORD
212 This will display a list of results to the console. You can abort
213 the command using "CTRL-C". Then use
215 $ gnunet-download -o FILENAME GNUNET_URI
217 to retrieve a file. The GNUNET_URI is printed by gnunet-search
218 together with a description. To publish files on GNUnet, use the
219 "gnunet-publish" command.
222 The GTK user interface is shipped separately. After downloading and
223 installing gnunet-gtk, you can invoke the setup tool and the
224 file-sharing GUI with:
229 For further documentation, see our webpage.
235 Contributions are welcome, please submit bugs to
236 https://gnunet.org/bugs/. Please make sure to run contrib/report.sh
237 and include the output with your bug reports. More about how to
238 report bugs can be found in the GNUnet FAQ on the webpage. Submit
239 patches via E-Mail to gnunet-developers@gnu.org.
241 In order to run the unit tests with "make check", you need to
242 set an environment variable ("GNUNET_PREFIX") to the directory
243 where GNUnet is installed (usually, GNUnet will use OS specific
244 tricks in order to try to figure out the PREFIX, but since the
245 testcase binaries are not installed, that trick does not work
246 for them). Also, before running any testcases, you must
247 complete the installation first. Quick summary:
249 $ ./configure --prefix=$SOMEWHERE
252 $ export GNUNET_PREFIX=$SOMEWHERE
255 Some of the testcases require python >= 2.6 and pexpect to be
256 installed. If any testcases fail to pass on your system, run
257 "contrib/report.sh" and report the output together with
258 information about the failing testcase to the Mantis bugtracking
259 system at https://gnunet.org/bugs/.
262 Running HTTP on port 80 and HTTPS on port 443
263 =============================================
265 In order to hide GNUnet's HTTP/HTTPS traffic perfectly, you might
266 consider running GNUnet's HTTP/HTTPS transport on port 80/443.
267 However, we do not recommend running GNUnet as root. Instead, forward
268 port 80 to say 1080 with this command (as root, in your startup
271 # iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 1080
275 # iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 4433
277 Then set in the HTTP section of gnunet.conf the "ADVERTISED_PORT" to
278 "80" and "PORT" to 1080 and similarly in the HTTPS section the
279 "ADVERTISED_PORT" to "443" and "PORT" to 4433.
281 You can do the same trick for the TCP and UDP transports if you want
282 to map them to a priviledged port (from the point of view of the
283 network). However, we are not aware of this providing any advantages
286 If you are already running an HTTP or HTTPS server on port 80 (or 443),
287 you may be able to configure it as a "ReverseProxy". Here, you tell
288 GNUnet that the externally visible URI is some sub-page on your website,
289 and GNUnet can then tunnel its traffic via your existing HTTP server.
290 This is particularly powerful if your existing server uses HTTPS, as
291 it makes it harder for an adversary to distinguish normal traffic to
292 your server from GNUnet traffic. Finally, even if you just use HTTP,
293 you might benefit (!) from ISP's traffic shaping as opposed to being
294 throttled by ISPs that dislike P2P. Details for configuring the
295 reverse proxy are documented on our website.
301 * https://gnunet.org/
302 * https://gnunet.org/bugs/
303 * https://gnunet.org/svn/
304 * http://www.gnu.org/software/gnunet/
305 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnunet-developers
306 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnunet
307 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnunet
308 * http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnunet-svn