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

Jacob Hrbek <[email protected]> Thu, 15 Sep 2022 05:35:31 +0000
Newsgroups	gmane.network.gnunet.general
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
I read the documentation and tried to make it work, but got as far as 
described if you can confirm that GNUNet is supposed to work that way 
then that would help.

// In terms of what GNUNet is
So iiuc GNUNet is reimplementation of "the internet" with a transporter 
used to relay the data across selected solution e.g. TCP, UDP, 
Bluetooth, Wi-FI, etc..

If that's the case then how is that supposed to work in practice? Am i 
supposed to like get the "CORE" thing working through e.g. TCP 
transponder which is going to get me a solution that is able to resolve 
through GNUNet's eqvivalent of an IP addresses and if i want domain 
resolution then i need to configure GNS on top of it and other relevant 
reimplementations of "the internet"s functionality?

If so that sounds like a lot of work.. is there any rational reason to 
why there is no definition for something like gnunet-service-type in 
guix? (bcs i would rather spent the effort developing that so that it 
works for everyone instead of me doing the eqvivalent amout of work 
duct taping it together..)

// Usability
in terms of usage my threat model is in terms of who handles my data to 
trust none and being political activist to be a target for cyber and 
physical attacks so in an ideal world the general rule that i go by is 
that i don't want anyone to know that i am even using any device AND 
what am i doing on the internet to generally follow the rule of if the 
solution has bunch of people providing super illegal stuff like 
assasinations for hire, cp, guns, etc.. then it's implementation is 
likely beyond the capability of any relevant enforcement agency to be 
good enough for me (Tor/Lokinet) -> Is GNUNet anywhere near such 
capability or is there a rational reason for me to migrate from 
Tor/Lokinet on it?

// Delay?
The main problem on onion-routing for me is the delay how does GNUNet 
handle that in comparison to what my ISP is giving me?

// Registering a domain?
Is there a way for me to register a TLD on GNUNet so that i can then 
use something like domain.my-cool-tld?

 > 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.

I didn't meant to insult anyone i wanted to inform about my experience 
with GNUNet so far so that it can hopefully be addressed as to me it's 
not going a good job explaining what GNUNet (like i rread the docs and 
looked at the videos and i just have more questions then answers) is 
and the experience to make it work is ride through hell..

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

For context i have 14 years of experience with computer science.. when 
i look at the website it's wall of text using custom terminology (that 
is hidden in the docs) on a self-made technology without clear 
explanation beyond someone talking on FOSDEM and alike events trying 
their best to explain it that to me feels more like an entertainment 
salted with bits of semi-useful info that is just not enough for me..

If this is supposed to be the replacement of the internet then it 
should be recognized that people go to the university to learn about it 
and how it use it for X years so the focus should be on how to make 
that process of presenting the project understandable to the general 
public as it seems to me as that GNUNet is something that people need a 
very specific knowledge and experience to understand how it works and 
how to make it work so i at very least i would suggest to make as short 
as possible informative video like 
<https://invidious.namazso.eu/watch?v=JWII85UlzKw> (That GNU seems to 
be really good at making based on guix's videos at 
<https://guix.gnu.org/en/videos/2020/packaging-part-two>) and put in on 
the landing page of the website to make this process easier and explain 
the terminology and used components instead of the current which seems 
to make everyone think that it's GNU's attempt at making TorProject 
alternative that doesn't work..

Ideally i would suggest to make more short videos like the one 
presented above by guix explaining the invidual components as well to 
get everyone "on the same boat" and to be able to work with/on the 
project painlessly and improve the current docs.

 > it's currently like comparing apples to oranges, or even worse, 
comparing apples to lunchboxes

What everyday usecase do you propose then or how should i look at this 
project?

On Čt, zář 8 2022 at 23:44:23 +0200, Maxime Devos 
<[email protected]> wrote:
> 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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