On Thu, 13 May 2010 19:52:15 -0300, gangazumba@palmares.net wrote:
>On 13 May 2010 14:31:54 GMT, "mr.bill" <mrbill@invalid.lss> wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 3 May 2010 14:47:25 GMT, trab@home.com wrote:
>>
>>>The name is: lsm-005-070
>>
>>Freenet key for the set (unwrap before using):
>>
>>CHK@bTMRyAPX9WM0xRP-
>>nGqmZ1W9Ce2kB54oEJGE0a5OvD0,ci7XYksJ8Kki64yAUVlSuQhAEwNJBWXboDQ984eDdV8,
>>AAIC--8/LS-Magazine-14-05-verified.rar
>>
>>
>>
>>Freenet URI for the entire magazine issue:
>>
>>http://127.0.0.1:8888/USK@rRf~se2yYcr-
>>UPKngHVAz8vPMnzkEyAELJHPk56URUk,oUcDknP0Zz4Tevi0~ACB-
>>V9FcXlqeD~fASxRabu8L4A,AQACAAE/LS-Magazine-14/2/
>>
>>
>>Hope to see some of you there!
>
>10x for your reply... but I never used Freenet ... Is good? Is it
>safe? What should I avoid?
>TIA
>GZ
Remember the old days in a.b.p.hussy? Freenet is just as good if not
better. Is it safe? It is very safe! You've probably wondered where
everybody disappeared to. Some moved on to onion, but that's intolerably
slow. The rest are in Freenet posting their asses off! Want to join us?
Here is a tutorial I authored during the frustrating times of learning to
run Freenet. Maybe it will help someone else.
Freenet - one man's opinion
===========================
Freenet is arguably the most horrid application ever written. It will
frustrate and render the most skilled computer practitioner insane. It
will thrash and otherwise strain your computer's hard drives. It will
keep your processor running at 100% usage for protracted periods. It
easily places an overhead of 500% on all your transactions, and has the
capability if not restrained, of taking over 100% of your drive's real
estate. It definitely requires a whole lot of getting used to.
If all the above is true, why even bother with Freenet? You'll ask
yourself this again and again before ever making peace with it. But the
truth is, there is a whole lot out there that can't be gotten as safely
elsewhere. Not only that, but anonymity applies to everybody, not just
the savvy posters. Everyone becomes a safe poster as well as a safe
downloader.
What is Freenet not?
Freenet is not a point & click program, ready to do your bidding at your
beck and call. It's not something you can fire up and use for half-an-
hour, then close down until tomorrow. It's so unlike anything you've ever
experienced with your computer you'll swear it was created by an alien
race to drive strong men to drink whilst being strapped to a table with
water dripping eternally on their foreheads. However, it is possible to
make peace with it - eventually. But please don't plan on making peace
with Freenet the first install, or the second, or third. Be forewarned!
What then is Freenet?
Freenet is a community of users, all ferrying traffic for someone else,
never knowing who asked for, or who receives the packets of data passing
through your node, never knowing what's in those small pieces of encrypted
files residing on your hard drive, but only knowing you don't host the
whole of any one thing on your machine, and the location of the other
parts is just as secret. It's sort of like 'cloud computing' except
everything passes through an unknown number of intermediaries. Web pages
exist only in tiny parcels distributed here and there. The same with
photos and videos. With such an arrangement of parts, it is impossible to
retrieve anything instantly. But it is possible to retrieve in perfect
safety, and even to publish in perfect safety.
Lastly, Freenet is the crack cocaine of the internet. Once you've seen
even a small truce in the war with the application, there is no returning
to a life without Freenet. Again, be forewarned.
Getting started - the first install
===================================
I'm going to make a guess and say that all of you reading this use Tor.
Well, you don't really use Tor itself, do you? It just sits there,
There's nothing you can do with it. But when your other programs use Tor
to access the internet, the world becomes a much safer place for you, does
it not?
I'm going to liken Freenet to Tor. Yes, I know it is possible to use
Freenet itself, but hardly anybody does, so let's get that thought out of
our heads right now. Freenet is going to sit there, just like Tor does,
waiting for some other program to use it. But unlike Tor, it's not going
to be unobtrusive. It's going to demand some degree of processor time,
and some amount of bandwidth, and this has to be on an on-going basis.
