Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. The minimum requirements are to have some hardware that you can install Debian onto and also that you have administrator access to your internet router so that you can forward ports to the system which has Freedombone installed.

The lack of a static IP address can be worked around by using a dynamic DNS service. Freedombone uses inadyn, which supports a variety of dynamic DNS providers.

The FreedomBox project supports Raspberry Pi builds, and the image build system for Freedombone is based on the same system. However, although the Raspberry Pi can run a version of Debian it requires a closed proprietary blob in order to boot the hardware. Who knows what that blob might contain or what exploits it could facilitate. From an adversarial point of view if you were trying to deliver "bulk equipment interference" then it doesn't get any better than piggybacking on something which has control of the boot process, and hence all subsequently run processes.

So although the Raspberry Pi is cheap and hugely popular it's not supported by the Freedombone project. Perhaps future versions of the Pi won't have the proprietary blob requirement, or maybe the blob will be open sourced at some stage.

Github is paradoxically a centralized, closed and proprietary system which happens to mostly host free and open source projects. Up until now it has been relatively benign, but at some point in the name of "growth" it will likely start becoming more evil, or just become like SourceForge - which was also once much loved by FOSS developers, but turned into a den of malvertizing.

At present Github is useful just because of the sheer number of eyeballs and the easy discoverability of projects via search.

The source code for this project is experimentally independently hosted, and it is expected that in future the main development will shift over to an independent site, maybe with mirrors on Github if it still exists in a viable form.

By default the Tor browser has https everywhere enabled and this can clash with onion addresses. Really this is a browser bug, which ought to be fixed. If you notice that "https" has been automatically prepended to your onion address then go to the https everywhere settings and disable it. https isn't needed for ontion sites since onion services already have their own public key encryption (the onion address is the public key).

It was originally designed to run on the Beaglebone Black, but that should be regarded as the most minimal system, because it's single core and has by today's standards a small amount of memory. Obviously the more powerful the hardware is the faster things like web pages (blog, social networking, etc) will be served but the more electricity such a system will require if you're running it 24/7. A good compromise between performance and energy consumption is something like an old netbook. The battery of an old netbook or laptop even gives you UPS capability to keep the system going during brief power outages or cable re-arrangements, and that means using full disk encryption on the server also becomes more practical.

Out of fashion but still working computer hardware tends to be cheap and readily available, yet still good for providing internet services.

Yes. Freedombone can support a small number of users, for a "friends and family" type of home installation. This gives them access to an email account, XMPP, SIP phone and the blog (depending on whether the variant which you installed includes those).

ssh username@mydomainname -p 2222
sudo control

Select Manage Users and then Add a user. You will be prompted for a username and you can also optionally provide their ssh public key.

Something to consider when having more than a single user on the system is the security situation. The original administrator user will have access to all of the data for other users (including their encryption keys), so if you do add extra users they need to have complete trust in the administrator.

Another point is that Freedombone installations are not intended to support many users (maybe ten at most). Large numbers of users may make the system unstable, and the more users you have on one system the more it becomes a single point of failure and also perhaps a honeypot from the standpoint of adversaries. Think of what happened with Lavabit and the moral dilemma which an administrator can be faced with (comply with threats and betray the trust of your users or don't comply and suffer other consequences). Ideally, you never want to put yourself into a situation where you can be forced to betray others.

To remove a user:

ssh username@mydomainname -p 2222
sudo control

Select Manage Users and then Delete a user. Note that this will delete all of that user's files and email.

The tripwire will be automatically reset once per week. If you want to reset it earlier then do the following:

ssh username@mydomain -p 2222
sudo control

Select "reset tripwire" using cursors and space bar then enter.

Even when using Freedombone metadata analysis by third parties is still possible. This can be mitigated by accessing your blog, or other web services, via their onion addresses, rather than via more conventional domain names. In that case your ISP and any government which they might be compelled to report back to will know when your system is being accessed, but not necessarily which services are being accessed or by whom. So for instance using a Tor browser and the onion address people may be able to safely read your blog or wiki and be reasonably confident that metadata isn't being gathered about what they read (or more concisely the metadata which can be gathered by a third party may just not be very useful or personally identifiable). On the other hand if you access the system via conventional domain names and dynamic DNS then it's safe to assume that metadata can and will be collected by third parties.

ssh username@domainname -p 2222
sudo control

Select Email Filtering Rules then you can add rules to be applied to incoming email addresses or mailing lists. If you prefer to do things directly on the command line, without the control panel, then the following commands are available:

Spamassassin is also available and within Mutt you can use the S (shift+s) key to mark an email as spam or the H (shift+h) key to mark an email as not being spam. So by using a combination of email rules and spam filtering you should be able to avoid any spammers or trolls.

