[Freedombox-discuss] Add Raspberry Pi as a reference platform?
A lot of my friends have one or more Raspberry Pi machines, and I even got one myself too. But no-one I know nearby own a Dreamplug. This tell me that the availability of the Debian based Freedombox reference platform is low, and I believe this limit the number of people joining the project. A way to tap into the resource of people already owning an Raspberry Pi and interested in taking back control over their own computer use and communication needs, would be to announce that Raspberry Pi will also be a reference platform for the Freedombox project. There are a few technical challenges we should address. One is that the most popular Debian like distribuntion for Raspberry Pi, Raspbian, is using binary packages built outside the Debian distribution because the binary packages available from Debian are not optimal to use on Raspberry Pi (it is related to arm architecture feature selection). We could either base our Raspberry Pi setup on Raspbian or use Debian and accept slightly slower binaries. Another challenge is the lack of network interfaces on the Raspberry Pi. It only got one TP interface internally, and would need to use USB network cards to get some more. But we could just require people interested in using Raspberry Pi as their Freedombox to either accept that it is only a home server and not a home router, or ask people to buy and insert either TP or wifi USB network cards in their Raspberry Pi to get the router and wifi access point functionallity. We could even do it dynamically, for example like this: 1 TP - home server 2 TP - home server and internet router 1 TP, 1 wifi - home server, internet router and wifi access point 1 TP, 2 wifi - home server, wifi access point and mesh node 2 TP, 2 wifi - home server, internet router, wifi access point and mesh node One unsolved issue might be the need for non-free firmware, but I am not sure if any such firmware is needed for the use cases we have in the Freedombox. -- Happy hacking Petter Reinholdtsen ___ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Add Raspberry Pi as a reference platform?
On 2013-10-10 at 11:26:49 +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote: One unsolved issue might be the need for non-free firmware, but I am not sure if any such firmware is needed for the use cases we have in the Freedombox. The raspberry-pi requires non-free software for booting: it is simply impossible to have it work (even in a limited way) using just free software. https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi (see the issues section at the end). -- Elena ``of Valhalla'' ___ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Add Raspberry Pi as a reference platform?
This is also possible 1 TP - home server and internet router using PPPOE On Thu, 2013-10-10 at 11:26 +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote: 2 TP - home server and internet router ___ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Add Raspberry Pi as a reference platform?
On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 11:26:49AM +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote: A lot of my friends have one or more Raspberry Pi machines, and I even got one myself too. But no-one I know nearby own a Dreamplug. This tell me that the availability of the Debian based Freedombox reference platform is low, and I believe this limit the number of people joining the project. A successor the the very popular PCEngines ALIX http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm system is in the works: http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.htm That would seem to be another potential hardware target. A way to tap into the resource of people already owning an Raspberry Pi and interested in taking back control over their own computer use and communication needs, would be to announce that Raspberry Pi will also be a reference platform for the Freedombox project. ___ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Add Raspberry Pi as a reference platform?
[Eugen Leitl] A successor the the very popular PCEngines ALIX http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm system is in the works: http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.htm That would seem to be another potential hardware target. The point I am trying to make is that we should focus on hardware available already with a lot of users. The fact that there is other hardware around (or soon to be available) that is nicher and more powerful and less dependend on non-free binary blobs is beside the point. We do not attract many potential developers by announcing support for some hardware almost no-one have at home already. :) I belive we need to focus on making the Freedombox useful for some set of users first, and then try to make it more secure and harder to track. Having your data in your own home provide legal protection that is easier to gain than the technical protection provided by access to the source and strong encryption. :) -- Happy hacking Petter Reinholdtsen ___ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Add Raspberry Pi as a reference platform?
