# FreedomBox Manual

## 1. FreedomBox Introduction

FreedomBox is a personal server that protects your privacy. It is a free software stack, a subset of the Debian universal operating system, that can be installed in many flavors of inexpensive and power-efficient hardware. The simplicity of setting up and operating a FreedomBox is similar to that of a smart phone.

### 1.1. Smart Router

FreedomBox runs in a physical computer and can route your traffic. It can sit between various devices at home such as mobiles, laptops and TVs and the Internet replacing a home wireless router. By routing traffic, FreedomBox can remove tracking advertisements and malicious web bugs before they ever reach your devices. FreedomBox can cloak your location and protect your anonymity by "onion routing" your traffic over Tor. FreedomBox provides a VPN server that you can use while you are away from home to keep your traffic secret on untrusted public wireless networks and to securely access various devices at home. It can also be carried along with your laptop and used to connect to public networks at work, school, or office to avail its services. It could be used in a village to provide communications throughout the village. In future, FreedomBox intends to provide support for alternative ways of connecting to the Internet such as Mesh networks.

### 1.2. Private Cloud

FreedomBox provides services: to your computers and mobile devices in your home and to computers and mobile devices of other people who are your friends. FreedomBox provides file sharing like Dropbox, shared calendering like Google or Yahoo and photo sharing. FreedomBox provides instant messaging and truly secure voice conference calling that works on low bandwidth providing high quality. FreedomBox has a blog and wiki to let you publish your content and collaborate with the rest of the world. Coming soon, a personal email server and federated social networking using GNU Social and Diaspora, providing privacy-respecting alternatives to Gmail and Facebook.

## 2. Quick Start

1. If you have not already done so, download and install a FreedomBox image by following the instructions on the Download page.

2. Plug one end of your ethernet cord into your FreedomBox's ethernet port, and plug the other end into your router.

   - On the Dreamplug, the eth0 port (the one toward the middle of the box) should be connected to your router.

3. If your device has a 2nd ethernet port, you can connect your computer to it directly, using an ethernet cable.

4. Power on your your FreedomBox.

5. On first boot, the FreedomBox will perform initial setup and then reboot. This may take several minutes.

6. After the FreedomBox has rebooted, you can access its web interface (called Plinth) through your web browser.

   - If your computer is connected directly to the FreedomBox through a second (LAN) ethernet port, you can browse to: http://freedombox/ or http://10.42.0.1/.

   - If your computer supports mDNS (GNU/Linux, Mac OSX and Windows with mDNS software installed), you can browse to: http://freedombox.local/ (or http://the-hostname-you-entered-during-install.local/)

   - If neither of these methods are available, then you will need to figure out the IP address of your FreedomBox. You can use the "nmap" program to find its IP address:

              nmap -p 80 --open -sV 192.168.0.0/24

     Your FreedomBox will show up as an IP address with an open tcp port 80 using Apache httpd service on Debian, such as the example below which would make it accessible at http://192.168.0.165:

              Nmap scan report for 192.168.0.165
              Host is up (0.00088s latency).
              PORT   STATE SERVICE VERSION
              80/tcp open  http    Apache httpd 2.4.17 ((Debian))

7. On accessing Plinth your browser will warn you that it communicates securely but that it regards the security certificate for doing so as invalid. This is a fact you need to accept because the certificate is auto generated on the box and therefore "self-signed" (the browser might also use words such as "untrusted", "not private", "privacy error" or "unknown issuer/authority"). Telling your browser that you are aware of this might involve pressing buttons such as "I understand the Risks", "proceed to ... (unsafe)" or "Add exception".

8. On the intial access you will see a welcome page that asks you to provide some basic information for setting up your FreedomBox.

9. After completing the form, you will be logged in to Plinth and able to access apps and configuration through the interface.

10. If your computer is connected directly to the FreedomBox, your FreedomBox can act as a router, allowing you to access the Internet.

Now, you can try any of the Apps that are available on FreedomBox.

## 3. Getting Help

This document is intended to give you all the information you need to get started with your FreedomBox. However, if you have any questions after reading this document, you can get help by:

- Emailing freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org. You can also sign up to receive copies of every discussion that happens on the mailing list and read the archives.

- Chatting at #freedombox@irc.oftc.net.

- Reading the wiki.

- Reading the FreedomBox Foundation's website.

- Reading the FreedomBox Project Page.

## 4. Release Notes

The following are the release notes for each FreedomBox version.

### 4.1. Version 0.8 (2016-02)

- Added Quassel, an IRC client that stays connected to IRC networks and can synchronize multiple frontends.

- Improved first boot user interface.

- Fixed Transmission RPC whitelist issue.

- Added translations for Turkish, Chinese, and Russian. Fixed and updated translations in other languages.

- Added Monkeysphere, which uses PGP web of trust for SSH host key verification.

- Added Let's Encrypt, to obtain certificates for domains, so that browser certificate warnings can be avoided.

- Added repro, a SIP server for audio and video calls.

- Allow users to set their SSH public keys, so they can login over SSH without a password.

### 4.2. Version 0.7 (2015-12-13)

- Translations! Full translations of the interface in Danish, Dutch, French, German and Norwegian Bokmål, and partial Telugu.

- Support for OLinuXino A20 MICRO and LIME2

- New Plinth applications: OpenVPN, reStore

- Improved first-boot experience

- Many bugfixes and cleanups

### 4.3. Version 0.6 (2015-10-31)

- New supported hardware target: Raspberry Pi 2

- New modules in Plinth:

  - Shaarli: Web application to manage and share bookmarks

  - Date & Time: Configure time zone and NTP service

  - Service Discovery: Configure Avahi service

- Documentation revamp including new user manual and developer guide

- Improved diagnostic tests, available in Plinth

- Avoid unnecessary changes when installing on existing Debian system

- Network configuration supports PPPoE connections

- Debian packages can be download over Tor

### 4.4. Version 0.5 (2015-08-07)

- New targets: CubieTruck, i386, amd64

- New apps in Plinth: Transmission, Dynamic DNS, Mumble, ikiwiki, Deluge, Roundcube, Privoxy

- NetworkManager handles network configuration and can be manipulated through Plinth.

- Software Upgrades (unattended-upgrades) module can upgrade the system, and enable automatic upgrades.

- Plinth is now capable of installing ejabberd, jwchat, and privoxy, so they are not included in image but can be installed when needed.

- User authentication through LDAP for SSH, XMPP (ejabberd), and ikiwiki.

- Unit test suite is automatically run on Plinth upstream. This helps us catch at least some code errors before they are discovered by users!

- New, simpler look for Plinth.

- Performance improvements for Plinth.

### 4.5. Version 0.3 (2015-01-20)

- Tor Bridges: All boxes now act as non-exit Tor bridges, routing traffic for the Tor network.

- Firewall: firewall is on by default and is automatically managed.

- Add BeagleBone support. We now have images for BeagleBone, RaspberryPi, VirtualBox i386/amd64, and DreamPlug.

- Ability to enable and use Tor Hidden Services. Works with Ejabberd/JWChat and ownCloud services.

- Enable Tor obfsproxy with scramblesuit.

- Drop well-known root password (an account with sudo capabilities still exists for now but will be removed soon).

- Switch to unstable as suite of choice for easier development.

- Newer images are built with systemd by default (due to Debian change).

- Install and operate firewall automatically (uses firewalld).

- Major restructuring of Plinth UI using Python3, Django web development framework and Bootstrap3. Code quality is much better and UI is more polished.

- Introduced packaging framework in Plinth UI for on-demand application installation.

### 4.6. Version 0.2 (2014-03-16)

- Support for Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (x86) in addition to the DreamPlug.

- New Services:

  - Configuration Management UI.

  - Instant Messaging.

  - OwnCloud.

  - dnsmasq.

  - Low-Level Configuration Management.

  - Service Announcement.

  - LDAP Server.

  - LXC Support.

  - Source Packages.

- The privoxy setup is now the default from Debian.

### 4.7. Version 0.1 (2013-02-26)

- First FreedomBox software release (0.1 image, developer release).

- Full hardware support in Debian

- Support for DreamPlug.

- Basic software tools selected as common working environment:

  - User interface system "plinth"

  - Cryptography tools: gpg or "monkeysphere"

  - Box-to-box communication design: Freedom-buddy (uses TOR network)

  - Web cleaning: "privoxy-freedombox".

## 5. Download and Install

Wellcome to the FreedomBox download page. You may either install FreedomBox on one of the supported inexpensive hardware, on a Linux Debian operating system, or deploy on a virtual machine. Installing on Debian is easy because FreedomBox is available as packages. On hardware, you may need a little bit of technical expertise to setup. What we are requiring is to buy a device and plug in an SD card. In case of trouble, please read and interact with the Questions and Answers page based on Freedombox-discuss mailing list archives.

### 5.1. Downloading on Debian

If you are installing on Debian, you don't need to download these images. Instead read instructions on setting up FreedomBox on Debian.

### 5.2. Downloading on Hardware or Virtual Machine

#### 5.2.1. Prepare your device

See hardware specific instructions on how to prepare your device at the Hardware section. Gather and read a lot of documentation on the web about first boot and flashing USB or SD Card on your hardware.

#### 5.2.2. Downloading Images

Recent images for supported targets are available here:

- Official Images: http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/freedombox/

#### 5.2.3. Verifying the Downloaded Images

It is important to verify the images you have downloaded to ensure that the file has not be corrupted during the transmission and that it is indeed the image built by FreedomBox developers.

- First open a terminal and import the public key of the FreedomBox developer who built the images:

      $ gpg --keyserver x-hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net --recv-keys 0x36C361440C9BC971

- Next, verify the fingerprint of the public key:

      $ gpg --fingerprint 0x36C361440C9BC971
      pub   4096R/0C9BC971 2011-11-12
            Key fingerprint = BCBE BD57 A11F 70B2 3782  BC57 36C3 6144 0C9B C971
      uid                  Sunil Mohan Adapa <sunil@medhas.org>
      sub   4096R/4C1D4B57 2011-11-12

- Finally, verify your downloaded image with its signature file .sig. For example:

      $ gpg --verify freedombox-unstable-free_2015-12-13_cubietruck-armhf.img.xz.sig freedombox-unstable-free_2015-12-13_cubietruck-armhf.img.xz
      gpg: Signature made Thursday 15 January 2015 09:27:50 AM IST using RSA key ID 0C9BC971
      gpg: Good signature from "Sunil Mohan Adapa <sunil@medhas.org>"
      gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
      gpg:          There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
      Primary key fingerprint: BCBE BD57 A11F 70B2 3782  BC57 36C3 6144 0C9B C971

#### 5.2.4. Installation

After the download you can use the image to boot supported hardware (including virtual machines). You'll need to copy the image to the memory card or USB stick as follows:

1. Figure out which device your card actually is.

   1. Unplug your card.

   2. Run dmesg -w to show and follow the kernel messages.

   3. Plug your card in. You will see messages such as following:

          [33299.023096] usb 4-6: new high-speed USB device number 12 using ehci-pci
          [33299.157160] usb 4-6: New USB device found, idVendor=058f, idProduct=6361
          [33299.157162] usb 4-6: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
          [33299.157164] usb 4-6: Product: Mass Storage Device
          [33299.157165] usb 4-6: Manufacturer: Generic
          [33299.157167] usb 4-6: SerialNumber: XXXXXXXXXXXX
          [33299.157452] usb-storage 4-6:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
          [33299.157683] scsi host13: usb-storage 4-6:1.0
          [33300.155626] scsi 13:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Generic- Compact Flash    1.01 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
          [33300.156223] scsi 13:0:0:1: Direct-Access     Multiple Flash Reader     1.05 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
          [33300.157059] sd 13:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0
          [33300.157462] sd 13:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg5 type 0
          [33300.462115] sd 13:0:0:1: [sdg] 30367744 512-byte logical blocks: (15.5 GB/14.4 GiB)
          [33300.464144] sd 13:0:0:1: [sdg] Write Protect is off
          [33300.464159] sd 13:0:0:1: [sdg] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
          [33300.465896] sd 13:0:0:1: [sdg] No Caching mode page found
          [33300.465912] sd 13:0:0:1: [sdg] Assuming drive cache: write through
          [33300.470489] sd 13:0:0:0: [sdf] Attached SCSI removable disk
          [33300.479493]  sdg: sdg1
          [33300.483566] sd 13:0:0:1: [sdg] Attached SCSI removable disk

   4. In the above case, the disk that is newly inserted is available as /dev/sdg. Very carefully note this and use it in the copying step below.

2. Decompress the downloaded image using tar:

       $ xz -d freedombox-unstable-free_2015-12-13_cubietruck-armhf.img.xz

   The above command is an example for the cubietruck image built on 2015-12-13. Your downloaded file name will be different.