Those of you who have run Tor relays, you will already know what I'm
talking about. Think of Freenet as acting like a Tor relay then. The
only difference is that nothing accesses the internet through Freenet,
only Freenet content is accessed through Freenet. The Freenet community
is large enough to have really good content, but small enough to make you
a member of an elite community, a community of those who have survived the
battles with this infernal application and emerged victorious in time.
The first task is to get the latest Java. I know, you think you're
current enough. There is no such thing with Freenet. The developers use
the newest commands placed into the latest Java, or else they just simply
demand the version they compiled for. And since Java has historically not
overwritten or replaced older installs, I always uninstall the current
version before upgrading. Otherwise I risk having multiple installs of
this bloatware with the concurrent loss of hard drive real estate. Not in
itself such a bad thing anymore, but it can sure swell a Ghost backup.
Whether the battle is won or lost forever on this first go-round, it
doesn't hurt to have the latest Java, now does it? You can do it now, or
you can do it later when upon installing Freenet, it complains you don't
have the latest Java ;(
The second preparatory task is to get, if you don't already have, a
browser besides Internet Explorer. Freenet interfaces with your default
browser during the install, and if that's IE, that's fine while the wizard
is running, but later on, you won't be able to access the things you need
to do with IE. The Freenet developers have used html tags that IE doesn't
understand, a mistake in my opinion, but you will need at least
FirefoxPortable to configure Freenet later. Having Firefox around is a
good thing, even if you lose the battle to conquer Freenet, so get it if
you don't have it. Google for FirefoxPortable. It is available from many
sources.
Seems like a hassle just getting ready for Freenet, doesn't it? Well, it
is, and that's part of my gripe. Why won't it work with what I already
have and know? Perhaps that's how they keep the Freenet community small
and tight-knit, who knows.
Now comes the dreaded first install, the later ones will go much faster.
Grab the Freenet installer, currently build 1247 from:
http://freenetproject.org/download.html
Forget about adding friends (in case you read about this on the download
page). Darknets are inherently unsafe unless you know the people
personally, like you visit their home, you know what I mean? Nobody you
meet anonymously on the internet classifies as a friend in this context.
The installer is small enough you can grab it over Tor if you wish without
it taking forever. And to let you know up front, Freenet is uninstalled
from Add/Remove programs. It will do a clean uninstall with no left over
remnants.
Run the installer. Choose 'Normal' security each time when presented a
choice. Grant the default amount of cache space. You can increase it
later at any time, but the truth is, you will get disgusted with Freenet
and uninstall it before 24 hours is up anyway. Don't go giving it a bunch
of your drive at this time since everything in there will be lost to the
community when you uninstall. Lastly, pick a bandwidth you can live with
"continually". You can increase it later to improve performance anyway.
For now, don't strain your machine, and your nerves, more than necessary.
16k or 32k will do fine.
A blue jumping rabbit will appear in your systray. Give it a loving place
along with your green Tor onion. You will hardly ever have need to move
your mouse over it. But if you should want to stop Freenet, that's where
the command to do so is hidden. Don't choose Exit without first stopping
the Freenet service. You don't really need to exit at all. You can just
stop and start the service from the jumping rabbit.
At this point, you don't know it yet, but that blue jumping rabbit will
slow your next reboot considerably. Whatever else you have that starts at
boot up will be delayed while the Freenet service starts. This is one of
the bigger frustrations.
For now though, if you have anything running that shows processor usage,
you will notice your processor running at 100% for a period of time. This
will continue until Freenet makes its connections to its peers. This
appears to be a low priority task as it doesn't noticeably slow the
machine at this time. So this is a minor frustration, but a frustration
none-the-less. The task responsible for this large processor demand is
"java.exe". Later on, at unknown times and for unknown reasons, java.exe
will again and again demand 100% of your processor. Sometimes the cause
is known, inserting large files for example, or just after boosting the
bandwidth, Sometimes the cause is unknown. Is your frustration tolerance
exceeded? If so, then the predicted uninstall will take place
prematurely. If you still have some patience, you might just make it on.
