blog/data/2013-09-10-freedombox.txt

   1 Title: Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi
   2 Tags: english, debian, freedombox
   3 Date: 2013-09-10 20:40
   4
   5 <p>I was introduced to the
   6 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
   7 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
   8 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
   9 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
  10 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
  11 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
  12 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
  13 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
  14
  15 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
  16 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
  17 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
  18 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
  19 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
  20
  21 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
  22 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
  23 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
  24 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
  25 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
  26 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
  27 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
  28 the current Freedombox setup, I had to come up with a way to install
  29 it on some hardware I do got access to.  I have rewritten the
  30 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
  31 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
  32 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
  33 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
  34 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
  35 missing in Debian).</p>
  36
  37 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
  38 scripts
  39 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
  40 and a administrative web interface
  41 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
  42 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
  43 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
  44 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
  45 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
  46 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
  47 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
  48 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
  49 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  None of
  50 this is really working yet, see
  51 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
  52 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
  53 on github at the moment.</p>
  54
  55 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look the following recipes should
  56 work to give you a test machine to poke at.</p>
  57
  58 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
  59
  60 <ol>
  61
  62 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
  63 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
  64 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
  65 to the Debian installer:<p>
  66 <pre>url=http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</pre></li>
  67
  68 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
  69 install on.</li>
  70
  71 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
  72 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
  73
  74 </ol>
  75
  76 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
  77
  78 <ol>
  79
  80 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
  81 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
  82 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
  83 <pre>
  84 deb http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox wheezy main
  85 </pre></li>
  86 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
  87 <pre>
  88 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
  89    apt-key add -
  90 apt-get update
  91 apt-get install freedombox-setup
  92 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
  93 </pre></li>
  94 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
  95
  96 </ol>
  97
  98 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
  99 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
 100 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
 101 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
 102 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
 103
 104 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
 105 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
 106 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
 107 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
 108
 109 <p>Please let me know if this work for you, or if you have any
 110 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
 111 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
 112 irc.debian.org and the
 113 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
 114 mailing list</a>.</p>
 115
 116 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
 117 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
 118 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
 119 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
 120 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
 121 default password is 'secret'.</p>