Turn the Beaglebone Black into a personal communications server
Author: Bob Mottram
Keywords: freedombox, debian, beaglebone, hubzilla, email, web server, home server, internet, censorship, surveillance, social network, irc, jabber

# Usage

Readme
Improving ssh security
Administrating the system via an onion address (Tor)
Mobile advice
Using Email
Syncing to the Cloud
Play Music
Microblogging (GNU Social)
Microblogging (PostActiv)
Blogging with Ghost
Blogging with HTMLy
Social Network
Photo albums
Wiki
Collaborative document editing
Multi-user chat with IRC
XMPP/Jabber
Tox
Mumble
Mailpile
RSS Reader
CalDAV calendar server
Git Projects
Adding or removing users
Blocking Ads

## Readme

After the system has installed a README file will be generated which contains passwords and some brief advice on using the installed systems. You can read this with the following commands:

    ssh username@domainname -p 2222
    emacs ~/README

You should transfer any passwords to a password manager such as KeepassX and then delete them from the README file. To save the file after removing passwords use CTRL-x CTRL-s.

To exit you can either just close the terminal or use CTRL-x CTRL-c followed by the exit command.

## Improving ssh security

To improve ssh security you can generate an ssh key pair on your system and then upload the public key to the Freedombone.

On your local machine:

    ssh-keygen

For extra security you may also want to add a passphrase to the ssh private key. You can show the generated public key with:

    cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Log into your system and open the control panel.

    ssh username@domain -p 2222

Select Administrator controls then Manage Users then Change user ssh public key. Copy and paste the public key here, then exit.

It's a good idea to also copy the contents of ~/.ssh/id_rsa and ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub to you password manager, together with the private key password if you created one.

There are advantages and disadvantages to using ssh keys for logins. The advantage is that this is much more secure than a memorised password, but the disadvantage is that you need to carry your ssh keys around and be able to install them on any computer of mobile device that you use. In high security or hostile infosec environments it may not be possible to carry or use USB thumb drives containing your keys and so memorised passwords may be the only available choice.

If you wish to only use ssh keys then log in to the Freedombone, become the root user and open the control panel with the 'control' command. Select Security Settings then keep hitting enter until you reach the question about allowing password logins. Select "no" for that, then apply the settings. Any subsequent attempts to log in via a password will then be denied.

## Administrating the system via an onion address (Tor)

You can also access your system via the Tor system using an onion address. To find out what the onion address for ssh access is you can do the following:

    ssh username@freedombone.local -p 2222

Select Administrator controls then select "About this system" and look for the onion address for ssh. You can then close the terminal and open another, then do the following on your local system:

    freedombone-client

This will set up your ssh environment to be able to handle onion addresses. In addition if you use monkeysphere then you can do:

    freedombone-client --ms yes

Then you can test ssh with:

    ssh username@address.onion -p 2222

Subsequently even if dynamic DNS isn't working you may still be able to administer your system. Using the onion address also gives you some degree of protection against corporate or government metadata analysis, since it becomes more difficult to passively detect which systems are communicating.

## Adding or removing users

Log into the system with:

    ssh username@domainname -p 2222

Select Administrator controls then User Management. Depending upon the type of installation after selecting administrator controls you might need to enter:

    sudo su
    control

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