blog/tags/freedombox/freedombox.rss

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   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries tagged freedombox</title>
   5                 <description>Entries tagged freedombox</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
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   9         <item>
  10                 <title>Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Tue, 10 Sep 2013 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I was introduced to the
  15 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/&quot;&gt;Freedombox project&lt;/a&gt;
  16 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
  17 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
  18 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
  19 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
  20 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
  21 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
  22 control over their own basic infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;
  23
  24 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
  25 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
  26 and privilege exercised by the &quot;western&quot; intelligence gathering
  27 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
  28 actually started working on the project a while back.&lt;/p&gt;
  29
  30 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/&quot;&gt;initial
  31 Debian initiative&lt;/a&gt; based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
  32 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
  33 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
  34 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
  35 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx&quot;&gt;Dreamplug&lt;/a&gt;,
  36 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
  37 the current Freedombox setup, I had to come up with a way to install
  38 it on some hardware I do got access to.  I have rewritten the
  39 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker&quot;&gt;freedom-maker&lt;/a&gt;
  40 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
  41 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
  42 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
  43 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
  44 missing in Debian).&lt;/p&gt;
  45
  46 &lt;p&gt;The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
  47 scripts
  48 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup&quot;&gt;freedombox-setup&lt;/a&gt;),
  49 and a administrative web interface
  50 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth&quot;&gt;plinth&lt;/a&gt; + exmachina +
  51 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
  52 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy&quot;&gt;privoxy&lt;/a&gt;
  53 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
  54 client (&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat&quot;&gt;jwchat&lt;/a&gt;)
  55 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
  56 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd&quot;&gt;ejabberd&lt;/a&gt;).  The
  57 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
  58 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
  59 this is really working yet, see
  60 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO&quot;&gt;the
  61 project TODO&lt;/a&gt; for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
  62 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
  63 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
  64 users.  I&#39;ve not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
  65 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
  66 with lots of half baked features.&lt;/p&gt;
  67
  68 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current stat, the
  69 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
  70 at.&lt;/p&gt;
  71
  72 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Wheezy amd64&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  73
  74 &lt;ol&gt;
  75
  76 &lt;li&gt;Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.&lt;/li&gt;
  77 &lt;li&gt;Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.&lt;/li&gt;
  78 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
  79 to the Debian installer:&lt;p&gt;
  80 &lt;pre&gt;url=&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  81
  82 &lt;li&gt;Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
  83 install on.&lt;/li&gt;
  84
  85 &lt;li&gt;When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
  86 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.&lt;/li&gt;
  87
  88 &lt;/ol&gt;
  89
  90 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Raspberry Pi Raspbian&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  91
  92 &lt;ol&gt;
  93
  94 &lt;li&gt;Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.&lt;/li&gt;
  95 &lt;li&gt;Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.&lt;/li&gt;
  96 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:&lt;/p&gt;
  97 &lt;pre&gt;
  98 deb &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox&lt;/a&gt; wheezy main
  99 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 100 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Run this as root:&lt;/p&gt;
 101 &lt;pre&gt;
 102 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
 103    apt-key add -
 104 apt-get update
 105 apt-get install freedombox-setup
 106 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
 107 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 108 &lt;li&gt;Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.&lt;/li&gt;
 109
 110 &lt;/ol&gt;
 111
 112 &lt;p&gt;You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
 113 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
 114 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
 115 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
 116 short &quot;&lt;tt&gt;apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; away. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 117
 118 &lt;p&gt;Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
 119 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
 120 off the DHCP server by running &quot;&lt;tt&gt;update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
 121 disable&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; as root.&lt;/p&gt;
 122
 123 &lt;p&gt;Please let me know if this work for you, or if you have any
 124 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
 125 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;#freedombox&lt;/a&gt; on
 126 irc.debian.org and the
 127 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;project
 128 mailing list&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 129
 130 &lt;p&gt;Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
 131 &lt;tt&gt;http://your-host-name:8001/&lt;/tt&gt; to see the state of the plint
 132 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
 133 get past it), and next visit &lt;tt&gt;http://your-host-name:8001/help/&lt;/tt&gt;
 134 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is &#39;admin&#39; and the
 135 default password is &#39;secret&#39;.&lt;/p&gt;
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