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 Additional documentation about GNUnet can be found at
25 Please note that for many of its dependencies GNUnet requires very
26 recent versions of the libraries which are often NOT to be found in
27 stable distributions in 2014. While using older packages may in some
28 cases on some operating systems may seem to work in some limited
29 fashion, we are in many cases aware of serious problems with older
30 packages. Hence please make sure to use the versions listed below.
32 These are the direct dependencies for running GNUnet:
34 - libmicrohttpd >= 0.9.42
36 - libgnurl >= 7.35.0 (available from https://gnunet.org/gnurl)
37 - libunistring >= 0.9.2
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)
46 - libopus >= 1.0.1 (optional for experimental conversation tool)
47 - libpulse >= 2.0 (optional for experimental conversation tool)
48 - libogg >= 1.3.0 (optional for experimental conversation tool)
49 - python-zbar >= 0.10 (optional for gnunet-qr)
50 - TeX Live >= 2012 (optional for gnunet-bcd)
52 - libglpk >= 4.45 (optional for experimental code)
54 Recommended autotools for compiling the git version are:
63 The fastest way is to use a binary package if it is available for your
64 system. For a more detailed description, read the installation
65 instructions on the webpage at https://gnunet.org/installation.
67 Note that some functions of GNUnet require "root" access. GNUnet will
68 install (tiny) SUID binaries for those functions is you run "make
69 install" as root. If you do not, GNUnet will still work, but some
70 functionality will not be available (including certain forms of NAT
73 GNUnet requires the GNU MP library (http://www.gnu.org/software/gmp/)
74 and libgcrypt (http://www.gnupg.org/). You can specify the path to
75 libgcrypt by passing "--with-gcrypt=PATH" to configure. You will also
76 need either sqlite (http://www.sqlite.org/), MySQL
77 (http://www.mysql.org/) or PostGres (http://www.postgres.org/).
79 If you install from source, you need to install GNU libextractor first
80 (download from http://www.gnu.org/software/libextractor/). We also
81 recommend installing GNU libmicrohttpd (download from
82 http://www.gnu.org/software/libmicrohttpd/). Then you can start the
83 actual GNUnet compilation and installation process with:
85 $ export GNUNET_PREFIX=/usr/local/lib # or other directory of your choice
87 # adduser --system --home "/var/lib/gnunet" --group gnunet --shell /bin/sh
88 # ./configure --prefix=$GNUNET_PREFIX/.. --with-extractor=$LE_PREFIX
91 # sudo -u gnunet gnunet-arm -s
93 Note that running the 'configure' and 'make install' steps as
94 root (or with sudo) is required as some parts of the installation
95 require the creation of SUID binaries. The installation will
96 work if you do not run these steps as root, but some components
97 may not be installed in the perfect place or with the right
98 permissions and thus won't work.
100 This will create the users and groups needed for running GNUnet
101 securely and then compile and install GNUnet to $GNUNET_PREFIX/../bin/,
102 $GNUNET_PREFIX/ and $GNUNET_PREFIX/../share/ and start the system
103 with the default configuration. It is strongly recommended that you
104 add a user "gnunet" to run "gnunet-arm". You can then still run the
105 end-user applications as another user.
107 If you create a system user "gnunet", it is recommended that you edit
108 the configuration file slightly so that data can be stored in the
109 system user home directory at "/var/lib/gnunet". Depending on what
110 the $HOME-directory of your "gnunet" user is, you might need to set
111 the SERVICEHOME option in section "[PATHS]" to "/var/lib/gnunet" to
112 do this. Depending on your personal preferences, you may also want to
113 use "/etc/gnunet.conf" for the location of the configuration file in
114 this case (instead of ~gnunet/.config/gnunet.conf"). In this case,
115 you need to start GNUnet using "gnunet-arm -s -c /etc/gnunet.conf" or
116 set "XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/etc/".
118 You can avoid running 'make install' as root if you run configure
119 with the "--with-sudo=yes" option and have extensive sudo rights
120 (can run "chmod +s" and "chown" via 'sudo'). If you run 'make install'
121 as a normal user without sudo rights (or the configure option),
122 certain binaries that require additional priviledges will not be
123 installed properly (and autonomous NAT traversal, WLAN, DNS/GNS and
124 the VPN will then not work).