Are you a clean freak like me? Do you frequently check for unknown
services running on your machine? Then here's what will appear in Task
Manager after installing Freenet:
wrapper-windows-x86-32.exe
java.exe
There is no harm in just letting Freenet sit there and run. It is helping
the Freenet community to do so, but then, "What's in it for me?", you ask.
Obviously you're running Freenet because you want access to Freenet
content. This is the tough part. You can't just go get something, and
you want the good stuff anyway, right? The kind that isn't advertised
anywhere? And you want it now! Well, you can't use your browser for any
of that. Your browser is used to alter the configuration at times. When
you need to, open Firefox and in the URL line type, "localhost:8888"
without the quotes, of course. We don't need to do that now at any rate.
So Freenet is running and the developers say it works better the longer
you run it. They suggest never shutting it down and somewhere deep inside
you feel that your problems with the application will vanish if you leave
Freenet running long enough. None of that is true!
Freenet does take time to connect to peers, but after anywhere from 20
minutes to an hour, you're not going to see any performance increase.
What's more, the Freenet community has a vested interest in you keeping
your node running. Perhaps they exaggerate a bit when describing an
expected performance increase in the hopes of you keeping your node up and
running.
So now the install is over and done with. No other installs take place.
Every other app we run is simply unzipped and the .jar file double-
clicked.
Frost
=====
Frost and Freenet go together like a hand and glove. It's on Frost you
will find what you seek. Freenet builds the community, Frost uses Freenet
to access the content. It's kind of like using a newsreader to access a
newsserver except everything is anonymous at all times.
On Frost, instead of having groups, you have boards. But just like
usenet, you first need to know which board has what you seek. Unlike
usenet however, the content is not hosted anywhere, but rather is hosted
everywhere, in bits and pieces. Your copy of Frost has to retrieve all
the bits and assemble them on your machine for you to browse. It can take
days to weeks, depending on how far back you want to build your database.
Is it time to do the first uninstall yet?
The second install
==================
I'm guessing you jumped ahead and ran Frost, got discouraged or had a
system crash. Perhaps you realized one or the other application needed to
be on a different encrypted volume or maybe on one that mounts at startup.
Perhaps you were bewildered by all the configuration choices. Whatever
the reason, you may be reading this for the first or the second time.
I recommend installing Freenet on a volume that doesn't mount at startup.
Maybe that wasn't your first choice. I recommend unzipping Frost onto a
secure volume that mounts later when desired also. That can keep
sensitive data at bay while the machine is accessed for other reasons.
Frost is unzipped and either the file frost.bat or frost.jar is double-
clicked. It's okay to let the splash screen display, but sooner or later
you will tire of it and want it gone. Pick a name not used anywhere else.
In other words, don't use the same nym on usenet, Freenet, and Ranchi.
If you have already posted a message to a board, then you will want to
export your identity to a file for later retrieval, after your third or
fourth install for instance.
Frost has to run a good while to build up a database of messages. This is
accomplished by downloading days backwards.
Is this your first time? You may want to go back 90 days. is this your
fourth install? Perhaps it's time to retrieve the last year's worth.
Downloading days backward
=========================
This is how we build a database going back in time. It's done only at the
beginning and not done again unless we decide to build back further in
time.
Go to Options>>Preferences>>News1.
Change "Number of days to display" to 120 (500 if you want a year's worth)
Change "Number of days to download backwards" to 90 (365 if you want a
year's worth)
Check "Always download all days backwards"
Click on "Expiration"
Change "Number of days before a message expires" to 120 (500 if you want a
year's worth)
When you've built your database up sufficiently, a few days to a week or
more, change "Number of days to download backwards" to its default (5),
and uncheck "Always download all days backwards". This will speed up the
refresh of new messages.
It is recommended also to go to the "Search" option and check "Disable
filesharing" since it can make you vulnerable to a correlation attack.
This will gray out the "Search files" tab in Frost, but you can later
"Search messages" under the "News" menu option.
You will be overwhelmed at the mess which comes in. Don't even try to
read them all or keep up with the influx. They will arrive in no
particular order, new and old alike. It will seem like a pointless
jumble.
