#+KEYWORDS: freedombox, debian, beaglebone, red matrix, email, web server, home server, internet, censorship, surveillance, social network, irc, jabber
#+DESCRIPTION: Turn the Beaglebone Black into a personal communications server
- A purchased domain name and SSL certificate (only needed for Red Matrix)
- A laptop or desktop machine with the ability to write to a microSD card (might need an adaptor)
You will also need to know, or find out, the IP address of your internet router and have a suitable static IP address for the Beaglebone on your local network. The router should allow you to forward ports to the Beaglebone (often this is under firewall or "advanced" settings).
where /dev/sdX is the device name for the microSD card. Often it's /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc, depending upon how many drives there are on your system. The script will download the Debian installer and update the microSD card. It can take a while, so be patient.
When the initial setup is done follow the instructions on screen to run the main freedombone command.
* Have some domains, or subdomains, registered with a dynamic DNS service
* System with a new installation of Debian Jessie
* Ethernet connection to an internet router
* It is possible to forward ports from the internet router to the system
* If you want to set up a social network or microblog then you will need SSL certificates corresponding to those domains
* Have ssh access to the system
* Interactive Setup
The interactive server configuration setup is recommended for most users. On the system where freedombone is to be installed create a configuration file.
You can select which variant you wish to install and then enter the details as requested. A video of the install sequence can be [[./installer.ogv][seen here]].
Add the following, and set the values as needed. DEFAULT_DOMAIN_NAME is where your email/xmpp/irc/voip will be accessed from. It could be the same as one of your other domains, or separate.
Both of the IP addresses are local IP addresses, typically of the form 192.168.x.x, with one being for the system and the other being for the internet router.
Save the configuration file and exit from your editor.
Now you can begin the installation. If you are doing this on a Beaglebone Black:
If you are using the interactive installer then you will be aked if you wish to import GPG keys. If you don't already possess GPG keys then just select "Ok" and they will be generated during the install. If you do already have GPG keys then there are a few possibilities
** You have the gnupg keyring on an encrypted USB drive
If you previously made a master keydrive containing the full keyring (the .gnupg directory). This is the most straightforward case, but not as secure as splitting the key into fragments.
** You have a number of key fragments on USB drives retrieved from friends
If you previously made some USB drives containing key fragments then retrieve them from your friends and plug them in one after the other. After the last drive has been read then remove it and just select "Ok". The system will then try to reconstruct the key. For this to work you will need to have previously made three or more [[Keydrives]].
** You can specify some ssh login details for friends servers containing key fragments
Enter three or more sets of login details and the installer will try to retrieve key fragments and then assemble them into the full key. This only works if you previously were using remote backups and had social key management enabled.
Setup of the server and installation of all the relevant packages is not quick, and depends upon which variant you choose and your internet bandwidth. Allow about three hours for a full installation on the Beaglebone Black. On the Beaglebone installation is in two parts, since a reboot is needed to enable the hardware random number generator and zram.
Any manual post-installation setup instructions or passwords can be found in /home/username/README. You should remove any passwords from that file and store them within a password manager such as KeepassX.
On your internet router, typically under firewall settings, open the following ports and forward them to your server.
After installing for the first time it's a good idea to create some keydrives. These will store your gpg key so that if all else fails you will still be able to restore from backup. There are two ways to do this:
This is the traditional security model in which you carry your full keyring on an encrypted USB drive. To make a master keydrive first format a USB drive as a LUKS encrypted drive. In Ubuntu this can be [[https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EncryptedFilesystemsOnRemovableStorage][done from the /Disk Utility/ application]]. Then plug it into the Freedombone system, then from your local machine run:
This breaks your GPG key into a number of fragments and randomly selects one to add to the USB drive. First format a USB drive as a LUKS encrypted drive. In Ubuntu this [[https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EncryptedFilesystemsOnRemovableStorage][can be done from the /Disk Utility/ application]]. Plug it into the Freedombone system then from your local machine run the following commands:
Fragments are randomly assigned and so you will need at least three or four keydrives to have enough fragments to reconstruct your original key in a worst case scenario. You can store fragments for different Freedombone systems on the same encrypted USB drive, so you can help to ensure that your friends can also recover their systems. This might be called "/the web of backups/" or "/the web of encryption/". Since you can only write a single key fragment from your Freedombone system to a given USB drive each friend doesn't have enough information to decrypt your backups or steal your identity, even if they turn evil. This is based on the assumption that it may be difficult to get three or more friends to conspire against you all at once.
You can configure laptops or desktop machines which connect to the Freedombone server in the following way. This alters encryption settings to improve overall security.
