fproxy 0.3 -- Freenet web proxy server


INTRODUCTION

This is fproxy, a web proxy which allows you to use a web browser as your
Freenet client.  (It differs from FCRC in that it runs as a standalone
server and does not require you to run a webserver or have CGI access.)



INSTALLATION

fproxy must be installed in the same tree as your Freenet installation.
It should live in the path Freenet/contrib/fproxy.  Compile fproxy by typing
'make' (Unix) or 'build' (Windows), or by typing 'javac *.java 
mumail/mime/*.java'.

(Note: Your classpath must include the directory ABOVE Freenet/, the same
as if you were compiling Freenet itself.)



USAGE

Start the proxy server with 'fproxy [options]', or 'fproxy -help' to
see a list of options.  It will start listening on a local port
(default 8080) for HTTP connections, and forward requests on to the
Freenet node specified at startup.  Usually this will be your local
node at tcp/localhost:19114.  Hops-to-live are currently set at
startup time as well.

Once you have started the server, the easiest way to access it is to
load the file 'gateway.html' in your favorite web browser.  (You can
rename this file or move it wherever you like.  If you started fproxy
on a port other than 8080, edit gateway.html and change the two lines
that say '127.0.0.1:8080' where indicated to be whatever port you 
used.)

Also, if you request / from fproxy, it will load the gateway.html file. So if,
for instance, fproxy is running on localhost (and it should be, damn it!) then
requesting http://localhost:8080/ from your browser should load the
gateway.html page.


To request a Freenet document, type in the key to retrieve and 
press Request.

To insert a Freenet document, type in the key to assign and the
filename of the data you wish to insert.  (Most browsers will show you
a "browse" button which will let you graphically choose your file.)
Select a content-type or leave it alone to let your browser
auto-detect it based on the file extension.  If you would also like to
submit an entry to one or more of the external Freenet key indexes,
select the appropriate items in the list box.  (You can add more
indexes by editing gateway.html appropriately.)

Note: After you press Insert, your browser may not appear to do anything
for a couple of minutes, depending on the size of the file and the speed/
memory of your computer.  This is normal, and occurs because fproxy must
currently load the entire file into memory before processing it.  I have
attempted to show intermediate results while fproxy is working, but some
browsers will not show anything until the process is complete.  Please be
patient.  (A future release will address this bottleneck.)



SECURITY

You are strongly advised to run a local Freenet node and use that to interface
with fproxy.  This will give you the full benefit of Freenet's protection.
Browsing a remote node directly is a security risk, as any idiosyncratic
differences in operation might be sufficient to identify it as a client,
circumventing your anonymity as a requester.

Adding a key to a key index (as opposed to inserting data) goes through
normal WWW channels and suffers from the usual web anonymity problems.
This button is provided solely for convenience.  A more secure method of
adding keys is to use an anonymizing service such as http://www.rewebber.de
to visit a key index directly.



FURTHER INFORMATION

For updates on fproxy, see http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~twh1/fproxy/
For more information on Freenet, see http://www.freenetproject.org/



AUTHOR

fproxy was written by Theodore Hong.  Comments should be directed to
t.hong@doc.ic.ac.uk, or see my website: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~twh1/.



LICENSE

Copyright (c) 2000 Theodore Hong.
Portions of fproxy are adapted from MUMail, which is Copyright (C) 1998
by Mark Tmpfel and Uli Luckas.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 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
General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA.

For more details, see the file COPYING.