I'll tell you how best to deal with the mess, but first, we need to add
the boards of interest. Click on the blue globe icon to call up the list
of boards. if you have them, highlight cl, hussy, and ua. Then choose
Actions>>Add selected board(s). If you don't have those groups, you can
add them by hand. In the left hand pane, right-click on "Freenet" and
choose "Add new board". Sometimes people will post their list of active
boards as an xml file. You can import that list, again starting with the
blue globe icon.
To make following what happens in a group do-able, right-click the group
name in the left-hand panel and select "Mark ALL messages read". Now only
the newly arrived messages will stand out from the rest, and you can
always browse the old threads at your leisure. I personally prefer to
change the default for my boards to "Show collapsed message threads".
It's under Options>>Messages. Otherwise all message threads are expanded
into a hopeless mess in my view.
Inserting and downloading - the third install
=============================================
Perhaps you already tried a year or more ago to run Freenet. So maybe
this is your third tentative attempt to see if the application has
improved. Well, at least you've gotten this far this time.
In Freenet, uploading is called inserting. Files are inserted in the
community database and persist even when you are off-line. They are first
broken into small chunks and encrypted. These are distributed to other
nodes. A set of keys pointing to the chunks are passed on to yet a
different bunch of nodes. When the insert is complete you are given the
key to the first chunk along with the filename. This is the key you post
to a board so that others may download the file you inserted. But for
right now, you'll be more interested in downloading than in inserting.
When reading messages, you will see keys looking somewhat like links.
These are not links to the whole file, rather, just to the first chunk of
the file. Click the key and choose "Download file key". The file will
come in rapidly if recently inserted into the database, slowly if the
insert was weeks ago. Sometimes it takes days for a file to download
completely. And if you're watching the download take place, you might
notice a terrible delay from when the download reaches 100% to when it
finally appears in the download directory. This too is a frustration
probably traceable to the slowness of running an intensive application on
top of java. The file most likely was not complete in itself, but since
repair pars were inserted into the database at the same time as the file,
it was being repaired during the delay. This is a slow enough process
with a windows app. It is intolerably slow when done with java.
If you've made it this far and downloaded anything of interest, you're
hooked. You might uninstall everything again in frustration, but you'll
be back.
To avoid having to refill your local database, I suggest wholesale copying
of your Frost folder to a backup somewhere, in case after sleeping on it,
you decide to once more give Freenet a try. Storing in an encrypted
container burned to disk is good. If more than 5 days elapses before
reinstalling, you might want to bump up the number of days to download
backwards in order to fill the gap. Otherwise, just restore your backup
folder and continue like there had been no interruption.
Inserting files can be a hassle. Frost will try to compress all files,
even jpegs, mpegs, and rar files which are not noticeably compressible
beyond what
they already are. This may require hours before the insert itself even
starts. A subfolder in Freenet containing persistent-temp files will
expand without
limit until it fills your drive and crashes the application. Inserting
files with Frost then is not an option.
Inserts, I have found, are best done with Firefox. Call up Firefox and
enter localhost:8888 on the URL line. Under Filesharing, choose Uploads.
Click the "Browse files" button (not the nearby "Browse" button) and work
your way to the file you want to upload. Unless you're posting a text
file, do not check the "Compress" box. There's probably never a reason to
check it.
Now go to Frost's Uploads page and check "Show global queue". You can
watch the file insert progress there. To speed up the insert, return to
Firefox and under "Configuration" select the submenu option "Core
settings". Find the "Output bandwidth limit" and raise it as high as your
upload bandwidth.
When the insert is done, you can right-click the filename in Frost's
Uploads page and copy the key and filename. This can be pasted into a
message and posted to a board. If there are no more uploads, you might
want to return to Firefox to bump the bandwidth down again. If you leave
it set high, expect java to consume huge amounts of processor power and
slow your machine down. Even after backing down on the bandwidth you will
see high processor usage for a period of time. This is Freenet. These
are the things you have to come to a peace with.
I have just given you the rough basics. If it helps anyone overcome the
despair of Freenet, then I have accomplished my goal. See all of you in
hussy!
--
not mr.bill in freenet
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