P2P IRC
In DarkFi, we organize our communication using resilient and
censorship-resistant infrastructure. For chatting, ircd
is a
peer-to-peer implementation of an IRC server in which any user can
participate anonymously using any IRC frontend and by running the
IRC daemon. ircd
uses the DarkFi P2P engine to synchronize chats
between hosts.
Installation
% git clone https://github.com/darkrenaissance/darkfi
% cd darkfi
% make BINS=ircd
% sudo make install BINS=ircd
Usage (DarkFi Network)
Upon installing ircd
as described above, the preconfigured defaults
will allow you to connect to the network and start chatting with the
rest of the DarkFi community.
First, try to start ircd
from your command-line so it can spawn its
configuration file in place. The preconfigured defaults will autojoin
you to the #dev
channel, where the community is most active and
talks about DarkFi development.
% ircd
After running it for the first time, ircd
will create a configuration
file you can review and potentially edit. It might be useful if you
want to add other channels you want to autojoin (like #philosophy
and #memes
), or if you want to set a shared secret for some channel
in order for it to be encrypted between its participants.
When done, you can run ircd
for the second time in order for it to
connect to the network and start participating in the P2P protocol:
% ircd
Clients
Weechat
In this section, we'll briefly cover how to use the Weechat IRC
client to connect and chat with
ircd
.
Normally, you should be able to install weechat using your distribution's package manager. If not, have a look at the weechat git repository for instructions on how to install it on your computer.
Once installed, we can configure a new server which will represent our
ircd
instance. First, start weechat, and in its window - run the
following commands (there is an assumption that irc_listen
in the
ircd
config file is set to 127.0.0.1:11066
):
/server add darkfi localhost/11066 -autoconnect
/save
/quit
This will set up the server, save the settings, and exit weechat. You are now ready to begin using the chat. Simply start weechat and everything should work.
We can now proceed with installing the mallumo
weechat script, which
is used for E2E encryption in private messages on this IRC network.
E2E encryption with mallumo
mallumo
is a Python plugin for Weechat that can be used to
enable end-to-end encryption for private messages between you and
other users of the DarkFi IRC network. The verbose installation
and configuration instructions can be found in the mallumo git
repository.
Briefly, make sure you install python3 and
pynacl
(can usually be done with
your distribution's package manager or pip
).
Then find where weechat has put its configuration files. It is usually
~/.weechat
or ~/.local/share/weechat
(here we will assume the
latter). Go to the directory, clone the repo, and make a couple of
symlinks:
% cd ~/.local/share/weechat
% mkdir -p src
% git clone https://github.com/darkrenaissance/mallumo src/mallumo
% cd python
% ln -s `realpath ../src/mallumo/mallumo` mallumo
% ln -s `realpath ../src/mallumo/mallumo/__init__.py` autoload/mallumo.py
Refer to darkrenaissance/mallumo and its README for usage instructions.
After this has been set up, the next time you start ircd
and then
weechat
, you will be connected to the DarkFi IRC network and be
able to chat with other participants.
Usage (Local Deployment)
These steps below are only for developers who wish to make a testing deployment. The previous sections are sufficient to join the chat.
Seed Node
First you must run a seed node. The seed node is a static host which
nodes can connect to when they first connect to the network. The
seed_session
simply connects to a seed node and runs protocol_seed
,
which requests a list of addresses from the seed node and disconnects
straight after receiving them.
The first time you run the program, a config file will be created in .config/darkfi. You must specify an inbound accept address in your config file to configure a seed node:
## P2P accept address
inbound="127.0.0.1:11001"
Note that the above config doesn't specify an external address since the seed node shouldn't be advertised in the list of connectable nodes. The seed node does not participate as a normal node in the p2p network. It simply allows new nodes to discover other nodes in the network during the bootstrapping phase.
Inbound Node
This is a node accepting inbound connections on the network but which is not making any outbound connections.
The external address is important and must be correct.
To run an inbound node, your config file must contain the following info:
## P2P accept address
inbound="127.0.0.1:11002"
## P2P external address
external_addr="127.0.0.1:11002"
## Seed nodes to connect to
seeds=["127.0.0.1:11001"]
Outbound Node
This is a node which has 8 outbound connection slots and no inbound connections. This means the node has 8 slots which will actively search for unique nodes to connect to in the p2p network.
In your config file:
## Connection slots
outbound_connections=8
## Seed nodes to connect to
seeds=["127.0.0.1:11001"]
Attaching the IRC Frontend
Assuming you have run the above 3 commands to create a small model testnet, and both inbound and outbound nodes above are connected, you can test them out using weechat.
To create separate weechat instances, use the --dir
command:
weechat --dir /tmp/a/
weechat --dir /tmp/b/
Then in both clients, you must set the option to connect to temporary servers:
/set irc.look.temporary_servers on
Finally you can attach to the local IRCd instances:
/connect localhost/6667
/connect localhost/6668
And send messages to yourself.
Running a Fullnode
See the script script/run_node.sh
for an example of how to deploy
a full node which does seed session synchronization, and accepts both
inbound and outbound connections.