Re: How do you set up GNUNet on GNU Guix?

Maxime Devos <[email protected]> Thu, 8 Sep 2022 23:44:23 +0200
Newsgroups	gmane.network.gnunet.general
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
On 08-09-2022 15:34, Jacob Hrbek wrote:

> I am trying to set up an alternative to tor on GNU Guix where 
> following the docs gets me:
>
GNUnet is not an alternative to Tor. Perhaps a Tor-like something could 
be built on top of GNUnet (maybe with CADET?) with some time and effort, 
but AFAICT nobody has built an anonymising (and properly anonymising, 
like Tor) P2P proxy thing on top of GNUnet yet.
> $ guix shell gnunet -- gnunet-arm -s -m
> Now only monitoring, press CTRL-C to stop.
> Starting namestore...
> Starting namecache...
> Starting statistics...
> Starting ats...
> Starting core...
> Starting peerinfo...
> Starting setu...
> Starting transport...
> Starting nat...
> Starting datastore...
> Starting peerstore...
> Starting identity...
> Starting reclaim...
>
> And that's how far i got.. using
>
> $ chromium --proxy-server="socks5://127.0.0.1:7777" test.gnu
> <returns 404>
>
Unless the installation documentation has changed, there were a more 
steps than that. IIRC, the docs ask you to modify some configuration 
files. You can find the installation documentation at 
<https://docs.gnunet.org/installing.html> (I recommend the single-user 
setup, as it is simpler, and because Guix does not expect you to use 
usermod, useradd and groupadd that way).

Also, IIRC the GNS proxy thing was a bit complicated, how about trying 
out a few simpler things first? E.g. the GNUnet file-sharing.

> Btw. the matrix channel for gnunet sucks they don't know how it works 
> and just sent me on the mailing list
Sounds like a good course of action to me -- sometimes on IRC (or 
Matrix), the people currently logged in did not have an answer, so they 
redirected you to a source that might have one. Additionally, I must 
recommend against insulting them (‘matrix channel suck, they don't 
know’), it makes people disinclined to help you further.
> and i still have no idea how GNUNet is even supposed to work as the 
> website doesn't do a good job explaining it

how about:

  * https://www.gnunet.org/en/applications.html# -- this gives a few
    applications. It also has (indirectly) link to the GNS specification
    (https://lsd.gnunet.org/lsd0001/), explaining in much detail how a
    (part of) GNS works.
  * For GNUnet file-sharing: in the TOC of the documentation
    (https://docs.gnunet.org/), there is a promising section "How
    file-sharing achieves Anonymity", which explains how it works. It
    also has links to PDF explaining in more detail.
  * In the surrounding text, it gives explanation on other related things.
  * For another method of explanations, there are video's:
    https://www.gnunet.org/en/video.html

It seems to me that it explains many parts of Guix, in different ways, 
with a reasonable structure (last time I checked, certainly not 
perfectly, but it has improved).

Do you have a particular part of the website in mind that you consider 
to not be explaining a particular thing well?

> so if anyone can elaborate on that e.g. is it using multi-layer 
> encryption like Tor? Or is it possibly better than tor?, etc..

GNUnet has lots of components.  What part are you looking for -- the 
DHT, NSE, the file-sharing, the GNS (= GNUnet's version of DNS), the 
‘VPN’, Messenger, CADET? All of them have different security properties 
in mind and implemented.

Also again, nobody has implemented a Tor-like thing on GNUnet yet, it's 
currently like comparing apples to oranges, or even worse, comparing 
apples to lunchboxes -- questions like ‘is X better than Y at Z’ are 
currently meaningless, especially when you aren't mentioning what your 
goal Z is.

Greetings,
Maxime
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