3. Copy the image to your card. Double check and make sure you don't write to your computer's main storage (such as /dev/sda). Also make sure that you don't run this step as root to avoid potentially overriding data on your hard drive due to a mistake in identifying the device or errors while typing the command. USB disks and SD cards inserted into the system should typically be write accessible to normal users. If you don't have permission to write to your SD card as a user, you may need to run this command as root. In this case triple check everything before you run the command. Another safety precaution is to unplug all external disks except the SD card before running the command.

   For example, if your SD card is /dev/sdf as noted in the first step above, then to copy the image, run:

       $ dd bs=1M if=freedombox-unstable-free_2015-12-13_cubietruck-armhf.img of=/dev/sdf conv=fdatasync

   The above command is an example for the cubietruck image built on 2015-12-13. Your image file name will be different.

   When picking a device, use the drive-letter destination, like /dev/sdf, not a numbered destination, like /dev/sdf1. The device without a number refers to the entire device, while the device with a number refers to a specific partition. We want to use the whole device. Downloaded images contain complete information about how many partitions there should be, their sizes and types. You don't have to format your SD card or create partitions. All the data on the SD card will be wiped off during the write process.

4. Use the image by inserting the SD card or USB disk into the target

   device and booting from it. Your device should also be prepared (see the Hardware section).

5. Read (the rest of) the Manual for instructions on how to use applications in FreedomBox.

## 6. Apps

### 6.1. Anonymity Network (Tor)

#### 6.1.1. What is Tor?

Tor is a network of server operated by volunteers. It allows users of these servers to improve their privacy and security while surfing on the Internet. You and your friends are able to access to your FreedomBox via Tor network without revealing its IP address. Activating Tor application on your FreedomBox, you will be able to offer remote services (chat, wiki, file sharing, etc...) without showing your location. This application will give you a better protection than a public web server because you will be less exposed to intrusive people on the web.

#### 6.1.2. Using Tor to browse anonymously

Tor Browser is the recommended way to browse the web using Tor. You can download the Tor Browser from https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html and follow the instructions on that site to install and run it.

#### 6.1.3. Using Tor Hidden Service to access your FreedomBox

Tor Hidden Service provides a way to access your FreedomBox, even if it's behind a router or firewall.

To enable Tor Hidden Service, first navigate to the Anonymity Network (Tor) page. (If you don't see it, click on the FreedomBox logo at the top-left of the page, to go to the main Apps page.) On the Anonymity Network (Tor) page, under Configuration, check "Enable Tor Hidden Service", then press the Update setup button. Tor will be reconfigured and restarted.

After a while, the page will refresh and under Status, you will see a table listing the Hidden Service .onion address. Copy the entire address (ending in .onion) and paste it into the Tor Browser's address field, and you should be able to access your FreedomBox. (You may see a certificate warning because FreedomBox has a self-signed certificate.)

Currently only HTTP (port 80) and HTTPS (port 443) are accessible through the Tor Hidden Service configured on the FreedomBox.

#### 6.1.4. Using Tor SOCKS port (advanced)

FreedomBox provides a Tor SOCKS port that other applications can connect to, in order to route their traffic over the Tor network. This port is accessible on any interfaces configured in the internal firewall zone. To configure the application, set SOCKS Host to the internal network connection's IP address, and set the SOCKS Port to 9050.

### 6.2. Deluge

#### 6.2.1. What is Deluge?

Your FreedomBox provides a Deluge application to enable. Deluge is a lightweight Bit Torrent client. Bit Torrent is a communications protocol using peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. P2P is a system that aims to interconnect end-user machines. Highly configurable, Deluge offers functionalities in the form of plugins.

### 6.3. Transmission

#### 6.3.1. What is Transmission ?

In addition to Deluge Bit Torrent, your FreedomBox provides a Transmission application to enable. Transmission is a lightweight Bit Torrent client allowing end-user machine to share files (documents, pictures, sounds, videos and programs). Transmission is well known for its simplicity and a default configuration that "Just Works".

### 6.4. Shaarli

#### 6.4.1. What is Shaarli?

Shaarli is personal (single-user) bookmarking application to install on your FreedomBox. It can also be used for micro-blogging, pastebin, online notepad and snippet archive. Shaarli is designed as a no-database delicious clone. As such, it provides very fast services, easy backup and import/export links as desktop or mobile browser bookmarks. Links stored can be public or private. Shaarli delivers ATOM and RSS feeds from its minimalist interface.

### 6.5. Chat Server (XMPP)

#### 6.5.1. What is XMPP?

XMPP is a federated protocol for Instant Messaging. This means that users who have accounts on one server, can talk to users that are on another server.

#### 6.5.2. Setting the Domain Name

For XMPP to work, your FreedomBox needs to have a Domain Name that can be accessed over the public Internet. You can read more about obtaining a Domain Name in the Dynamic DNS section of this manual.

Once you have a Domain Name, you can tell your FreedomBox to use it by setting the Domain Name in the System Config.

Please note that Pagekite does not support the XMPP protocol at this time.

#### 6.5.3. Registering XMPP users through SSO

Currently, all users created through Plinth will be able to login to the XMPP server. You can add new users through the System Users and Groups module. It does not matter which Groups are selected for the new user.

### 6.6. Dynamic DNS

#### 6.6.1. What is Dynamic DNS?

In order to reach a server on the Internet, the server needs to have permanent address also know as the static IP address. Many Internet service providers don't provide home users with a static IP address or they charge more providing a static IP address. Instead they provide the home user with an IP address that changes every time the user connects to the Internet. Clients wishing to contact the server will have difficulty reaching the server.

Dynamic DNS service providers assist in working around a problem. First they provide you with a domain name, such as 'myhost.example.org'. Then they associate your IP address, whenever it changes, with this domain name. Then anyone intending to reach the server will be to contact the server using the domain name 'myhost.example.org' which always points to the latest IP address of the server.

For this to work, every time you connect to the Internet, you will have to tell your Dynamic DNS provider what your current IP address is. Hence you need special software on your server to perform this operation. The Dynamic DNS function in FreedomBox will allow users without a static public IP address to push the current public IP address to a Dynamic DNS Server. This allows you to expose services on FreedomBox, such as ownCloud, to the Internet.

#### 6.6.2. GnuDIP vs. Update URL

There are two main mechanism to notify the Dynamic DNS server of your new IP address; using the GnuDIP protocol and using the Update URL mechanism.

If a service provided using update URL is not properly secured using HTTPS, your credentials may be visible to an adversary. Once an adversary gains your credentials, they will be able to replay your request your server and hijack your domain.

On the other hand, the GnuDIP protocol will only transport a salted MD5 value of your password, in a way that is secure against replay attacks.

#### 6.6.3. Using the GnuDIP protocol

1. Register an account with any Dynamic DNS service provider. A free service provided by the FreedomBox community is available at https://gnudip.datasystems24.net .

2. In FreedomBox UI, enable the Dynamic DNS Service.

3. Select GnuDIP as Service type, enter your Dynamic DNS service provider address (for example, gnudip.datasystems24.net) into GnuDIP Server Address field.

4. Fill Domain Name, Username, Password information given by your provider into the corresponding fields.

#### 6.6.4. Using an Update URL

This feature is implemented because the most popular Dynamic DNS providers are using Update URLs mechanism.

1. Register an account with a Dynamic DNS service provider providing their service using Update URL mechanism. Some example providers are listed in the configuration page itself.

2. In FreedomBox UI, enable the Dynamic DNS service.

3. Select other Update URL as Service type, enter the update URL given by your provider into Update URL field.

4. If you browse the update URL with your Internet browser and a warning message about untrusted certificate appears, then enable accept all SSL certificates. WARNING: your credentials may be readable here because man-in-the-middle attacks are possible! Consider choosing a better service provider instead.

5. If you browse the update URL with your Internet browser and the username/password box appears, enable use HTTP basic authentication checkbox and provide the Username and Password.

6. If the update URL contains your current IP address, replace the IP address with the string <Ip>.

#### 6.6.5. Checking If It Works

1. Make sure that external services you have enabled such as /jwchat, /roundcube and /ikiwiki are available on your domain address.

2. Go to the Status page, make sure that the NAT type is detected correctly. If your FreedomBox is behind a NAT device, this should be detected over there (Text: Behind NAT). If your FreedomBox has a public IP address assigned, the text should be "Direct connection to the Internet".

3. Check that the last update status is not failed.

### 6.7. Roundcube

#### 6.7.1. What is Roundcube?

RoundCube is a browser-based multilingual email client with an application-like user interface. RoundCube is using the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) to access e-mail on a remote mail server. It supports MIME to send files, and provides particularly address book, folder management, message searching and spell checking.

### 6.8. ownCloud

#### 6.8.1. What is ownCloud?

ownCloud is a self-hosted file sync and share server. It provides access to your data through a platform to view, sync and share across devices. Calendars and Contacts feature will help you keeping google at a nice distance. ownCloud's functionalities are native or available via plugins (Collaborative Editing, Play Music, Watch Movies, Store Passwords, Dashboard, Mozilla Sync...) via https://apps.owncloud.com/

#### 6.8.2. Installation

Clicking on the ownCloud application in Plinth will show an installation prompt. Proceed to install. After the installation, visit the /owncloud link provided in the ownCloud page. First time installation wizard will show up asking for administrator username and password to setup (no additional details such as database configuration are requested). After providing the details, you will be logged. You will be able to start using the ownCloud and create more users.

##### 6.8.2.1. External Storage

ownCloud's external storage plugin allows you to expose the contents of a hard drive or those of an online storage account as a folder. Following are the steps required to setup such storage.

1. Mount your hard drive or external storage to any fixed directory on the system.

2. Install two packages needed via the 'apt-get' on the SSH command line shell (this step will not be needed in future):

   -     $ sudo apt-get install php-google-api-php-client php-dropbox

3. Goto ownCloud Apps section and enable 'External Storage Support' plugin.

4. Goto 'Admin' section and add your hard drive mount path in the external storage section. This folder will now show up in your folders list to access and sync across devices.

### 6.9. PageKite

#### 6.9.1. What is PageKite?

PageKite makes local websites and services publicly accessible immediately without creating yourself a public IP address. PageKite provides "Kites" and "Services". Kites aims to make accessible in a second a web page (for instance foo.pagekite.me). Services can expose a file or a folder. Technically speaking, PageKite is free Software solution for tunneling HTTP, HTTPS and SSH servers through firewalls and NAT.

#### 6.9.2. Use PageKite

See PageKite website.

### 6.10. Secure Shell

#### 6.10.1. What is Secure Shell?

FreedomBox runs openssh-server server by default allowing remote logins from all interfaces. If your hardware device is connected to a monitor and a keyboard, you may login directly as well. Regular operation of FreedomBox does not require you to use the shell. However, some tasks or identifying a problem may require you to login to a shell.

#### 6.10.2. Default User Account

The pre-built FreedomBox images have a default user account called "fbx". However the password is not set for this account, so it will not be possible to log in with this account by default.

There is a script included in the freedom-maker program, that will allow you to set the password for this account, if it is needed. To set a password for the "fbx" user:

1. Decompress the image file.

2. Get a copy of freedom-maker from https://github.com/freedombox/freedom-maker.

3. Run sudo ./bin/passwd-in-image <image-file> fbx.

4. Copy the image file to SD card and boot device as normal.

The "fbx" user also has superuser privileges via sudo.

#### 6.10.3. Logging In

To login via SSH, to your FreedomBox:

    $ ssh fbx@freedombox

Replace fbx with the name of the user you wish to login as. freedombox should be replaced with the hostname or IP address of you FreedomBox device as found in the Quick Start process.

fbx is the default user present on FreedomBox with superuser privileges. Any other user created using Plinth and belonging to the group admin will be able to login. The root account has no password set and will not be able to login. Access will be denied to all other users.

fbx and users in admin group will also be able to login on the terminal directly. Other users will be denied access.

If you repeatedly try to login as a user and fail, you will be blocked from logging in for some time. This is due to libpam-abl package that FreedomBox installs by default. To control this behavior consult libpam-abl documentation.

#### 6.10.4. Becoming Superuser

After logging in, if you want to become the superuser for performing administrative activities:

    $ sudo su

Make a habit of logging in as root only when you need to. If you aren't logged in as root, you can't accidentally break everything.

#### 6.10.5. Changing Password

To change the password of a user managed by Plinth, use the change password page. However, the fbx default user is not managed by Plinth and its password cannot be changed in the web interface.

To change password on the terminal, log in to your FreedomBox as the user whose password you want to change. Then, run the following command:

    $ passwd

This will ask you for your current password before giving you the opportunity to set a new one.

### 6.11. Mumble

#### 6.11.1. What is Mumble?

Mumble is a voice chat software. Primarily intended for use while gaming, it is suitable for simple talking with high audio quality, noise suppression, encrypted communication, public/private-key authentication by default, and "wizards" to configure your microphone for instance. A user can be marked as a "priority speaker" within a channel.