126 If you run 'configure' and 'make install' as root or use the SUDO
127 option, GNUnet's build system will install "libnss_gns*" libraries to
128 "/lib/" regardless (!) of the $GNUNET_PREFIX you might have specified,
129 as those libraries must be in "/lib/". If you are packaging GNUnet
130 for binary distribution, this may cause your packaging script to miss
131 those plugins, so you might need to do some additional manual work to
132 include those libraries in your binary package(s). Similarly, if you
133 want to use the GNUnet naming system and did NOT run GNUnet's 'make
134 install' process with SUDO rights, the libraries will be installed to
135 "$GNUNET_PREFIX" and you will have to move them to "/lib/"
138 Finally, if you are compiling the code from git, you have to
139 run ". bootstrap" before ./configure. If you receive an error during
140 the running of ". bootstrap" that looks like "macro `AM_PATH_GTK' not
141 found in library", you may need to run aclocal by hand with the -I
142 option, pointing to your aclocal m4 macros, i.e.
144 $ aclocal -I /usr/local/share/aclocal
150 Note that additional, per-user configuration files can be created by
151 each user. However, this is usually not necessary as there are few
152 per-user options that normal users would want to modify. The defaults
153 that are shipped with the installation are usually just fine.
155 The gnunet-setup tool is particularly useful to generate the master
156 configuration for the peer. gnunet-setup can be used to configure and
157 test (!) the network settings, choose which applications should be run
158 and configure databases. Other options you might want to control
159 include system limitations (such as disk space consumption, bandwidth,
160 etc.). The resulting configuration files are human-readable and can
161 theoretically be created or edited by hand.
163 gnunet-setup is a separate download and requires somewhat recent
164 versions of GTK+ and Glade. You can also create the configuration file
165 by hand, but this is not recommended. For more general information
166 about the GNU build process read the INSTALL file.
168 GNUnet uses two types of configuration files, one that specifies the
169 system-wide defaults (typically located in
170 $GNUNET_PREFIX/../share/gnunet/config.d/) and a second one that overrides
171 default values with user-specific preferences. The user-specific
172 configuration file should be located in "~/.config/gnunet.conf" or its
173 location can be specified by giving the "-c" option to the respective
180 First, you must obtain an initial list of GNUnet hosts. Knowing a
181 single peer is sufficient since after that GNUnet propagates
182 information about other peers. Note that the default configuration
183 contains URLs from where GNUnet downloads an initial hostlist
184 whenever it is started. If you want to create an alternative URL for
185 others to use, the file can be generated on any machine running
186 GNUnet by periodically executing
188 $ cat $SERVICEHOME/data/hosts/* > the_file
190 and offering 'the_file' via your web server. Alternatively, you can
191 run the build-in web server by adding '-p' to the OPTIONS value
192 in the "hostlist" section of gnunet.conf and opening the respective
193 HTTPPORT to the public.
195 If the solution with the hostlist URL is not feasible for your
196 situation, you can also add hosts manually. Simply copy the hostkeys
197 to "$SERVICEHOME/data/hosts/" (where $SERVICEHOME is the directory
198 specified in the gnunet.conf configuration file). You can also use
199 "gnunet-peerinfo -g" to GET a URI for a peer and "gnunet-peerinfo -p
200 URI" to add a URI from another peer. Finally, GNUnet peers that use
201 UDP or WLAN will discover each other automatically (if they are in the
202 vicinity of each other) using broadcasts (IPv4/WLAN) or multicasts
205 The local node is started using "gnunet-arm -s". GNUnet should run
206 24/7 if you want to maximize your anonymity, as this makes partitioning
209 Once your peer is running, you should then be able to access GNUnet
212 $ gnunet-search KEYWORD
214 This will display a list of results to the console. You can abort
215 the command using "CTRL-C". Then use
217 $ gnunet-download -o FILENAME GNUNET_URI
219 to retrieve a file. The GNUNET_URI is printed by gnunet-search
220 together with a description. To publish files on GNUnet, use the
221 "gnunet-publish" command.
224 The GTK user interface is shipped separately. After downloading and
225 installing gnunet-gtk, you can invoke the setup tool and the
226 file-sharing GUI with:
231 For further documentation, see our webpage.
237 Contributions are welcome, please submit bugs to
238 https://gnunet.org/bugs/. Please make sure to run contrib/report.sh
239 and include the output with your bug reports. More about how to
240 report bugs can be found in the GNUnet FAQ on the webpage. Submit
241 patches via E-Mail to gnunet-developers@gnu.org.
243 In order to run the unit tests with by hand (instead of using
244 "make check"), you need to
245 set an environment variable ("GNUNET_PREFIX") to the directory
246 where GNUnet's libraries are installed.
247 Also, before running any testcases, you must
248 complete the installation first. Quick summary:
250 $ ./configure --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