If you run the command:

service inadyn status

And see some error related to checking for changes in the IP address then you can try other external IP services. Edit /etc/inadyn.conf and change the domain for the checkip-url parameter. Possible sites are:

https://check.torproject.org/
https://www.whatsmydns.net/whats-my-ip-address.html
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/whats-my-ip/
http://checkip.two-dns.de
http://ip.dnsexit.com
http://ifconfig.me/ip
http://ipecho.net/plain
http://checkip.dyndns.org/plain
http://ipogre.com/linux.php
http://whatismyipaddress.com/
http://ip.my-proxy.com/
http://websiteipaddress.com/WhatIsMyIp
http://getmyipaddress.org/
http://www.my-ip-address.net/
http://myexternalip.com/raw
http://www.canyouseeme.org/
http://www.trackip.net/
http://icanhazip.com/
http://www.iplocation.net/
http://www.howtofindmyipaddress.com/
http://www.ipchicken.com/
http://whatsmyip.net/
http://www.ip-adress.com/
http://checkmyip.com/
http://www.tracemyip.org/
http://checkmyip.net/
http://www.lawrencegoetz.com/programs/ipinfo/
http://www.findmyip.co/
http://ip-lookup.net/
http://www.dslreports.com/whois
http://www.mon-ip.com/en/my-ip/
http://www.myip.ru
http://ipgoat.com/
http://www.myipnumber.com/my-ip-address.asp
http://www.whatsmyipaddress.net/
http://formyip.com/
http://www.displaymyip.com/
http://www.bobborst.com/tools/whatsmyip/
http://www.geoiptool.com/
http://checkip.dyndns.com/
http://myexternalip.com/
http://www.ip-adress.eu/
http://www.infosniper.net/
http://wtfismyip.com/
http://ipinfo.io/
http://httpbin.org/ip

Suppose that some new encryption vulnerability has been announced and that you need to change your encryption settings. Maybe an algorithm thought to be secure is now no longer so and you need to remove it. You can change your settings by doing the following:

ssh myusername@mydomain -p 2222
sudo control

Then select Security Settings. You will then be able to edit the crypto settings for all of the installed applications. Be very careful when editing, since any mistake could make your system less secure rather than more.

Suppose that you have bought a domain name (rather than using a free subdomain on freedns) and you want to use that instead.

Remove any existing nameservers for your domain (or select "custom" nameservers), then add:

NS1.AFRAID.ORG
NS2.AFRAID.ORG
NS3.AFRAID.ORG
NS4.AFRAID.ORG

It might take a few minutes for the above change to take effect. Within freedns click on "Domains" and add your domains (this might only be available to paid members). Make sure that they're marked as "private".

Select "Subdomains" from the menu on the left then select the MX entry for your domain and change the destination to 10:mydomainname rather than 10:mail.mydomainname.

To route email to one of your freedns domains:

editor /etc/mailname

Add any extra domains which you own, then save and exit.

editor /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf

Within dc_other_hostnames add your extra domain names, separated by a colon ':' character.

Save and exit, then restart exim.

update-exim4.conf.template -r
update-exim4.conf
service exim4 restart

You should now be able to send an email from postmaster@mynewdomainname and it should arrive in your inbox.

If you did the full install or selected the social variant then the system will have tried to obtain a Let's Encrypt certificate automatically during the install process. If this failed for any reason, or if you have created a new site which you need a certificate for then do the following:

ssh username@mydomainname -p 2222
sudo control

Select Security settings then Create a new Let's Encrypt certificate.

One thing to be aware of is that Let's Encrypt doesn't support many dynamic DNS subdomains, such as those from freeDNS, so to run Hubzilla and GNU Social you will need to have your own official domains for those. There are many sites from which you can buy cheap domain names, and while this isn't ideal in terms of making you dependent upon another company it's the only option currently.