### 6.12. Privoxy

#### 6.12.1. What is Privoxy?

Privoxy is a software for security, privacy, and accurate control over the web. It provides a much more powerful web proxy (anonymity on the web) than what your browser can offer. Privoxy "is a proxy that is primarily focused on privacy enhancement, ad and junk elimination and freeing the user from restrictions placed on his activities" (source: Privoxy FAQ). Learning about networking protocols like HTTP, about HTML, and "Regular Expressions" can help a lot using Privoxy.

### 6.13. Wiki & Blog (Ikiwiki)

#### 6.13.1. What is Ikiwiki?

Ikiwiki converts wiki pages into HTML pages suitable for publishing on a website. It provides particularly blogging, podcasting, calendars and a large selection of plugins.

#### 6.13.2. Creating a wiki or blog

You can create a wiki or blog to be hosted on your FreedomBox through the Wiki & Blog (Ikiwiki) page in Plinth. The first time you visit this page, it will ask to install packages required by Ikiwiki.

After the package install has completed, select the Create tab. You can select the type to be Wiki or Blog. Also type in a name for the wiki or blog, and the username and password for the wiki's/blog's admin account. Then click Update setup and you will see the wiki/blog added to your list. Note that each wiki/blog has its own admin account.

#### 6.13.3. Accessing your wiki or blog

From the Wiki & Blog (Ikiwiki) page, select the Manage tab and you will see a list of your wikis and blogs. Click a name to navigate to that wiki or blog.

From here, if you click Edit or Preferences, you will be taken to a login page. To log in with the admin account that you created before, select the Other tab, enter the username and password, and click Login.

#### 6.13.4. User login through SSO

Besides the wiki/blog admin, other FreedomBox users can be given access to login and edit wikis and blogs. However, they will not have all the same permissions as the wiki admin. They can add or edit pages, but cannot change the wiki's configuration.

To add a wiki user, go to the Users and Groups page in Plinth (under System configuration, the gear icon at the top right corner of the page). Create or modify a user, and add them to the wiki group. (Users in the admin group will also have wiki access.)

To login as a FreedomBox user, go to the wiki/blog's login page and select the Other tab. Then click the "Login with HTTP auth" button. The browser will show a popup dialog where you can enter the username and password of the FreedomBox user.

### 6.14. Unhosted Storage

#### 6.14.1. What is Unhosted?

Unhosted is a way to uncouple web applications from data. No matter where a web application is served from, the data can be stored on an Unhosted storage server of user's choice. Unhosted web apps do not send your user data to their server and are hence known as "serverless", "client-side", or "static" web apps. Either you connect your own server at runtime, or your data stays within the browser. Your FreedomBox can become your Unhosted storage server using a remoteStorage server know as reStore.

| This module is currently disabled in FreedomBox as the package required for reStore server is not available in Debian yet. The package is available for testing via http://debian-dev.freedombox.at/

#### 6.14.2. Setup

Your FreedomBox contains a remoteStorage server called reStore, that can serve as your personal storage server for Unhosted web apps. To setup reStore, simply install and enable in FreedomBox web UI. After the setup, create an account by visiting the link provided on the Unhosted app page https://<yourdomain>/restore/.

| User accounts are currently not integrated with Plinth user management, and public sign-up is enabled!

#### 6.14.3. Try Unhosted apps

Once Unhosted is setup on FreedomBox and when FreedomBox is accessible by a domain name (such by using PageKite, Dynamic DNS or Tor Hidden Service), try one of the following Unhosted web apps (more are listed at http://unhosted.org/apps):

- http://litewrite.net/ (a note taking application)

- https://myfavoritedrinks.5apps.com/ (list your favorite drinks)

- https://todomvc.5apps.com/labs/architecture-examples/remotestorage/ (a simple todo list)

To connect the Unhosted app to your FreedomBox's Unhosted storage, click on the remoteStorage icon and type your address <user>@<yourdomain>, e.g.:

If this doesn't work, make sure that

- FreedomBox has a domain name using PageKite, Dynamic DNS or Tor Hidden Service.

- The reStore server is running.

- You have created the account specified in the reStore server.

- Your FreedomBox SSL certificate is trusted in your current browser session (important when using private browsing).

Finish the OAuth flow by authenticating with your password and authorizing access, then you should get redirected back to the Unhosted app, and be able to use it. All data of the Unhosted web app is now stored on your FreedomBox.

### 6.15. OpenVPN

#### 6.15.1. What is OpenVPN?

OpenVPN provides to your FreedomBox a virtual private network service. You can use this software for remote access, site-to-site VPNs and Wi-Fi security. OpenVPN includes support for dynamic IP addresses and NAT.

### 6.16. GnuSocial

#### 6.16.1. What is GNU social?

GNU social is a continuation of the StatusNet project. It is social communication software for both public and private communications. It is widely supported and has a large userbase. It is already used by the Free Software Foundation, and Richard Stallman himself. Think of GNU Social as twitter and beyond.

#### 6.16.2. Status of package

GNU Social is still getting packaged for debian and will be available soon for everyone to use. check the progress by tracking the bug #782812.

## 7. System

### 7.1. Networks

This section describes how networking is setup by default in FreedomBox and how you can customize it. See also the Firewall section for more information on how firewall works.

#### 7.1.1. Default setup

In a fresh image of FreedomBox, network is not configured at all. When the image is written to an SD card and the device boots, configuration is done. During first boot, FreedomBox setup package detects the networks interfaces and tries to automatically configure them so that FreedomBox is available for further configuration via the web interface from another machine without the need to connect a monitor. Automatic configuration also tries to make FreedomBox useful, out of the box, for the most important scenarios FreedomBox is used for.

There are two scenarios it handles: when is a single ethernet interface and when there are multiple ethernet interfaces.

##### 7.1.1.1. Single ethernet interface

When there is only single ethernet interface available on the hardware device, there is not much scope for it to play the role of a router. In this case, the device is assumed to be just another machine in the network. Accordingly, the only available interface is configured to be an internal interface in automatic configuration mode. This means that it connects to the Internet using the configuration provided by a router in the network and also makes all (internal and external) of its services available to all the clients on this network.

##### 7.1.1.2. Multiple ethernet interface

When there are multiple ethernet interfaces available on the hardware device, the device can act as a router. The interfaces are then configured to perform this function.

The first network interface is configured to be an WAN or external interface in automatic configuration mode. This means that it connects to the Internet using network configuration provided by the Internet Service Provider (ISP). Only services that are meant to be provided across the entire Internet (external services) will be exposed on this interface. You must plug your Internet connection into the port of this ethernet interface. If you wish to continue to have your existing router manage the Internet connection for you, then plug a connection from your router to the port on this interface.

The remaining network interfaces are configured for the clients of a router. They are configured as LAN or internal interfaces in shared configuration mode. This means that all the services (both external and internal) services are provided to who ever connects on this interface. Further, the shared mode means that clients will be able to receive details of automatic network connection on this interface. Specifically, DHCP configuration and DNS servers are provided on this interface. The Internet connection available to the device using the first network interface will be shared with clients using this interface. This all means that you can connect your computers to this network interface and they will get automatically configured and will be able to access the Internet via the FreedomBox.

Currently, it is not very clear which interface will be come the WAN interface (and the remaining being LAN interfaces) although the assignment process is deterministic. So, it take a bit of trail and error to figure out which one is which. In future, for each device, this will be well documented.

##### 7.1.1.3. Wi-Fi configuration

All Wi-Fi interfaces are configured to be LAN or internal interfaces in shared configuration mode. They are also configured to become Wi-Fi access points with following details.

- Name of the access point will be FreedomBox plus the name of the interface (to handle the case where there are multiple of them).

- Password for connecting to the interface will be freedombox123.

#### 7.1.2. Internet Connection Sharing

Although the primary duty of FreedomBox is to provide decentralized services, it can't also act like a home router. Hence, in most cases, FreedomBox connects to the Internet and provides other machines in the network the ability to use that Internet connection. FreedomBox can do this in two ways: using a shared mode connection or using an internal connection.

When an interface is set in shared mode, you may connect your machine directly to it. This is either by plugging in an ethernet cable from this interface to your machine or by connecting to a Wi-Fi access point. This case is the simplest to use, as FreedomBox automatically provides your machine with the necessary network configuration. Your machine will automatically connect to FreedomBox provided network and will be able to connect to the Internet given that FreedomBox can itself connect to the Internet.

Sometimes the above setup may not be possible because the hardware device may have only one network interface or for other reasons. Even in this case, your machine can still connect to the Internet via FreedomBox. For this to work, make sure that the network interface that your machine is connecting to is in internal mode. Then, connect your machine to network in which FreedomBox is present. After this, in your machine's network configuration, set FreedomBox's IP address as the gateway. FreedomBox will then accept your network traffic from your machine and send it over to the Internet. This works because network interfaces in internal mode are configured to masquerade packets from local machines to the Internet and receive packets from Internet and forward them back to local machines.

#### 7.1.3. Customization

The above default configuration may not be fit for your setup. You can customize the configuration to suit your needs from the Networks area in the 'setup' section of the FreedomBox web interface.

##### 7.1.3.1. PPPoE connections

If your ISP does not provide automatic network configuration via DHCP and requires you to connection via PPPoE. To configure PPPoE, remove any network connection existing on an interface and add a PPPoE connection. Here, optionally, provide the account username and password given by your ISP and activate the connection.

##### 7.1.3.2. Connect to Internet via Wi-Fi

By default Wi-Fi devices attached during first boot will be configured as access points. They can be configured as regular Wi-Fi devices instead to connection to a local network or an existing Wi-Fi router. To do this, click on the Wi-Fi connection to edit it. Change the mode to Infrastructure instead of Access Point mode and IPv4 Addressing Method to Automatic (DHCP) instead of Shared mode. Then the SSID provided will mean the Wi-Fi network name you wish to connect to and passphrase will be the used to while making the connection.

##### 7.1.3.3. Adding a new network device

When a new network device is added, network manager will automatically configure it. In most cases this will not work to your liking. Delete the automatic configuration created on the interface and create a new network connection. Select your newly added network interface in the add connection page.

- Then set firewall zone to internal and external appropriately.

- You can configure the interface to connect to a network or provide network configuration to whatever machine connects to it.

- Similarly, if it is a Wi-Fi interface, you can configure it to become a Wi-FI access point or to connect to an existing access points in the network.

#### 7.1.4. Manual Network Operation

FreedomBox automatically configures networks by default and provides a simplified interface to customize the configuration to specific needs. In most cases, manual operation is not necessary. The following steps describe how to manually operate network configuration in the event that a user finds FreedomBox interface to insufficient for task at hand or to diagnose a problem that FreedomBox does not identify.

On the command line interface:

To see the list of available network devices:

    nmcli device

To see the list of configured connections:

    nmcli connection

To see the current status of a connection:

    nmcli connection show '<conneciton_name>'

To see the current firewall zone assigned to a network interface:

    nmcli connection show '<conneciton_name>' | grep zone

or

    firewall-cmd --zone=internal --list=all
    firewall-cmd --zone=external --list=all

To create a new network connection:

    nmcli con add con-name "<connection_name>" ifname "<interface>" type ethernet
    nmcli con modify "<connection_name>" connection.autoconnect TRUE
    nmcli con modify "<connection_name>" connection.zone internal

To change the firewall zone for a connection:

    nmcli con modify "<connection_name>" connection.zone "<internal|external>"

For more information on how to use nmcli command, see its man page. Also for a full list of configuration settings and type of connections accepted by Network Manager see:

https://developer.gnome.org/NetworkManager/stable/ref-settings.html

To see the current status of the firewall and manually operate it, see the Firewall section.

### 7.2. Upgrades

FreedomBox can automatically install security upgrades. On the Upgrades page of the Settings section in Plinth you can turn on automatic upgrades. For FreedomBox versions above 0.5, this feature is enabled by default and there is no manual action necessary. It is strongly recommended that you have this option enabled to keep your FreedomBox secure.

Upgrades are performed every day at night. If you wish to shutdown FreedomBox every day after use, keep it running at night once a week or so to let the automatic upgrades happen. Alternatively, you can perform manual upgrades as described below.

#### 7.2.1. Manual Upgrades

In the Plinth web interface, you can initiate a manual upgrade process from Upgrades page of the Settings section. Note that once the upgrades start, it may take a long time to complete and Plinth may seem to wait for the page to load.

Under some circumstances, automatic upgrades may fail and require you perform a manual upgrade action. Even upgrades initiated from Plinth may not finish properly. This may be because the upgrade process requires you to make a decision. In these cases, manual upgrade on the terminal may be the only option.

In addition, while the upgrade task is running any application installations will wait until the upgrade task is finished. Depending on the hardware, the upgrade task may take a little time, therefore, giving the impression that the application installation stalled.

To perform manual upgrades on the terminal, login into FreedomBox on a terminal or using a remote secure shell (see Secure Shell section). Then run the following commands:

    $ sudo su -
    Password:
    # apt-get update
    # apt-get dist-upgrade

This will ask you if it is alright to install/upgrade (or remove) some packages and use (or release) some disk space. Say yes after review. In some cases, during the upgrades process you will be asked questions about modified configuration files, answering with a default Keep current configuration is usually safe.