Quoting Eugen Leitl (2013-10-10 12:58:48) On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 11:26:49AM +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote: A lot of my friends have one or more Raspberry Pi machines, and I even got one myself too. But no-one I know nearby own a Dreamplug. This tell me that the availability of the Debian based Freedombox reference platform is low, and I believe this limit the number of people joining the project. Listed at https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TargetedHardware#Unsuitable A successor the the very popular PCEngines ALIX http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm system is in the works: http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.htm That would seem to be another potential hardware target. Added to https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TargetedHardware#Promising - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private signature.asc Description: signature ___ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Add Raspberry Pi as a reference platform?
On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 01:06:14PM +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote: The point I am trying to make is that we should focus on hardware available already with a lot of users. The fact that there is other The Raspberry is a nice device, but it looks a bit anaemic in terms of hardware specs. It seems you have to develop a minimal core which is designed for small/memory-tight devices. What would be such a minimal core the Pi could run? hardware around (or soon to be available) that is nicher and more powerful and less dependend on non-free binary blobs is beside the point. We do not attract many potential developers by announcing support for some hardware almost no-one have at home already. :) ___ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Add Raspberry Pi as a reference platform?
Hello. Den 10 okt 2013 13:33 skrev Eugen Leitl eu...@leitl.org: On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 01:06:14PM +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote: The point I am trying to make is that we should focus on hardware available already with a lot of users. The fact that there is other The Raspberry is a nice device, but it looks a bit anaemic in terms of hardware specs. The Raspberry Pi works good as a small server. 512 MB are more than most NAS got one year ago. And you can easily clock it to 1 GHz. It seems you have to develop a minimal core which is designed for small/memory-tight devices. What would be such a minimal core the Pi could run? What do you mean with core? The standard Debian kernel works good. As long as you don't run any X11 locally, it's plenty of power and RAM for a server. Unix was developer on under powered computers even in that time. hardware around (or soon to be available) that is nicher and more powerful and less dependend on non-free binary blobs is beside the point. We do not attract many potential developers by announcing support for some hardware almost no-one have at home already. :) I do agree on this. But do we need to even talk hardware this much? If done right, as long we have Debian running on a machine should we be able to run Freedombox on it. And Rasbian should be enough Debian to run Freedombox, without (large) software problems. /Anders ___ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Add Raspberry Pi as a reference platform?
[Jonas Smedegaard] Listed at https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TargetedHardware#Unsuitable It sure is. What was the reason you added dropped Raspberry Pi from the wiki 2013-08-13 21:35:37 and added it back under the Unsuitable heading 2013-08-18 00:04:41? Was there some mailing list discussion leading up to this classification? To me, the fact that it need some non-free binary blobs is an unfortunate situation that we should try to correct, not a blocker from using it, given its huge user base. And I would be willing to use the debian arm arch and sacrifice some performance to avoid having to use a Debian derivative. After all, the missing hardware floating point will mostly affect the HDMI output we do not care much about. How many of the mailing list subscribers got a Raspberry Pi and how many got a Dreamplug? I created a small poll on URL: http://doodle.com/xbmswycmsahy6qwp to get some idea about the relative availability in this group. Please fill in your answer there. -- Happy hacking Petter Reinholdtsen ___ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Add Raspberry Pi as a reference platform?
Hi Anders, Quoting Anders Jackson (2013-10-10 13:53:56) Den 10 okt 2013 13:33 skrev Eugen Leitl [1]eu...@leitl.org: On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 01:06:14PM +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote: hardware around (or soon to be available) that is nicher and more powerful and less dependend on non-free binary blobs is beside the point. We do not attract many potential developers by announcing support for some hardware almost no-one have at home already. :) I do agree on this. But do we need to even talk hardware this much? If done right, as long we have Debian running on a machine should we be able to run Freedombox on it. And Rasbian should be enough Debian to run Freedombox, without (large) software problems. I agree Raspberry Pi is fast enough (especially when cheating and not using Debian but the derivative optimized for the ARMv6 subarch). Main problem, considering it as *reference* platform, is the non-free blobs needed to boot. Also a problem if using unofficial packages. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private signature.asc Description: signature ___ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Add Raspberry Pi as a reference platform?
