blog/data/2014-04-15-freedombox.txt

   1 Title: FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid
   2 Tags: english, debian, freedombox, surveillance, web, sikkerhet
   3 Date: 2014-04-15 22:10
   4
   5 <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
   6 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
   7 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
   8 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
   9 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
  10 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
  11
  12 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
  13 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
  14 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
  15 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
  16 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
  17 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
  18 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
  19
  20 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
  21 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
  22 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
  23 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
  24 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
  25 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
  26 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
  27 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
  28 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
  29 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
  30 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
  31 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
  32
  33 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
  34 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
  35 become root:</p>
  36
  37 <p><pre>
  38 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
  39   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
  40   u-boot-tools
  41 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
  42   freedom-maker
  43 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
  44 </pre></p>
  45
  46 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
  47 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
  48 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
  49 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
  50 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
  51 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
  52 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
  53 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
  54
  55 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
  56 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
  57 the preseed values:</p>
  58
  59 <p><pre>
  60 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
  61 </pre></p>
  62
  63 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
  64 it still work.</p>
  65
  66 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
  67 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
  68 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
  69 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
  70 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
  71 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
  72 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
  73
  74 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
  75 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
  76 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
  77 irc.debian.org)</a> and
  78 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
  79 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>