### 7.3. Firewall

Firewall is a network security system that controls the incoming and outgoing network traffic. Keeping a firewall enabled and properly configured reduces risk of security threat from the Internet.

The operation of the firewall in Plinth web interface of FreedomBox is automatic. When you enable a service it is automatically permitted in the firewall and when you disable a service it is automatically disabled in the firewall. For services which are enabled by default on FreedomBox, firewall ports are also enabled by default during the first run process.

Firewall management in FreedomBox is done using FirewallD.

#### 7.3.1. Interfaces

Each interface is needs to be assigned to one (and only one) zone. Whatever rules are in effect for a zone, those rules start to apply for that interface. For example, if HTTP traffic is allowed in a particular zone, then web requests will be accepted on all the addresses configured for all the interfaces assigned to that zone.

There are primarily two firewall zones used. The internal zone is meant for services that are provided to all machines on the local network. This may include services such as streaming media and simple file sharing. The external zone is meant for services that are provided publicly on the Internet. This may include services such as blog, website, email web client etc.

For details on how network interfaces are configured by default, see the Networks section.

#### 7.3.2. Ports/Services

The following table attempts to document the ports, services and their default statuses in FreedomBox. If you find this page outdated, see the Plinth source for lib/freedombox/first-run.d/90_firewall and Firewall status page in Plinth UI.

Service | Port | External | Enabled by default | Status shown in Plinth | Managed by Plinth
SSH | 22/tcp |  |  |  |
JWChat | 80/tcp |  |  |  |
JWChat | 443/tcp |  |  |  |
OwnCloud | 80/tcp |  |  |  |
OwnCloud | 443/tcp |  |  |  |
Plinth | 443/tcp |  |  |  |
Tor (Socks) | 9050/tcp |  |  |  |
NTP | 123/udp |  |  |  |
DNS | 53/tcp |  |  |  |
DNS | 53/tdp |  |  |  |
mDNS | 5353/udp |  |  |  |
DHCP | 67/udp |  |  |  |
Bootp | 67/tcp |  |  |  |
Bootp | 67/udp |  |  |  |
Bootp | 68/tcp |  |  |  |
Bootp | 68/udp |  |  |  |
LDAP | 389/tcp |  |  |  |
LDAPS | 636/tcp |  |  |  |
OpenVPN | 1194/udp |  |  |  |
Privoxy | 8118/tcp |  |  |  |
XMPP Server | 5269/tcp |  |  |  |
XMPP Client | 5222/tcp |  |  |  |
XMPP Bosh | 5280/tcp |  |  |  |
Obfsproxy | <random>/tcp |  |  |  |

#### 7.3.3. Manual operation

See FirewallD documentation for more information on the basic concepts and comprehensive documentation.

##### 7.3.3.1. Enable/disable firewall

To disable firewall

    service firewalld stop

or with systemd

    systemctl stop firewalld

To re-enable firewall

    service firewalld start

or with systemd

    systemctl start firewalld

##### 7.3.3.2. Modifying services/ports

You can manually add or remove a service from a zone.

To see list of services enabled:

    firewall-cmd --zone=<zone> --list-services

Example:

    firewall-cmd --zone=internal --list-services

To see list of ports enabled:

    firewall-cmd --zone=<zone> --list-ports

Example:

    firewall-cmd --zone=internal --list-ports

To remove a service from a zone:

    firewall-cmd --zone=<zone> --remove-service=<service>
    firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=<zone> --remove-service=<interface>

Example:

    firewall-cmd --zone=internal --remove-service=xmpp-bosh
    firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=internal --remove-service=xmpp-bosh

To remove a port from a zone:

    firewall-cmd --zone=internal --remove-port=<port>/<protocol>
    firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=internal --remove-port=<port>/<protocol>

Example:

    firewall-cmd --zone=internal --remove-port=5353/udp
    firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=internal --remove-port=5353/udp

To add a service to a zone:

    firewall-cmd --zone=<zone> --add-service=<service>
    firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=<zone> --add-service=<interface>

Example:

    firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-service=xmpp-bosh
    firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=internal --add-service=xmpp-bosh

To add a port to a zone:

    firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-port=<port>/<protocol>
    firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=internal --add-port=<port>/<protocol>

Example:

    firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-port=5353/udp
    firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=internal --add-port=5353/udp

##### 7.3.3.3. Modifying the zone of interfaces

You can manually change the assignment of zones of each interfaces after they have been autuomatically assigned by the first boot process.

To see current assignment of interfaces to zones:

    firewall-cmd --list-all-zones

To remove an interface from a zone:

    firewall-cmd --zone=<zone> --remove-interface=<interface>
    firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=<zone> --remove-interface=<interface>

Example:

    firewall-cmd --zone=external --remove-interface=eth0
    firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=external --remove-interface=eth0

To add an interface to a zone:

    firewall-cmd --zone=<zone> --add-interface=<interface>
    firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=<zone> --add-interface=<interface>

Example:

    firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-interface=eth0
    firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=internal --add-interface=eth0

## 8. Hardware

FreedomBox is aimed as a consumer electronics device that is easy to setup, maintain and use. The project does not aim to create a custom hardware device. Instead we plan to support/customize exiting hardware.

In addition to supporting various single board computers and other devices, FreedomBox also supports being installed in a virtual machine. Also, any Debian machine can be turned into a FreedomBox by installing the freedombox-setup package. See the manual for more details.

### 8.1. Supported Hardware

#### 8.1.1. Recommended Hardware

FreedomBox - Danube Edition (based on Cubietruck) | Cubieboard2 | BeagleBone Black |  |
A20 OLinuXino Lime2 | A20 OLinuXino MICRO | PC Engines APU |  |
Debian | VirtualBox | . | . | .

#### 8.1.2. Also Working Hardware

This hardware works but is not recommended due to freedom, performance-per-cost, or other concerns:

DreamPlug | Raspberry Pi | Raspberry Pi 2

Note: As FreedomBox is in development state, Supported Hardware means that FreedomBox images are built for the said hardware and at least one developers has reported the basic functions to be working.

### 8.2. Targeted Hardware

#### 8.2.1. List of Hardware Targeted

Although the project may focus on supporting specific devices, we are looking to support as wider a variety of hardware as possible that is suitable for FreedomBox needs. Take a look at the list of hardware targeted for support.

#### 8.2.2. Adding Hardware Support

If you are a developer, consider adding hardware support for your device by modifying Freedom Maker and FreedomBox Setup.

### 8.3. Cubietruck

#### 8.3.1. FreedomBox Danube Edition

FreedomBox Danube Edition is a custom casing around Cubietruck coupled with an SSD.

#### 8.3.2. Cubietruck / Cubieboard3

Cubietruck (Cubieboard3) is a single board computer with better performance than many other such boards. FreedomBox images are being built for it. For using this board as FreedomBox, a separate USB WiFi device that does not require non-free firmware is recommended.

#### 8.3.3. Download

FreedomBox SD card images for this hardware are being built. These SD card images are meant for use with the on-board SD card slot and won't work when used with a separate SD card reader connected via USB.

An alternative to downloading these images is to install Debian on Cubietruck and then install FreedomBox on it.

#### 8.3.4. Build Image

FreedomBox images for this hardware can be built using Freedom Maker.

#### 8.3.5. Availability

FreedomBox Danue Edition

- A limited number of units are planned to be shipped along with the release of FreedomBox 1.0. If you wish to get one, express your interest.

Cubietruck / Cubieboard3

- Price: 89 USD

- List of suppliers

#### 8.3.6. Hardware

- Open Hardware: No

- CPU: Allwinner A20, ARM Cortex-A7 @ 1GHz dual-core

- RAM: 2 GiB DDR3 @ 480 MHz

- Storage: 8 GB NAND flash built-in, 1x microSD slot

- Architecture: armhf

- Ethernet: 10/100/1000, RJ45

- WiFi: Broadcom BCM4329/BCM40181 (no free WiFi drivers + firmware available)

- SATA: 1x 2.0 port

#### 8.3.7. Non-Free Status

- Non-free blobs required: ?

- WiFi: no free WiFi drivers + firmware available

- Works with stock Debian kernel: yes

#### 8.3.8. Known Issues

- WiFi does not work with free software. A separate USB WiFi device is recommended.

### 8.4. Beagle Bone Black

Beagle Bone Black (Revision C.1) is an open hardware single board computer. FreedomBox images are built and tested for it. For using this board as FreedomBox, a USB WiFi device that does not require non-free firmware is recommended.

#### 8.4.1. Download

FreedomBox SD card images for this hardware are available. Follow the instructions on the download page to create a FreedomBox SD card and boot into FreedomBox.

Note: This image is for BeagleBone Black. It won't work on BeagleBone Green.

An alternative to downloading these images is to install Debian on BeagleBone and then install FreedomBox on it.

#### 8.4.2. Build Image

FreedomBox images for this hardware can be built using Freedom Maker.

#### 8.4.3. Availability

- Price: ~ 59 USD (50 EUR)

- Mouser Electronics

- Full list of suppliers

#### 8.4.4. Hardware

- Open Hardware: Yes

- CPU: AM335x 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8

- RAM: 512MB DDR3L 800 Mhz

- Storage: Onboard 4GB, 8bit Embedded MMC and microSD

- Architecture: armhf

- Ethernet: 10/100, RJ45

- WiFi: None, use a USB WiFi device

- SATA: None

#### 8.4.5. Non-Free Status

- Non-free blobs required: No

- WiFi: Not available

- Works with stock Debian kernel: Yes

#### 8.4.6. Known Issues

None

### 8.5. A20 OLinuXino Lime2

Olimex's A20 OLinuXino Lime2 is fully open source hardware single board computer using the Allwinner A20 Dual Core ARM processor. FreedomBox images are being built for it starting with version 0.7. For using this board as FreedomBox, a separate USB WiFi device that does not require non-free firmware is recommended.

#### 8.5.1. Similar Hardware

The following similar hardware will also work well with FreedomBox.

- Olimex's A20 OLinuXino Lime2 4GB. This hardware merely has extra 4GB NAND storage that is not used by FreedomBox.

#### 8.5.2. Download

FreedomBox SD card images for this hardware are being built. These SD card images are meant for use with the on-board SD card slot and won't work when used with a separate SD card reader connected via USB.

An alternative to downloading these images is to install Debian on the device and then install FreedomBox on it.

#### 8.5.3. Build Image

FreedomBox images for this hardware can be built using Freedom Maker once the support for it is added.

#### 8.5.4. Availability

- Price: 45 EUR (A20 OLinuXino Lime2)

- Price: 55 EUR (A20 OLinuXino Lime2 4GB)

- Olimex Store

#### 8.5.5. Hardware

- Open Source Hardware (OSHW): Yes

- CPU: Allwinner A20, ARM Cortex-A7 @ 1GHz dual-core

- RAM: 1 GiB DDR3

- Storage: 4 GB NAND flash built-in (only on 4GB model), 1x microSD slot

- Architecture: armhf

- Ethernet: 10/100/1000, RJ45

- WiFi: None, use a USB WiFi device

- SATA: 1x port

#### 8.5.6. Non-Free Status

- Non-free blobs required: No

- WiFi: Not available

- Works with stock Debian kernel: Yes

- Boot Firmware: BROM (GPLV2+)

#### 8.5.7. Known Issues

- WiFi is not available. A separate USB WiFi device is recommended.

### 8.6. A20 OLinuXino MICRO

Olimex's A20 OLinuXino MICRO is fully open source hardware single board computer using the Allwinner A20 Dual Core ARM processor. FreedomBox images are being built for it starting with version 0.7. For using this board as FreedomBox, a separate USB WiFi device that does not require non-free firmware is recommended.

#### 8.6.1. Similar Hardware

The following similar hardware will also work well with FreedomBox.

- Olimex's A20 OLinuXino MICRO 4GB. This hardware merely has extra 4GB NAND storage that is not used by FreedomBox.

#### 8.6.2. Download

FreedomBox SD card images for this hardware are being built. These SD card images are meant for use with the on-board SD card slot and won't work when used with a separate SD card reader connected via USB.

An alternative to downloading these images is to install Debian on the device and then install FreedomBox on it.

#### 8.6.3. Build Image

FreedomBox images for this hardware can be built using Freedom Maker once the support for it is added.

#### 8.6.4. Availability

- Price: 55 EUR (A20 OLinuXino MICRO)

- Price: 65 EUR (A20 OLinuXino MICRO 4GB)

- Olimex Store

#### 8.6.5. Hardware

- Open Source Hardware (OSHW): Yes

- CPU: Allwinner A20, ARM Cortex-A7 @ 1GHz dual-core

- RAM: 1 GiB DDR3

- Storage: 4 GB NAND flash built-in (only on 4GB model), 1x microSD slot

- Architecture: armhf

- Ethernet: 10/100, RJ45

- WiFi: None, use a USB WiFi device

- SATA: 1x port

#### 8.6.6. Non-Free Status

- Non-free blobs required: No

- WiFi: Not available

- Works with stock Debian kernel: Yes

- Boot Firmware: BROM (GPLV2+)

#### 8.6.7. Known Issues

- WiFi is not available. A separate USB WiFi device is recommended.