[Anders Jackson] But do we need to even talk hardware this much? If done right, as long we have Debian running on a machine should we be able to run Freedombox on it. And Rasbian should be enough Debian to run Freedombox, without (large) software problems. I bring it up because I have experienced that the focus on the Dreamplug have kept otherwise skilled people from seing the point of contributing to the project. I thus believe adding another reference platform will make it easier to show the world that the Freedombox project is not about creating a software solution for a hardware platform almost no-one own, but about creating a generic software solution. -- Happy hacking Petter Reinholdtsen ___ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Add Raspberry Pi as a reference platform?
Quoting Petter Reinholdtsen (2013-10-10 14:08:09) [Jonas Smedegaard] Listed at https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TargetedHardware#Unsuitable It sure is. What was the reason you added dropped Raspberry Pi from the wiki 2013-08-13 21:35:37 and added it back under the Unsuitable heading 2013-08-18 00:04:41? Uhm - in what way is the reason not obvious from the resulting wiki page and the commit messages for those changes? Was there some mailing list discussion leading up to this classification? Not specifically, that I recall. To me, the fact that it need some non-free binary blobs is an unfortunate situation that we should try to correct, not a blocker from using it, given its huge user base. And I would be willing to use the debian arm arch and sacrifice some performance to avoid having to use a Debian derivative. After all, the missing hardware floating point will mostly affect the HDMI output we do not care much about. Great if soneone actually technically fixes the problem! How many of the mailing list subscribers got a Raspberry Pi and how many got a Dreamplug? I created a small poll on URL: http://doodle.com/xbmswycmsahy6qwp to get some idea about the relative availability in this group. Please fill in your answer there. I don't see how democracy helps here. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private signature.asc Description: signature ___ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Add Raspberry Pi as a reference platform?
[Jonas Smedegaard] Uhm - in what way is the reason not obvious from the resulting wiki page and the commit messages for those changes? The reasoning seem to be based on assumtion that are non-obvious to me. The first part Requires non-free blob to boot seem quite similar to any PC with a non-free BIOS, which I assume is not making any PC hardware unsuitable, and and pretty weak when using Debian - Raspbian is not Debian seem irrelevant (and fixable) if it have enough performance to do the job it need to do. This I wonder where the assumtions/requirements that make it unsuitable have been discussed. According to URL: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/5016 there are 1.75 million sold Raspberry Pi units. It seem to me like a valuable resource we should tap into. :) Great if soneone actually technically fixes the problem! Yeah. :) I don't see how democracy helps here. It is not a vote, it is a marked poll. :) So no democracy involved here. 8 replies so far on URL: http://doodle.com/xbmswycmsahy6qwp . -- Happy hacking Petter Reinholdtsen ___ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Which mesh system should be included in the Freedombox?
Petter Reinholdtsen p...@hungry.com wrote: After looking a bit into the mesh options, ... * Which mesh system should be included in Freedombox? * What are the options and their features? * What should be use to decide which one to pick? As I see it, security has to be the first consideration for any Box component, including a mesh system. Given the stated project goals we should not even consider anything unless we have good reason to consider it secure. If something looks desirable but has not had an audit for security, then auditing it and contributing fixes if needed is more important for the Box than things like getting it into Debian or making it run on a Dreamplug. ___ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Add Raspberry Pi as a reference platform?
Jonas Smedegaard d...@jones.dk writes: Main problem, considering it as *reference* platform, is the non-free blobs needed to boot. Also a problem if using unofficial packages. iirc they were going to put the blobs in a rom chip, but i can't find the announcement right now. -- http://selfdandi.com.ar pgpDarJuzpd9l.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Add Raspberry Pi as a reference platform?