Normally certificates will be automatically renewed once per month, so you don't need to be concerned about it. If anything goes wrong with the automatic renewal then you should receive a warning email.

If you need to manually renew a certificate:

ssh username@mydomainname -p 2222
sudo control

Select Security settings then Renew Let's Encrypt certificate.

Most likely it's because Let's Encrypt doesn't support your particular domain or subdomain. Currently free subdomains tend not to work. You'll need to buy a domain name, link it to your dynamic DNS account and then do:

ssh username@mydomainname -p 2222
sudo control

Select Security settings then Create a new Let's Encrypt certificate.

Almost everywhere on the web you will read that self-signed certificates are worthless. They bring up scary-scary looking browser warnings and gurus will advise you not to use them. Self-signed certificates are quite useful though. What the scary warnings mean - and it would be good if they explained this more clearly - is that you have an encrypted connection established but there is no certainty about who that connection is with.

The usual solution to this is to get a "real" SSL certificate from one of the certificate authorities, but it's far from clear that such authorities can actually be trusted. Yes, Let's Encrypt is awesome and very convenient but it's really a small sticking plaster over a much bigger problem. If you don't believe me then do some independent research on the history of certificate authorities and the scandals associated with them, then consider how many of those within your browser (usually under advanced settings) are "trusted". Some of those "trusted" certs are for companies with incredibly sketchy reputations, or governments such as that of China. Consider whether you judge the Chinese government to always be truthful about which certificate belongs to which domain, and that it will never abuse such a capability for censorship or political/commercial advantage. Then you'll begin to get an idea of the ramshackle nature of what currently exists.

So although most internet users have been trained to look for the lock icon as an indication that the connection is secured that belief may not always be well founded.

Despite the hype, security of web sites on the internet is still a somewhat unsolved problem, and what we have now is a less than ideal but good enough to fool most of the people most of the time kind of arrangement. Long term a better solution might be to have a number of certificate authorities in a number of different jurisdictions vote on whether a given certificate actually belongs to a given domain name. Experimental systems like this exist, but they're not widely used. Since the current certificate system has an enormous amount of inertia behind it change could be slow in arriving.

For now a self-signed certificate will probably in most cases protect your communications from "bulk" passive surveillance. Once you've got past the scary browser warning and accepted the certificate under most conditions (except when starting up the Tor browser) you should not repeatedly see that warning. If you do then someone may be trying to meddle with your connection to the server. You can also take a note of the fingerprint of the certificate and verify that if you are especially concerned. If the fingerprint remains the same then you're probably ok.

That pledge is utterly worthless. Years ago people trusted Google in the same sort of way, because they promised not be be evil and because a lot of the engineers working for them seemed like honest types who were "on our side". Post-nymwars and post-PRISM we know exactly how much Google cared about the privacy and security of its users. But Google is only one particular example. In general don't trust pledges made by companies, even if the people running them seem really sincere.

Welcome to the world of email. Email is really the archetypal decentralized service, developed during the early days of the internet. In principle anyone can run an email server, and that's exactly what you're doing with Freedombone. Email is very useful, but it has a big problem, and that's that the protocols are totally insecure. That made it easy for spammers to do their thing, and in response highly elaborate spam filtering and blocking systems were developed. Chances are that your emails are being blocked in this way. Sometimes the blocking is so indisciminate that entire countries are excluded. What can you do about it? Unless you control the block list at the receiving end probably you can't do anything. There is zero accountability for such blocking, and you can't just contact someone and say "hey, I'm not a spammer". This system works well for the big internet companies because it effectively centralises email to a few well-known brand names and keeps any independent servers out.

So the situation with email presently is pretty bad, and there's a clear selection pressure against decentralization and towards only a few companies controlling all email services. Longer term the solution is to have more secure protocols which make spamming hard or expensive. Bitmessage is one such system. As an immediate practical workaround you could try buying a domain name and then linking it to your dynamic DNS account (freeDNS, etc) in the hope that the blocking is against dynamic DNS domain names, but there is no guarantee that will work and often blocking may be based upon IP address ranges about which there is little you can do.