### 8.7. APU

PC Engines APU 1D is a single board computer with 3 Gigabit ethernet ports, a powerful AMD APU and Coreboot firmware. FreedomBox images built for AMD64 machines are tested to work well for it. For using this board as FreedomBox, a USB WiFi device that does not require non-free firmware is recommended.

#### 8.7.1. Similar Hardware

Although untested, the following similar hardware is also likely to work well with FreedomBox.

- Using amd64 image:

  - apu1c

  - apu1c4

  - apu1d4

- Using i386 image:

  - alix1d

  - alix1e

  - alix2d2

  - alix2d3

  - alix2d13

  - alix3d2

  - alix3d3

  - alix6f2

#### 8.7.2. Download

FreedomBox disk images for this hardware are available. Follow the instructions on the download page to create a FreedomBox SD card, USB disk, SSD or hard drive and boot into FreedomBox. Pick the image meant for all amd64 machines.

An alternative to downloading these images is to install Debian on the APU and then install FreedomBox on it.

#### 8.7.3. Networking

The first network port, the left most one in the above picture, is configured by FreedomBox to be an upstream Internet link and the remaining 2 ports are configured for local computers to connect to.

#### 8.7.4. Build Image

FreedomBox images for this hardware, which is for all amd64 machines, can be built using Freedom Maker.

#### 8.7.5. Availability

- Price: 110 - 170 USD (depending on the board and supplier)

- PC Engines

- Full list of suppliers

#### 8.7.6. Hardware

- Open Hardware: No

- CPU: AMD G series T40E

- RAM: 2 GB DDR3-1066 DRAM

- Storage: SD card, External USB

- Architecture: amd64

- Ethernet: 3 Gigabit Ethernet ports

- WiFi: None, use a USB WiFi device

- SATA: 1 m-SATA and 1 SATA

#### 8.7.7. Non-Free Status

- Non-free blobs required: No

- WiFi: Not available

- Works with stock Debian kernel: Yes

- Boot firmware: Coreboot

#### 8.7.8. Known Issues

None

### 8.8. VirtualBox

This page will help you get started with using FreedomBox on a virtual machine using VirtualBox. While VirtualBox images are primarily used for testing and development, they can also be used for regular use if you have spare resources on one of your machines. This setup is useful if:

- You don't own one of the supported hardware devices.

- You don't use Debian GNU/Linux as your operating system.

- You don't want to disturb your Debian installation to try out FreedomBox.

#### 8.8.1. Download

FreedomBox SD card images for this VirtualBox are available. Follow the instructions on the download page to download and verify VirtualBox images.

An alternative to downloading these images is to install Debian on VirtualBox and then install FreedomBox on it.

#### 8.8.2. Creating a Virtual Machine

1. Decompress the downloaded VDI image.

2. Create a new VirtualBox VM.

3. When asked for a "Virtual Hard Disk" select the .vdi file you just extracted in step 1.

4. After a virtual machine is created, go to settings -> [Network] -> [Interface] and set on the following options.

#### 8.8.3. Network Configuration

VirtualBox provides many types of networking options. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. For more information about how various networking types work in VirtualBox, see VirtualBox's networking documentation. https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html

For a simple setup, it is recommended that you use a single network interface in your guest machine. This will make the first boot script automatically configure that interface as an internal network with automatic network configuration. Inside the guest machine, the networking is configured automatically and all the services are made available on this network interface. For more information on how networks are configured by default in FreedomBox, see Networks section.

What remains is to make those services available to the host machine or to other machines in the network. You must then choose one of the following types of networking for the network interface on your guest machine. To set a particular type of network for the guest's network adapter, go to the guest VM's settings then the network options and then select the adapter you wish to configure. There, set the network type from the available list of networks.

1. First and the recommended option is to use the Bridge type of network. This option exposes the guest machine to the same network that host network is connected to. The guest obtains network configuration information from a router or DHCP server on the network. The guest will appear as just another machine in the network. A major advantage of this of setup is that the host and all other machines in the network will be able to access the services provided by guest without requiring any further setup. The only drawback of this approach is that if the host is not connected to any network, the guest's network will remain unconfigured making it inaccessible even from the host.

2. Second method is Host only type of networking. With a guest's network interface configured in this manner, it will only be accessible from the host machine. The guest will not able access any other machine but the host, so you do not have internet access on the guest. All services on the guest are available to the host machine without any configuration such as port forwarding.

3. The third option is to use the NAT type of network. This the networking type that VirtualBox assigns to a freshly created virtual machine. This option works even when host is not connected to any network. The guest is automatically configured and is able to access the Internet and local networks that host is able to connect to. However, the services provided by the guest require port forwarding configuration setup to be available outside.

   To configure this go to VM settings -> [Network] -> [Adapter] -> [Port Forwarding]. Map a port such as 2222 from host to guest port 22 and you will be able to ssh into FreedomBox from host machine as follows:

        ssh -p 2222 fbx@localhost

   Map 4443 on host to 443 on the guest. This make FreedomBox HTTPS service available on host using the URL https://localhost:4443/ You will need to add a mapping for each such services from host to guest.

4. The final option is to create two network interfaces, one host only and one NAT type. This way you can access the guest without any additional configuration, and you have internet access on the guest. The guest will be invisible to any other machines on the network.

Summary of various network types:

- | Guest accessible from other machines | Guest accessible from host | Works without port forwarding | Works without host connected to network | Guest has internet access
Bridged |  |  |  |  |
Host only |  |  |  |  |
NAT |  |  |  |  |
NAT and Host |  |  |  |  |

#### 8.8.4. Using

You can log in as the user created during Plinth setup.

After logging in, you can become root with the command sudo su. See the FreedomBox usage page for more details.

#### 8.8.5. Build Image

If you wish to build your own images instead of downloading available images, it can be done using Freedom Maker.

#### 8.8.6. Tips & Troubleshooting

##### 8.8.6.1. Finding out the IP address of the virtual machine

This depends on the network configuration you chose. With a bridged adapter, your virtual machine gets its IP address from the DHCP server of your network, most likely of your Router. You can try the first couple of IP addresses or check your router web interface for a list of connected devices.

If you chose host-only adapter, the IP address is assigned by the DHCP server of your VirtualBox network. In the VirtualBox Manager, go to File -> Preferences -> Network -> Host-only Networks. You can see and edit the DHCP address range there, typically you get assigned addresses close to the Lower Address Bound.

Another possibility of finding the IP address is to login via the Virtualbox Manager (or similar software). The FreedomBox images do not have any default user accounts, so you need to set an initial user and password using the passwd-in-image script.

##### 8.8.6.2. Networking Problems with macchanger

The package macchanger can cause network problems with VirtualBox. If you have a valid IP address on your guest's host network adapter (like 192.168.56.101) but are not able to ping or access the host (like 192.168.56.1), try uninstalling macchanger:

    $ dpkg --ignore-depends=freedombox-setup --remove macchanger

You might have to manually remove the script /etc/network/if-prep-up/macchanger. If Debian complains about unmet dependencies when you use a package manager (apt-get, aptitude, dpkg), try to remove 'macchanger' from the dependencies of 'freedombox-setup' in the file /var/lib/dpkg/status.

##### 8.8.6.3. Mounting Images Locally

If you want to mount images locally, use the following to copy built images off the VirtualBox:

    $ mkdir /tmp/vbox-img1 /tmp/vbox-root1
    $ vdfuse -f freedombox-unstable_2013.0519_virtualbox-i386-hdd.vdi /tmp/vbox-img1/
    $ sudo mount -o loop /tmp/vbox-img1/Partition1 /tmp/vbox-root1
    $ cp /tmp/vbox-root1/home/fbx/freedom-maker/build/freedom*vdi ~/
    $ sudo umount /tmp/vbox-root1
    # $ sudo umount /tmp/vbox-img1 # corruption here.

##### 8.8.6.4. Fixing the time after suspend and resume

The virtual machine loses the correct time/date after suspending and resuming. One way to fix this is to create a cron-job that restarts the time service ntp. You can add a crontab entry as root to restart ntp every 15 minutes by typing 'crontab -e' and adding this line:

    */15 * *   *   *     /etc/init.d/ntp restart

Do not restart this service too often as this increases the load of publicly and freely available NTP servers.

### 8.9. Debian

FreedomBox is a pure blend of Debian. This means that all the work on FreedomBox is available in Debian as packages. It also means that any machine running Debian can be turned into a FreedomBox.

This page describes the process of installing FreedomBox on a Debian system. Currently, FreedomBox works in Debian Testing (Stretch) and Unstable (Sid).

Use a fresh Debian installation

Installing FreedomBox changes your Debian system in many important ways. This includes installing a firewall and regenerating server certificates. It is hence recommended that you install FreedomBox on a fresh Debian installation instead of an existing setup.

use "fbx" as the login name

If you choose to create an initial user account, use "fbx" as the login name. (Once the FreedomBox setup program completes, all user accounts except for the "fbx" account will be locked out via pam_access. This also affects sudo access.)

#### 8.9.1. Installing on Debian

1. Check the Troubleshooting section below, for any tips or work-arounds that might help during the install.

2. Install Debian Testing (Stretch) or Unstable (Sid) on your hardware.

3. Update your package list.

       $ sudo apt-get update

4. Install freedombox-setup package.

       $ sudo apt-get install freedombox-setup

   - When asked to specify whether Macchanger should be set up to run automatically, please choose "No".

5. Run FreedomBox setup program. This installs further packages and sets up basic configuration.

       $ sudo /usr/lib/freedombox/setup | tee freedombox-setup.log

   You may have to clear your existing network configuration. See Troubleshooting note #2 below.

6. Reboot the system. This is necessary to trigger the first-run script.

       $ sudo reboot

7. After the system boots up, wait for it to reboot again. The first-run scripts sets up a few things and initiates a reboot.

8. After the second reboot you can start using FreedomBox.

#### 8.9.2. Troubleshooting

1. There is a bug in policykit-1 package that causes errors and hangs during installation of freedombox-setup package. A workaround is to first install policykit-1 package and then reboot. After that, follow the above procedure setup procedure.

       $ sudo apt-get update
       $ sudo apt-get install policykit-1
       $ sudo reboot

2. Freedombox does not support network device configuration via /etc/network/interfaces, and it will not manage any non-loopback interfaces mentioned there. (See bug #797614.) Future versions of freedombox-setup will clear this file automatically; for now, edit it manually and ensure that it contains only the following:

       auto lo
       iface lo inet loopback

   If you have already completed the setup process without doing this step, you will need to clear out the /etc/network/interfaces file keeping only the above lines. Then perform a reboot. After this network connections configured by the setup step above will configure your network. Network interfaces will then be in the internal or external firwall zone. This is essential for the FreedomBox's web interface to be reachable from other machines in the network. You can tweak network manager connections with the nmtui command if you wish.

### 8.10. DreamPlug

DreamPlug is the hardware for which FreedomBox has been originally targeted. FreedomBox images are built and tested for it. For using this device as FreedomBox, a USB WiFi device that does not require non-free firmware is recommended.

You can find more support and discussion for DreamPlug on the official forum.

#### 8.10.1. Download

FreedomBox SD card images for this hardware are available. Follow the instructions on the download page to create a FreedomBox SD card and boot into FreedomBox. See also instructions for using an internal micro-SD with DreamPlug.

An alternative to downloading these images is to install Debian on DreamPlug and then install FreedomBox on it.

#### 8.10.2. Firmware

Note that the factory firmware configurations may vary between revisions of the hardware, and render some images incompatible. See the DreamPlug firmware page for information on what images are compatible and how to update your DreamPlug firmware.

#### 8.10.3. Build Image

FreedomBox images for this hardware can be built using Freedom Maker.

#### 8.10.4. Testing

Instructions on how to test this hardware are available.

#### 8.10.5. Availability

- Price: 159 USD

- DreamPlug manufacturer

- Reseller Spinifex in Australia

#### 8.10.6. Hardware

- Open Hardware: No

- CPU: Marvell Kirkwood 88F6281 @ 1.2GHz

- RAM: 512MB 16bit DDR2-800 MHz

- Storage: 4 GB on board micro-SD

- Architecture: armel

- Ethernet: 2x 10/100/1000, RJ45

- WiFi: SD8787, 802.11 b/g/n

- SATA: eSATA 2.0 port

#### 8.10.7. Non-Free Status

- Non-free blobs required: built-in WiFi

- WiFi: no free WiFi drivers + firmware available

- Works with stock Debian kernel: yes

#### 8.10.8. Known Issues

- WiFi does not work with free software. A separate USB WiFi device is recommended.