On Thu, 2013-10-10 at 11:26 +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote: A way to tap into the resource of people already owning an Raspberry Pi and interested in taking back control over their own computer use and communication needs, would be to announce that Raspberry Pi will also be a reference platform for the Freedombox project. I think we ought to support as much hardware as possible. But announcing Raspberry Pi as a reference platform is likely to be controversial, because of the non-free blobs required. Now, I have always heard Bdale talk about the Debian-based Freedombox as a reference implementation, implying to me that other groups would build different compatible Freedombox software implementations (e.g. Freedombox on Fedora, which afaik doesn't exist). So I would suggest shifting the language slightly; there is only one reference implementation (i.e. Freedombox on Debian), which may work on various hardware platforms. Make the reference implementation hardware-agnostic as far as possible, and then individual users can make the decision about whether Raspberry Pi is acceptable. Otherwise, we're still stuck in the hardware business, just a different piece of hardware. I confidently predict the current generation RPi Model B will look dreadfully underpowered in two years, and we'd better be ready to support whatever hardware comes along next. That's not to say that you shouldn't write the support for setting up servers vs. routers vs. mesh networks and so on - many people might find that useful, and you could achieve the goal of attracting more people to the project. How cross-platform can this be made? -- Tim Retout dioc...@debian.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Tor
On Tue, 2013-10-08 at 11:04 +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote: So to me, it seem like routing all traffic through Tor bring the advantage of making it harder to track your location while changing the set of people that can perform MITM attack on you. It is not like using Tor for everything is introducing some new threat. It is already known that NSA and China rutinely perform MITM attach on non-Tor traffic, and I assume others do as well. So we are left with probability calculations instead to evaluate the threat. I agree to some extent, but my assessment of the probabilities is still that using Tor unencrypted is going to cause you new and interesting security problems. Privacy and anonymity are different things, and actually I am more worried about privacy first. There's no point using Tor to access a cloud-based email service. I want to focus on getting everyone's data decentralized, and their communications encrypted. While talking about these topics with a friend, I just got a tip about PORTALofPi, which is a ARch based Raspberry Pi setup to force all traffic over Tor. See URL: https://github.com/grugq/PORTALofPi/ for that recipe. Grugq's writing is very interesting: http://grugq.github.io/ He recommends using a VPN over Tor to avoid monitoring by malicious exit nodes (which of course won't avoid monitoring by the VPN provider): http://grugq.github.io/blog/2013/06/14/you-cant-get-there-from-here/ http://www.slideshare.net/grugq/opsec-for-hackers (NSFW, slide 137 onwards) -- Tim Retout dioc...@debian.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Add Raspberry Pi as a reference platform?
Quoting Tim Retout (2013-10-10 23:31:24) Now, I have always heard Bdale talk about the Debian-based Freedombox as a reference implementation, implying to me that other groups would build different compatible Freedombox software implementations (e.g. Freedombox on Fedora, which afaik doesn't exist). So I would suggest shifting the language slightly; there is only one reference implementation (i.e. Freedombox on Debian), which may work on various hardware platforms. Make the reference implementation hardware-agnostic as far as possible, and then individual users can make the decision about whether Raspberry Pi is acceptable. My impression is that Bdale talks about a reference *hardware* platform. What I work on is piecing together Debian parts not for that one hardware platform but for at *least* that one. To me, FreedomBox is a certain type of hardware with a certain package selection and configuration, of a more generic operating system - i.e. should be usable on at *least* one hardware platform (that we call the reference platform), and should only contain services and tools already in common use among sysadmins in other contexts. If Plinth is cool, then convince sysadmins more commonly that it is cool - embedding it only into FreedomBox makes it a weakness IMO! Fedora or Ubuntu or whoever are welcome to mimic similar the system configuration of FreedomBox, and install it onto similar hardware. To me, FreedomBox is not a specific system on specific hardware, but a broader concept, which we happen to implement using Debian: Some use a Linux desktop or a Linux phone, some use a FreedomBox. - Jonas P.S. If you want FreedomBox on Raspberry Pi, I suggest to either a) convince the Raspberry Pi developers to mimic in Raspbian what we do in Debian, or b) convince Emdebian folks (i.e. the Debian developers most involved with ARM devices) that Raspberry Pi is viable for Debian. -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private signature.asc Description: signature ___ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
