Re: [GNUnet-developers] about the FCFS registration and the pubkey - which pubkey to really use? -s? or really -P?

[Christian Grothoff]

On 07/16/2012 07:07 PM, address@hidden wrote:
> Hello list,
> 
> I am rather a newbie here, and not exactly any kind of developer,
> still I am trying to look into the gnunet and these new dns zones and
> the fcfs subzone.
> 
> I have self-compiled 0.9.3 and tried to register some zone (do you
> only type the subzone name, or a complete one on the fcfs regsite?),
> but I think the only time it succeeded was, when I actually used not
> the gnunet-rsa -P command but the gnunet-rsa -S command to get the
> short/hashed pubkey of my installation.

Right, you must use the short hash (as DNS limits individual name
segments to 63 characters, GNS uses the short hash).  Where did you read
that you should use the long version?

> Is that a bug in documentation at:
> https://gnunet.org/gns-fcfs-authority-started
> 
> also on:
> https://gnunet.org/fcfs/
> please give examples next to the textbox fields, that would make it
> easier for the user.

That's a reasonable suggestion, I'll put it on my looong list ;-).

> so is
> What is your desired domain name?
> myzonename.fcfs.gnunet.
> 
> or rather only
> myzonename

Just 'myzonename', as 'fcfs.gnunet' is always going to be used.

> and the public key, is it really supposed to be generated via
> gnunet-rsa -P ~/.gnunet/gns/zonekey.zkey
> 
> rather than
> gnunet-rsa -s ~/.gnunet/gns/zonekey.zkey?

Either command will generate the same kind of key in the file, just the
hash function used to generate the textual output will be different.

> The script/registrationwebsite constantly gave me errors until I
> actually switched over and used the -s (256bit hashed private key
> according to manual) parameter.
> 
> Where would my registered subzone actually show up on my local system?
> gnunet-setup nor any of the gtk tools showed me anything else than
> only a plain "fcfs" entry after that import .sh script, and not even a
> nested fcfs.gnunet. entry or anything.

If you install and configure GNS correctly, then your name will show up
when you lookup 'yourname.fcfs.gnunet' using DNS (assuming you've put
some "A" or "AAAA" records under the name "+" in your zone using, say,
'gnunet-setup'.  I don't know why 'fcfs.gnunet' doesn't show up in your
version; however, we have fixed many, many bugs since 0.9.3 including a
few with respect to GNS and the GUI, so you might want to use SVN HEAD
or the (soon to be released) 0.9.4 to see if that helps (sorry, but you
are using bleeding-edge features).

> I used to do a bit of dns-admin in the past and ran some local
> (internal) dns zones of my own on LAN/WAN networks, but I have yet to
> understand were we are headed once we register our own subzones to
> that fcfs.gnunet. zone.

FCFS allows you to create a 'PKEY' record in the fcfs zone under an
(available) name of your choice.  All requests to that subdomain will
then be delegated to your zone.  If that is not a sufficient answer, I
suspect the issue is that GNS itself isn't fully clear to you, which is
understandable as we're still in the process of documenting it.  If you
have any specific questions, please send them to us and we'll try to
improve the documentation.

> Also, after I did a registration with my private key (-s one) I
> couldnt register any further zones with that key any more, the
> registration website refused to use this same private key for
> additional entries. Is this on purpose? How do we practically register
> multiple zones and have multiple private/public keys in use.

This particular FCFS implementation limits registration to one name per
key to encourage users to be reasonable --- otherwise we might have some
"funny guy" registering all names with up to 8 characters just for fun.
 However, other FCFS zones can have different policies and in your own
zone you can obviously do whatever you like to do.

I hope this helps!


Happy hacking!

Christian