### 8.11. Raspberry Pi Model B+

Raspberry Pi (Model B+) is a popular single board computer developed with the intention of promoting teaching of basic computer science in schools. FreedomBox images are built and tested for it. For using this board as FreedomBox, a USB WiFi device that does not require non-free firmware is recommended.

Note: The Debian architecture used for this device is armel. This means floating point computations are done in software and most operations are slower than what Raspberry Pi is capable of.

#### 8.11.1. Download

FreedomBox SD card images for this hardware are available. Follow the instructions on the download page to create a FreedomBox SD card and boot into FreedomBox.

#### 8.11.2. Build Image

FreedomBox images for this hardware can be built using Freedom Maker.

#### 8.11.3. Availability

- Price: 35 USD

- List of official distributors

#### 8.11.4. Hardware

- Open Hardware: No

- CPU: ARM1176JZF-S (ARMv6k) 700 MHz

- RAM: 512 MB

- Storage: MicroSD card slot

- Architecture: armel

- Ethernet: 10/100, RJ45

- WiFi: None, use a USB WiFi device

- SATA: None

#### 8.11.5. Non-Free Status

- Non-free blobs required: boot firmware

- WiFi: Not available

- Works with stock Debian kernel: No

#### 8.11.6. Known Issues

- The Debian architecture used for this device is armel. This means floating point computations are done in software and generally most operations are slower than what Raspberry Pi is capable of.

### 8.12. Raspberry Pi 2 Model B

Raspberry Pi 2 (Model B ) is a popular single board computer developed with the intention of promoting teaching of basic computer science in schools. It is a successor to Raspberry Pi Model B+ with much faster processor and more RAM. FreedomBox images are built and tested for it. For using this board as FreedomBox, a USB WiFi device that does not require non-free firmware is recommended.

Note: For FreedomBox release 0.5, the Debian architecture used for this device is armel. This means floating point computations are done in software and most operations are slower than what Raspberry Pi 2 is capable of. Starting with FreedomBox release 0.6 separate armhf images with full hardware floating point support will be available.

#### 8.12.1. Download

FreedomBox SD card images for this hardware are available. Follow the instructions on the download page to create a FreedomBox SD card and boot into FreedomBox.

#### 8.12.2. Build Image

FreedomBox images for this hardware can be built using Freedom Maker.

#### 8.12.3. Availability

- Price: 35 USD

- List of official distributors

#### 8.12.4. Hardware

- Open Hardware: No

- CPU: 900 MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7

- RAM: 1 GB

- Storage: MicroSD card slot

- Architecture: armhf

- Ethernet: 10/100, RJ45

- WiFi: None, use a USB WiFi device

- SATA: None

#### 8.12.5. Non-Free Status

- Non-free blobs required: boot firmware

- WiFi: Not available

- Works with stock Debian kernel: No

#### 8.12.6. Known Issues

- The Debian architecture used for this device is armel. This means floating point computations are done in software and generally most operations are slower than what Raspberry Pi 2 is capable of. However, starting with FreedomBox 0.6 separate images for Raspberry Pi 2 with armhf architecture will be built.

### 8.13. USB Wi-Fi

FreedomBox works on many single board computers. However, many of these boards do not have built-in Wi-Fi capabilities. Even when Wi-Fi capability is available, non-free proprietary firmware is required to make them work.

A solution to the problem is to plug-in a USB Wi-Fi device into one of the available USB ports. There are many such devices available which do not require non-free firmware to work. The following is a list of such devices that work with FreedomBox devices. Some devices based on these chips have tested to work well with FreedomBox including functions such as access point mode.

- Devices with Atheros AR7010 chip

- Devices with Atheros AR9271 chip

#### 8.13.1. Firmware Installation

The free firmware for these devices is not packaged in Debian yet. You can manually download and install the firmware as follows:

    sudo su [enter password]
    cd /lib/firmware
    wget https://www.thinkpenguin.com/files/ath9k-htc/version-1.4-beta/htc_9271.fw
    wget https://www.thinkpenguin.com/files/ath9k_firmware_free-version/htc_7010.fw

#### 8.13.2. Resources

- Debian Wiki on WiFi drivers

- Wikipedia: Comparison of open-source Linux wireless network drivers

- WikiDevi: database of computer hardware

### 8.14. Advanced Topics

#### 8.14.1. Adding Additional Features

There are a number of incomplete projects that you might find useful, for setting up a wiki, an IM server, and so forth. To check these out, download the repository:

    $ hg clone https://bitbucket.org/nickdaly/plugserver ~/plugserver

Then, read the README. It's pretty detailed. Also, if you can, it may be best to wait until these tools are fully integrated into the FreedomBox image. Otherwise, migrating from these custom tools to the officially supported FreedomBox tools may be difficult. Ultimately, that decision is up to you.

## 9. Contributing

From code, design and translation to spreading the world and donation, here is a list of possible contributions to develop FreedomBox.

### 9.1. Quick Links

Progess calls

TODO page

Donation page

### 9.2. Welcome to newcomers

As a newcomer, you are more than welcome to introduce yourself to all users and doers on the "FreedomBox-discuss" mailing list or on the #freedombox IRC channel. In addition to make useful contacts, you can start reporting bugs and translate (see below) the wiki website and the FreedomBox web interface.

### 9.3. Development priorities

Upcoming priorities have been discussed end of October 2015 by several core developers and the Freedombox Foundation. You'll find on the mailing list archives a Medium Term Roadmap for 2015 and 2016. We want to enjoy soon a version 1.0. We are targeting mid January for a 0.8 release. The main focus of the 0.8 release is going to be integrated in the PGP based SSL Client authentication work. We are planning on a 0.9 polish release for late February with general usability improvements.

Please check next progess calls to keep yourself on track and meet members of the release team. A TODO page aggregates the complete list of the items to work on for FreedomBox.

### 9.4. Contributions needed

#### 9.4.1. Add an Application

If you are a developer and wish to see an application available in FreedomBox, you can contribute by adding the application to FreedomBox. See the FreedomBox Developer Manual.

#### 9.4.2. Bugs

List of bugs listed on Debian universal system.

#### 9.4.3. Code

If you are a developer, you can contribute code to one of the sub-projects of FreedomBox. Step-by-step process of contributing code to FreedomBox is available.

- FreedomBox Setup: a Debian package for setting up the FreedomBox.

- Plinth: a web interface to administer the functions of FreedomBox.

- Freedom Maker: a script to build FreedomBox disk images for use on various hardware devices or virtual machines.

You can pickup a task from one of the TODO lists. The individual page project pages contain information availabily of the code, how to build and TODO lists.

#### 9.4.4. Design

##### 9.4.4.1. User Experience Design

If you are a user experience designer, you can help FreedomBox with the following items:

- UI experience for the Plinth web interface

- Web design for freedomboxfoundation.org and FreedomBox wiki pages

- Logo and branding (we currently have an identity manual and logos)

- Possible designs for custom FreedomBox cases on single board computers

- User experience design

##### 9.4.4.2. Technical Design

FreedomBox is still under development any many components are yet to be worked on. You can contribute to the discussion on various technical design and implementation aspects of FreedomBox. See:

- Design portal

#### 9.4.5. Donate

The FreedomBox Foundation is a Delaware non-profit corporation in the process of applying for 501(c)(3) federal nonprofit recognition from the IRS. FreedomBox project is run by volunteers. You can help the project financially by donating via PayPal, Bitcoin or by mailing a check. Please see the donation page for details on how to donate.

#### 9.4.6. Document: User Manual, Website and Wiki

FreedomBox needs better documentation for users and contributors. FreedomBox manual is prepared by aggregating various pages on the wiki and exporting to various formats. The manual is then used in Plinth and elsewhere.

If you wish to contribute to the FreedomBox wiki (and consequently the FreedomBox manual), you can create a wiki account and start editing.

For contributing to the website please start a discussion on the FreedomBox mailing list.

#### 9.4.7. Quality Assurance

- FreedomBox already runs on many platforms and it is not possible for developers to test all possible platforms. If you have one of the supported hardware you can help with testing FreedomBox on the platform.

- When an application is made available on FreedomBox, not all of its functionality is tested in the real world by developer doing the work. Deploying the application and testing it will help ensure high quality applications in FreedomBox.

See the quality assurance page for a basic list of test cases to check for and information on reporting bugs.

#### 9.4.8. Localization

All text visible to users of FreedomBox needs to be localized to various languages. This translation work includes:

- Plinth web interface for FreedomBox

- FreedomBox documentation

- FreedomBox website and wiki

- Individual applications that FreedomBox exposes to users such as ownCloud, JWChat etc.

Some of the translation work are implemented in user interface (Plinth) since the 0.7 release. Documents for user interface translation are currently available on Transifex localization platform and GitHub. If you wish to see FreedomBox available for one of your languages, please start a discussion on the FreedomBox discuss mailing list or on the #freedombox IRC channel to avoid double translations.

For more information, please visit the FreedomBox translation landing page.

#### 9.4.9. Spread the Word

Speak to your family, friends, local community or at global conferences about the importance of FreedomBox. To be a successful project we need many more participants, be it users or contributors. Write about your efforts at the talks page and on the wiki.

## 10. Developer Guide

This manual is meant for developers intending to develop applications for FreedomBox. It provides a step by step tutorial and an API reference.

### 10.1. Writing Applications - Tutorial

This tutorial covers writing an application for FreedomBox. FreedomBox is a pure blend of Debian with a web interface, known as Plinth, that configures its applications. We shall discuss various aspects of building an application for FreedomBox, by creating an example application.

There are two parts to writing a FreedomBox application. First is to make sure that the application is available as a Debian package uploaded to the repositories. This is the majority of the work involved. However, if an application is already available in Debian repositories, it is trivial to build a FreedomBox UI for it. The second part of writing an application for FreedomBox is to provide a thin web interface layer for configuring the application. This is done by extending Plinth's user interface to provide visibility to the application and to let the user control its operations in a highly simplified way. This layer is referred to as 'Plinth application'.

Plinth applications can either be distributed as part of Plinth source code by submitting the applications to the Plinth project or they can distributed independently. This tutorial covers writing an application that is meant to be distributed as part of Plinth. However, writing independent Plinth applications is also very similar and most of this tutorial is applicable.

| Note The term application, in this tutorial, is used to mean multiple concepts. FreedomBox application is a combination of Debian package and a web interface layer. The web interface layer is also called a Plinth application which is very similar to and built upon a Django application.

#### 10.1.1. Before we begin

Plinth is a web interface built using Python3 and Django. FreedomBox applications are simply Django applications within the Plinth project. Hence, for the most part, writing a FreedomBox application is all about writing a Django application.

You should start by reading the Django tutorial. All the concepts described there are applicable for how plinth and its applications are be built.

#### 10.1.2. Picking an application

We must first, of course, pick an application to add to FreedomBox. For the purpose of this tutorial, let us pick Tiny Tiny RSS. The project description reads as, Tiny Tiny RSS is an open source web-based news feed (RSS/Atom) reader and aggregator, designed to allow you to read news from any location, while feeling as close to a real desktop application as possible.

Choosing an application

When choosing an application we must make sure that the application respects users' freedom and privacy. By choosing to use FreedomBox, users have explicitly made a choice to keep the data with themselves, to not provide privacy compromising data to centralized entities and to use Free Software that respects their Software Freedom. These are not properties of some of the applications in FreedomBox but all applications must adhere to these principles. Applications should not even ask the users questions to this effect, because users have already made a choice.

#### 10.1.3. Packaging the application

Majority of the effort in creating an application for FreedomBox is to package it for Debian and get it uploaded to Debian repositories. Going through the process of packaging itself is outside the scope of this tutorial. It is, however, well documented elsewhere. You should start here.

Debian packaging might seem like an unnecessary process that takes time with its adherence to standards, review process, legal checks, etc. However, upon close examination, one will find that without these steps the goals of the FreedomBox project cannot be met. Some of the advantages of Debian packaging are listed below:

- Legal check ensures that proprietary licensed code or code with bad licenses does not inadvertently creep in.

- Libraries have to be packaged separately easing security handling. When a security vulnerability is identified in a library, just the library will have to be updated and not all the applications that depend on it.

- Upgrades become smoother. The dependency handling of the packaging system, configuration handling tools, tools to deal with various types of well known files help with ensuring a proper upgrade.

- Collaborative maintenance teams ensure that the package is well cared for even if you get busy with other work and can't spend time on your package. Following standards and using common infrastructure is critical to enable this development methodology.

#### 10.1.4. Creating the project structure

Create a directory structure as follows with empty files. We will fill them up in a step-by-step manner.

