Installation

If you have an existing system, such as an old laptop or netbook which you can leave running as a server, then install a new version of Debian Jessie onto it. During the Debian install you won't need the print server or the desktop environment, and unchecking those will reduce the attack surface. Once Debian enter the following commands:

su
apt-get update
apt-get -y install git dialog build-essential
git clone https://github.com/bashrc/freedombone
cd freedombone
make install
freedombone menuconfig

Currently the following boards are supported:

• Beaglebone Black
• Cubieboard 2
• Cubietruck (Cubieboard 3)
• olinuxino Lime
• olinuxino Lime2
• olinuxino Micro

If there is no existing image available then you can build one from scratch. See the section above on how to do that. If an existing image is available then you can download it and check the signature with:

gpg --verify filename.img.asc

And the hash with:

sha256sum filename.img

If the image is compressed then decompress it with:

unxz filename.img.xz

Then copy it to a microSD card. Depending on your system you may need an adaptor to be able to do that.

sudo dd bs=1M if=filename.img of=/dev/sdX conv=fdatasync

Where sdX is the microSD drive. You can check which drive is the microSD drive using:

ls /dev/sd*

With the drive removed and inserted. Copying to the microSD will take a while, so go and do something less boring instead. When it's complete remove it from your system and insert it into the SBC. Connect an ethernet cable between the SBC and your internet router, then connect the power cable. On the Beaglebone Black you will see some flashing LEDs, but on other SBCs there may not be any visual indication that anything is booting.

With the board connected and running you can ssh into the system with:

ssh fbone@freedombone.local -p 2222

Using the password 'freedombone'. Take a note of the new login password and then you can proceed through the rest of the installation.

Virtualbox and Qemu are supported. You can run a 64 bit Qemu image with:

qemu-system-x86_64 -m 1G filename.img

If you are using Virtualbox then add a new VM and select the Freedombone vdi image.

The default login will be username 'fbone' and password 'freedombone'. Take a note of the new login password and then you can proceed through the rest of the installation.

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.

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.

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.

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 done from the Disk Utility application. Then plug it into the Freedombone system, then from your local machine run:

ssh myusername@mydomainname -p 2222

Select Administrator controls then Backup and Restore then Backup GPG key to USB (master keydrive).

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 can be done from the Disk Utility application. Plug it into the Freedombone system then from your local machine run the following commands:

ssh myusername@mydomainname -p 2222

Select Administrator controls then Backup and Restore then Backup GPG key to USB (fragment keydrive).

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.