    +- <plinth_root>/
      |
      +- plinth/
      | |
      | +- modules/
      |   |
      |   +- ttrss/
      |     |
      |     +- __init__.py
      |     |
      |     +- forms.py
      |     |
      |     +- urls.py
      |     |
      |     +- views.py
      |     |
      |     +- templates/
      |     | |
      |     | +- ttrss.html
      |     |
      |     +- tests
      |       |
      |       +- __init__.py
      |
      +- actions/
      | |
      | +- ttrss
      |
      +- data/
        |
        +- etc/
          |
          +- plinth/
            |
            +- modules-enabled/
              |
              +- ttrss

The __init__.py indicates that the directory in which it is present is a Python module. For now, it is an empty file.

Plinth's setup script setup.py will automatically install the plinth/modules/ttrss directory (along with other files described later) to an appropriate location. If you are creating an application that stays independent and outside of Plinth source tree, then your setup.py script will need to install it a proper location on the system. The plinth/modules/ directory is a Python3 namespace package. So, you can install it with the plinth/modules/ directory structure into any Python path and still be discovered as plinth.modules.*.

#### 10.1.5. Tell Plinth that we exist

The first thing to do is tell Plinth that our application exists. This is done by writing a small file with the Python import path to our application and placing it in data/etc/plinth/modules-enabled/. Let us create this file ttrss:

    plinth.modules.ttrss

This file is automatically installed to /etc/plinth/modules-enabled/ by Plinth's installation script setup.py. If we are writing a module that resides independently outside the Plinth's source code, the setup script will need to copy it to the target location. Further, it is not necessary for the application to be part of the plinth.modules namespace. It can, for example, be plinth_ttrss.

#### 10.1.6. Writing the URLs

For a user to visit our application in Plinth, we need to provide a URL. When the user visits this URL, a view is executed and a page is displayed. In urls.py write the following:

    from django.conf.urls import url

    from . import views

    urlpatterns = [
        url(r'^apps/ttrss/$', views.index, name='index'),
    ]

This routes the /apps/ttrss/ URL to a view called index defined in plinth/modules/ttrss/views.py. This is no different than how routing URLs are written in Django. See Django URL dispatcher for more information.

#### 10.1.7. Adding a menu item

We have added a URL to be handled by our application but this does not yet show up to be a link in Plinth web interface. Let us add a link in the applications list. In __init__.py add the following:

    from plinth import cfg

    def init():
        """Intialize the module."""
        menu = cfg.main_menu.get('apps:index')
        menu.add_urlname('News Feed Reader (Tiny Tiny RSS)', 'glyphicon-bullhorn',
                         'ttrss:index', 850)

As soon as Plinth starts, it will load all the enabled modules into memory. After this, it gives a chance to each of the modules to initialize itself by calling the init() method if there is such a method available as <app>.init(). Here we have implemented this method and added our menu item to the applications menu as part of the initialization process.

We wish to add our menu item to the list of applications which is why we have retrieved the applications menu which is available under the main menu. After this we add our own menu item to this menu. There are several parameters during this process that are important:

- In the first parameter we are providing the display name to use for our application when showing the menu item.

- In the second parameter we are providing the icon to show for this menu item. This is an icon from the Twitter Bootstrap library. See

  the Twitter Bootstrap library documentation for a list of available icons. We can pick an icon from the available list of icons and just mention its glyphicon class as name here.

- The third parameter is the name of the URL we have created for our application. Note that when including this application's URLs, Plinth will automatically set the name of the module as the Django

  URL namespace. Hence it is ttrss:index and not just index.

- The final parameter specifies where in the menu this application shows up. This is weightage number with which Plinth sorts the menu items. Higher the weightage, the lower the menu item appears (as it sinks). Since Plinth menu items are alphabetically sorted, for our

  application we wish for it to appear between Public Visibility and Voice Chat. Their weights are 800 and 900 respectively. So we selected 850.

We have used the application menu item to insert our own menu item as a child. To be able to use the application menu item, we need to make sure that the module providing the application menu is loaded before our application is loaded. We will do that in the next step.

#### 10.1.8. Specifying module dependencies

Specifying a simple list of applications to be loaded before our application provided to Plinth is sufficient. Add this in __init__.py.

    depends = ['plinth.modules.apps']

Plinth will now make sure that the apps module is loaded before our module is loaded. Application initialization is also ensured to happen in this order. We can safely use any features of this module knowing that they have been initialized.

| Circular dependencies Circular dependencies are not possible among Plinth applications. Attempting to add them will result in error during startup.

#### 10.1.9. Writing the enable/disable form

We wish to provide a user interface to the user to enable and disable the application. Complex modules may require more options but this is sufficient for our application. Add the following forms.py.

    from django import forms

    class TtrssForm(forms.Form):
        """Tiny Tiny RSS configuration form."""
        enabled = forms.BooleanField(
            label='Enable Tiny Tiny RSS',
            required=False)

This creates a Django form that shows a single option to enable/disable the application. It also shows its current state. This is how a regular Django form is built. See Django Forms documentation for more information.

| Too many options Resist the temptation to create a lot of configuration options. Although this will put more control in the hands of the users, it will make FreedomBox less usable. FreedomBox is a consumer product. Our target users are not technically savvy and we have make most of the decisions on behalf of the user to make the interface as simple and easy to use as possible.

#### 10.1.10. Writing a view

In views.py, let us add a view that can handle the URL we have provided above.

    from .forms import TtrssForm

    def index(request):
        """Serve configuration page."""
        status = get_status()

        form = None

        if request.method == 'POST':
            form = TtrssForm(request.POST, prefix='ttrss')
            if form.is_valid():
                _apply_changes(request, status, form.cleaned_data)
                status = get_status()
                form = TtrssForm(initial=status, prefix='ttrss')
        else:
            form = TtrssForm(initial=status, prefix='ttrss')

        return TemplateResponse(request, 'ttrss.html',
                                {'title': 'News Feed Reader (Tiny Tiny RSS)',
                                 'status': status,
                                 'form': form})

This view works with the form we created in the previous step. It shows the current status of the service in form. This status is retrieved with the help of get_status() helper method. When the form is posted, again this view is called and it verifies whether the form's input values are correct. If so, it will apply the actions necessary for changed form values using the _apply_changes() method.

#### 10.1.11. Getting the current status of the application

The view in the previous setup requires the status of the application to be retrieved using the get_status() method. Let us implement that method in views.py.

    from plinth.modules import ttrss

    def get_status():
        """Get the current status."""
        return {'enabled': ttrss.is_enabled()}

This method retrieves the various statuses of the application for display in the view. Currently, we only need to show whether the application is enabled or disabled. So, we retrieve that using a helper method defined in __init__.py.

    from plinth import action_utils

    def is_enabled():
        """Return whether the module is enabled."""
        return action_utils.webserver_is_enabled('50-tt-rss')

This method uses one of the several action utilities provided by Plinth. This method checks whether a webserver configuration named 50-tt-rss is enabled.

#### 10.1.12. Displaying the application page

The view that we have written above requires a template file known as ttrss.html to work. This template file controls how the web page for our application is displayed. Let us create this template file in templates/ttrss.html.

    {% extends "base.html" %}

    {% load bootstrap %}

    {% block content %}

    <h2>News Feed Reader (Tiny Tiny RSS)</h2>

    <p>Tiny Tiny RSS is a news feed (RSS/Atom) reader and aggregator,
      designed to allow you to read news from any location, while feeling
      as close to a real desktop application as possible.</p>

    <h3>Configuration</h3>

    <form class="form" method="post">
      {% csrf_token %}

      {{ form|bootstrap }}

      <input type="submit" class="btn btn-primary" value="Update setup"/>
    </form>

    {% endblock %}

This template extends an existing template known as base.html. This template is available in Plinth core to provide all the basic layout, styling, menus, JavaScript and CSS libraries. We will override the content area of the base template and keep the rest.

Yet again, there is nothing special about the way this template is written. This is a regular Django template. See Django Template documentation.

For styling and UI components, Plinth uses the Twitter Bootstrap project. See Bootstrap documentation for reference.

#### 10.1.13. Applying the changes from the form

The view we have created displays the form and processes the form after the user submits it. It used a helper method called _apply_changes() to actually get the work done. Let us implement that method in views.py.

    from django.contrib import messages

    from plinth import actions

    def _apply_changes(request, old_status, new_status):
        """Apply the changes."""
        modified = False

        if old_status['enabled'] != new_status['enabled']:
            sub_command = 'enable' if new_status['enabled'] else 'disable'
            actions.superuser_run('ttrss', [sub_command])
            modified = True

        if modified:
            messages.success(request, 'Configuration updated')
        else:
            messages.info(request, 'Setting unchanged')

We check to make sure that we don't try to disable the application when it is already disabled or try to enable the application when it is already enabled. Although Plinth's operations are idempotent, meaning that running them twice will not be problematic, we still wish avoid unnecessary operations for the sake of speed.

We are actually perform the operation using Plinth actions. We will implement the action to be performed a bit later.

After we perform the operation, we will show a message on the response page showing that the action was successful or that nothing happened. We use the Django messaging framework to accomplish this. See Django messaging framework for more information.

#### 10.1.14. Installing packages required for the application

Plinth takes care of installing all the Debian packages required for our application to work. All we need to do is specify the list of the Debian packages required using a decorator on our view as follows:

    from plinth import package

    @package.required(['tt-rss'])
    def index(request):
        """Serve configuration page."""
        ...

The first time this application's view is accessed, Plinth shows a package installation page and allows the user to install the required packages. After the package installation is completed, the user is shown the application's configuration page.

If there are configuration tasks to be performed immediately before or after the package installation, Plinth provides hooks for it. The before_install= and on_install= parameters to the @package.required decorator take a callback methods that are called before installation of packages and after installation of packages respectively. See the reference section of this manual or the plinth.package module for details. Other modules in Plinth that use this feature provided example usage.

#### 10.1.15. Writing actions

The actual work of performing the configuration change is carried out by a Plinth action. Actions are independent scripts that run with higher privileges required to perform a task. They are placed in a separate directory and invoked as scripts via sudo. For our application we need to write an action that can enable and disable the web configuration. We will do this by creating a file actions/ttrss.

    import argparse

    from plinth import action_utils

    def parse_arguments():
        """Return parsed command line arguments as dictionary."""
        parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
        subparsers = parser.add_subparsers(dest='subcommand', help='Sub command')

        subparsers.add_parser('enable', help='Enable Tiny Tiny RSS')
        subparsers.add_parser('disable', help='Disable Tiny Tiny RSS')

        return parser.parse_args()

    def subcommand_enable(_):
        """Enable web configuration and reload."""
        action_utils.webserver_enable('50-tt-rss')

    def subcommand_disable(_):
        """Disable web configuration and reload."""
        action_utils.webserver_disable('50-tt-rss')

    def main():
        """Parse arguments and perform all duties."""
        arguments = parse_arguments()

        subcommand = arguments.subcommand.replace('-', '_')
        subcommand_method = globals()['subcommand_' + subcommand]
        subcommand_method(arguments)

    if __name__ == '__main__':
        main()

This is a simple Python3 program that parses command line arguments. While Python3 is preferred, it can be written in other languages also. It uses a helper utility provided by Plinth to actually enable and disable Apache2 web server configuration.

This script is automatically installed to /usr/share/plinth/actions by Plinth's installation script setup.py. Only from here will there is a possibility of running the script under sudo. If you are writing an application that resides indenpendently of Plinth's source code, your setup.py script will need to take care of copying the file to the target location.

#### 10.1.16. Creating diagnostics

Plinth provides a simple API for showing diagnostics results. The application has to implement a method for actually running the diagnostics and return the results as a list. Plinth then takes care of calling the diagnostics method and displaying the list in a formatted manner.

To implement the diagnostics method, method called diagnose() has to be available as <app>.diagnose(). It must return a list in which each item is the result of a test performed. The item itself is a two-tuple containing the display name of the test followed by the result as passed, failed or error.

    def diagnose():
        """Run diagnostics and return the results."""
        results = []

        results.extend(action_utils.diagnose_url_on_all(
            'https://{host}/ttrss', extra_options=['--no-check-certificate']))

        return results

There are several helpers available to implement some of the common diagnostic tests. For our application we wish to implement a test to check whether the /ttrss URL is accessible. Since this is a commonly performed test, there is a helper method available and we have used it in the above code. The {host} tag replaced with various IP addresses, hostnames and domain names by the helper to produce different kinds of URLs and they are all tested. Results for all tests are returned which we then pass on to Plinth.

The user can trigger the diagnostics test by going to System -> Diagnostics page. This runs diagnostics for all the applications. If we want users to be able to run diagnostics specifically for this application, we can include a button for it in our template immediately after the application description.

    {% include "diagnostics_button.html" with module="ttrss" %}

#### 10.1.17. Logging

Sometimes we may feel the need to write some debug messages to the console and Plinth log file. Doing this in Plinth is just like doing this any other Python application.

    import logging

    logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)

    def example_method():
        logger.debug('A debug level message')

        logger.info('Showing application page - %s', request.method)

        try:
            something()
        except Exception as exception:
            # Print stack trace
            logger.exception('Encountered an exception - %s', exception)

For more information see Python logging framework documentation.

#### 10.1.18. Adding a License

Plinth is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License Version 3 or later. FreedomBox UI applications, which run as modules under Plinth, also need to be under the same license or under a compatible license. The license of our application needs to clear for our application to be accepted by users and other developers. Let us add license headers to our application.

    #
    # This file is part of Plinth.
    #
    # This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
    # it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as
    # published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
    # License, or (at your option) any later version.
    #
    # This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    # but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    # MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    # GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
    #
    # You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
    # along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
    #

The above header needs to be present in every file of the application. It is suitable for Python files. However, in template files, we need to modify it slightly.

    {% extends "base.html" %}
    {% comment %}
    #
    # This file is part of Plinth.
    #
    # This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
    # it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as
    # published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
    # License, or (at your option) any later version.
    #
    # This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    # but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    # MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    # GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
    #
    # You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
    # along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
    #
    {% endcomment %}

    ...

#### 10.1.19. Internationalization

Every string message that is visible to the user must be localized to user's native language. For this to happen, our application needs to be internationalized. This requires marking the user visible messages for translation. Plinth applications use the Django's localization methods to make that happen.

    from django.utils.translation import ugettext as _

    def index(request):
        ...
        return TemplateResponse(request, 'ttrss.html',
                                {'title': _('News Feed Reader (Tiny Tiny RSS)'),
                                 'status': status,
                                 'form': form})

Notice that the page's title is wrapped in the _() method call. Let us do that for the menu item of the application too.

    from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _

    def init():
        """Intialize the module."""
        menu = cfg.main_menu.get('apps:index')
        menu.add_urlname(_('News Feed Reader (Tiny Tiny RSS)'), 'glyphicon-envelope',
                         'ttrss:index', 600)

Notice that in this case, we have used the ugettext_lazy and in the first case we have used the regular ugettext. This is because in the second case the gettext lookup is made once and reused for every user looking at the interface. These users may each have a different language set for their interface. Lookup made for one language should not be used for other users. The _lazy method provided by Django makes sure that the return value is an object that will actually be converted to string at the final moment when the string is being displayed. In the first case, the looked is made and string is returned immediately.

All of this is the usual way internationalization is done in Django. See Django internationalization and localization documentation for more information.

#### 10.1.20. Coding standards

For readability and easy collaboration it is important to follow common coding standards. Plinth uses the Python coding standards and uses the pylint and flake8 tools to check if the there are any violations. Run these tools on our application and fix any errors and warnings. Better yet, integrate these tools into your favorite IDE for on-the-fly checking.

For the most part, the code we have written so far, is already compliant with the coding standards. This includes variable/method naming, indentation, document strings, comments, etc. One thing we have to add are the module documentation strings. Let us add those. In __init__.py add the top:

    """
    Plinth module to configure Tiny Tiny RSS.
    """

### 10.2. Reference Guide

This section describes Plinth API that is most frequently used by application. Note that since Plinth is under development and has not yet reached 1.0, this API is subject to change. This is not usually a problem because all the Plinth applications currently reside in Plinth source repository itself and are updated when the API is updated.

#### 10.2.1. Applications

These methods are optionally provided by the application and Plinth calls/uses them if they are present.

##### 10.2.1.1. <application>.init()

Optional. This method is called by Plinth soon after all the applications are loaded. The init() call order guarantees that other applications that this application depends on will be initialized before this application is initialized.

##### 10.2.1.2. <application>.diagnose()

Optional. Called when the user invokes system-wide diagnostics by visiting System -> Diagnositcs. This method must return an array of diagnostic results. Each diagnostic result must be a two-tuple with first element as a string that is shown to the user as name of the test and second element is the result of the test. It must be one of passed, failed, error. Example return value:

    [('Check http://localhost/app is reachable', 'passed'),
     ('Check configuration is sane', 'passed')]

##### 10.2.1.3. <appliation>.depends

Optional. This module property must contain a list of all applications that this application depends on. The application is specified as string containing the full module load path. For example, plinth.modules.apps.

##### 10.2.1.4. plinth.package.required(package_list, before_install=None, on_install=on_install)

Make sure that a set of Debian packages are installed before a view can be accessed. If the packages are not currently installed on the system, a special installation view is displayed showing the list of packages to be installed. If the user chooses to proceed, package installation will start and an installation progress screen will be shown. After completion of the installation process, the original view is shown.

The package_list must be an iterable containing the Debian package names as strings. If provided, the before_install callable is called just before the installation process starts. Similarly, on_install callable is called just after the package installation completes.

#### 10.2.2. Actions

Plinth's web front does not directly change any aspect of the underlying operating system. Instead, it calls upon Actions, as shell commands. Actions live in /usr/share/plinth/actions directory. They require no interaction beyond passing command line arguments or taking sensitive arguments via stdin. They change the operation of the services and applications of the FreedomBox and nothing else. These actions are also directly usable by a skilled administrator.

The following methods are provided by Plinth to run actions and to implement them easily by reusing code for common tasks.

##### 10.2.2.1. plinth.actions.run(action, options=None, input=None, async=False)

Run an action command present under the actions/ directory. This runs subprocess.Popen() after some checks. The action must be present in the actions/ directory.

options are a list of additional arguments to pass to the command. If input is given it must be bytearray containing the input to pass on to the executed action. If async is set to True, the method will return without waiting for the command to finish.

##### 10.2.2.2. plinth.actions.superuser_run(action, options=None, input=None, async=False)

This is same as plinth.actions.run() except the command is run with superuser privelages.

##### 10.2.2.3. plinth.action_utils

Several utlities to help with the implementation of actions and diagnotic tests are implemented in this module. Refer to the module source code for a list of these methods and their documentation.

#### 10.2.3. Menus

##### 10.2.3.1. plinth.cfg.main_menu

This is a reference to the global main menu. All menu entries in Plinth are decendents of this menu item. See Menu.add_item() and Menu.add_urlname() for adding items to this menu or its children.

##### 10.2.3.2. plinth.menu.Menu.get(self, urlname, url_args=None, url_kwargs=None)

Return a child of this menu item. urlname must be the name of a URL as configured in Django. django.core.urlresolvers.reverse() is called before the lookup for child menu item is performed. url_args and url_kwargs are passed on to reverse().

##### 10.2.3.3. plinth.menu.Menu.add_item(self, label, icon, url, order=50)

Add a menu item as a child to the current menu item. label is the user visible string shown for the menu item. icon must be a glyphicon class from the Twitter Bootstrap library. url is the relative URL to which this menu item will take the user to.

##### 10.2.3.4. plinth.menu.Menu.add_urlname(self, label, icon, urlname, order=50, url_args=None, url_kwargs=None)

Same as plinth.menu.Menu.add_item() but instead of URL as input it is the name of a URL as configured in Django. django.core.urlresolvers.reverse() is called before it is added to the parent menu item. url_args and url_kwargs are passed on to reverse().

#### 10.2.4. Services

##### 10.2.4.1. plinth.service.Service.__init__(self, service_id, name, ports=None, is_external=False, enabled=True)

Create a new Service object to notify all applications about the existence and status of a given application. service_id is a unique identifier for this application. name is a display name of this application that is shown by other applications such as on the firewall status page. ports is a list of names recognized by firewalld when enabling or disabling firewalld services. If is_external is true, the ports for this service are accessible from external interfaces, that is, from the Internet. Otherwise, the service is only available for client connected via LAN. enabled is the current state of the application.

##### 10.2.4.2. plinth.service.Service.is_enabled(self)

Return whether the service is currently enabled.

##### 10.2.4.3. plinth.service.Service.notify_enabled(self, sender, enabled)

Notify other applications about the change of status of this application. sender object should identify which application made the change. enabled is a boolean that signifies whether the application is enabled (= True) or disabled (= False).

This is typically caught by the firewall application to enable or disable the ports corresponding to an application.

## 11. Hacking

FreedomBox consists of three main projects:

- Plinth, the web interface

- FreedomBox Setup, the Debian package to perform initial setup and

- Freedom Maker, a script to build disk images for various hardware

### 11.1. Plinth

Plinth is a web interface to administer the functions of the FreedomBox.

Plinth is Free Software under GNU Affero General Public License version 3 or (at your option) a later version.

#### 11.1.1. Using

- Plinth comes installed with all FreedomBox images. You can download FreedomBox images and run on any of the supported hardware. Then, you can access Plinth by visiting the URL http://freedombox/plinth.

- If you are on a Debian box, you may install Plinth from Debian package archive. Currently, only Stretch (testing) and Sid (unstable) are supported. To install Plinth run:

    $ sudo apt-get install plinth

- You can also get Plinth from its Git repository and install from source.

#### 11.1.2. Screenshots

#### 11.1.3. Support

You may ask for support on

- The mailing list

- #freedombox IRC channel

#### 11.1.4. Contributing

We are looking for help to improve Plinth. You can contribute to Plinth by not just by coding but also by translating, documenting, designing, packaging and providing support.

- Instructions on how to contribute code are available.

- The primary Git repository is hosted at FreedomBox GitHub Page.

- Instructions for installing from source and hacking the source are available.

- List of bugs, TODO items and feature requests are available on the issue tracker.

- Before contributing to Plinth code, you need understand Python and Django on top which it is built.

- You can request for development assistance on the mailing list or the #freedombox IRC channel.

##### 11.1.4.1. Debian Package

- Plinth is packaged for Debian.

- Packaging project is on Alioth along with sources.

- Issues related to packaging are listed on Debian BTS.

### 11.2. FreedomBox Setup

FreedomBox Setup is a Debian package for setting up the FreedomBox. If you download and use pre-built images you don't have to worry about this package.

FreedomBox Setup is responsible for setting up basic networking, web server, user accounts, installing essential packages etc. It performs first part of the setup during the image build process. Later, when the image is booted for the first time on actual hardware (or on a virtual machine), it does the remaining setup and then reboots the machine. It also comes with a diagnostic script to check if the FreedomBox Setup is running as expected.

FreedomBox Setup is Free Software licensed under GNU General Public License version 3 or (at your option) a later version.

#### 11.2.1. Using

- FreedomBox Setup comes installed with all FreedomBox images. You can download FreedomBox images and run on any of the supported hardware.

- If you are on a Debian box, you may install FreedomBox Setup from Debian package archive. This essentially turns your Debian installation into a FreedomBox! Currently, only Sid (unstable) is supported. To install FreedomBox Setup, see instructions on setting up FreedomBox on a Debian machine.

- You can also get FreedomBox Setup from its Git repository and build Debian package from source.

#### 11.2.2. Support

You may ask for support on

- The mailing list

- #freedombox IRC channel

#### 11.2.3. Contributing

We are looking for help to improve FreedomBox Setup.

- Instructions on how to contribute code are available.

- FreedomBox Setup is part of the FreedomBox Alioth Project.

- List of bugs, TODO items, packages issues and feature requests are available on the issue tracker.

- You can request for development assistance on the mailing list or the #freedombox IRC channel.

- See Debian tracker for information on Debian package. FreedomBox Setup is a Debian native package meaning it is primarily built for Debian and comes with Debian packaging scripts in its repository.

### 11.3. Freedom Maker

Freedom Maker is a script to build FreedomBox disk images for use on various hardware devices or virtual machines.

Freedom Maker can currently build FreedomBox disk images for the following:

- DreamPlug

- Raspberry Pi

- BeagleBone

- Cubietruck (work in progress)

- VirtualBox

- Other virtual machines (using raw disk images)

It relies on the vmdebootstrap project actually create images. If a hardware platform is capable of running Debian, it should not be too much effort adopt Freedom Maker to create FreedomBox images for the platform.

Freedom Maker is Free Software licensed under GNU General Public License version 3 or (at your option) a later version.

#### 11.3.1. Building FreedomBox Images

- You can get Freedom Maker from its Git repository and follow the instructions in the README to build a FreedomBox image.

#### 11.3.2. Support

You may ask for support on

- The mailing list

- #freedombox IRC channel

#### 11.3.3. Contributing

We are looking for help to improve Freedom Maker.

- Instructions on how to contribute code are available.

- Freedom Maker is hosted on FreedomBox Alioth Portal. The primary Git repository is hosted there.

- Freedom Maker is also hosted on FreedomBox GitHub Page. Pull requests are accepted there.

- You can contribute to FreedomBox by adding support for more hardware platforms. Freedom Maker can be easily adopted to newer platforms if they already support running Debian.

- You can create and test images with Freedom Maker regularly to test for new features and check for regressions.

- List of bugs, TODO items and feature requests are available on the issue tracker.

- You can request for development assistance on the mailing list or the #freedombox IRC channel.

## 12. Other Resources: Manual Older Versions

- 0.3 Manual

- 0.2 Manual

- Jessie Manual

## 13. Tell people around you

- FreedomBox in the Press

- Conferences

- Talks and presentations

  - Available Material Slides and other raw material

- Facebook

- Twitter

- Debconf11 Videos