Ah, ok ... I was wondering how there could be sites featured in the router's main page if there's no DNS. It appears that my address book is "subscribed" to http://i2p-projekt.i2p/hosts.txt

I wonder how hard it is to get into that list. I'd like to be on it :)

In the mean time, please keep using Uncensored via the I2P connection if you can. I'm relying on you guys to supply me with information on how well it's working. I don
't consider my own experience to be valid since I'm on the same router that's providing the service.

We have to make a determination about how much testing is required before we can feel confident making big announcements to the I2P community.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-------------------

After a good solid week of operation and my I2P router getting well established enough to carry over 1000 tunnels during normal operation...

MY FUCKING SD CARD SHIT THE BED.

It's only been in operation for a week so I don't even have the keys backed up yet.

*exhale*

Ok, I managed to save /var/lib/i2p/i2p-config from the SD card. This rescues the keys and configurations while I get the machine rebuilt. Pi 3 can boot from USB so I'm going to use a real hard disk this time.

Okay, that explains why I'm not able to connect via I2P anymore. I thought it was something on my end because I had rejiggered my tunnel so that I could connect to it a little differently.
I will say that--as you might expect--it was painfully slow. Worse than connecting with ssh over TOR. I don't think that I2P is really designed for real-time interactive protocols like this. Not sure if the user experience can be made to be any more tolerable without a client of some kind.

Right. The client really is designed to help mitigate that, by sending and receiving blocks of data at a time instead of individual characters. When I get my router up and running again I'll open a second server tunnel that goes directly to the server port. Then anyone who is willing to trust the client (or compile it themselves) can point at it. I'll also see if we can make use of the router's built-in SOCKS proxy -- maybe that will eliminate the need for users to manually configure a client tunnel.

Ok, the router is up again, this time using a real spinning disk instead of an SD card as its root volume. My config backup held, so everything should be as it was before. Give it a try.

It works again. On the other hand, my setup for connecting to it is not so good. I need to rethink how I'm doing some things here... and probably my whole life, in general.

What operating system are you using? I might be able to offer some suggestions about using the I2P SOCKS proxy instead of explicitly requiring a client tunnel configured on your router. I'll be trying that out myself to see if we can document some good options for people who are just getting started.

Feh. Didn't work, and I don't know how it ever worked since there's no provision for having name lookups performed on the socks server side.

I've opened up another server tunnel:
[ czesg4qmyrkbybkngoldpcv2ndem4lwo5y2f4paf6e377es43oga.b32.i2p ]

This one will take you to port 504 on Uncensored's citadel server. So if you have Citadel client software installed on your machine, you can create a client tunnel on your I2P router, and point your client at it. Give it a try.

If there's enough interest I can eventually build I2CP directly into the protocol so you don't have to configure a client tunnel, but there would need to be an audience larger than just the two people I know about now :)

I use Debian. I didn't realize citadel was in the apt repos. I'm now connected using the citadel client over I2P. It appears to work fine! And since the delay isn't every keypress, it is so much more tolerable.

Text based interface makes a lot of sense. My concern there is that

people will have to manually configure client tunnels in their I2P
routers to use it. "Build a client tunnel on your router with these
parameters, then telnet to it" sounds like something high-maintenance,

unless I2P users can be counted upon to be savvy enough to do that?

Your average i2p user is more savvy than your average end user. Back in the days when there were popular XMPP servers inside I2P, people just configured their tunnels and joined up. Now everybody seems to be in IRC. Or torrenting movies.

2021-10-18 23:16 from IGnatius T Foobar
Ah, ok ... I was wondering how there could be sites featured in the

router's main page if there's no DNS. It appears that my address book

is "subscribed" to http://i2p-projekt.i2p/hosts.txt

I wonder how hard it is to get into that list. I'd like to be on it

:)

It is not trivial to get in the official list.

The way you get a service started is by registering to a jump service. Try zzz's, since zzz is a core dev of the whole thing. If the service proves itself stable and makes a strong commitment to provide darknet services it will be eventually included in the host list distributed with the i2p router, and probably featured as a service worth visitting in the routerE starting page.

2021-10-19 10:01 from IGnatius T Foobar


FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-----

--------------

After a good solid week of operation and my I2P router getting well
established enough to carry over 1000 tunnels during normal
operation...

MY FUCKING SD CARD SHIT THE BED.

It's only been in operation for a week so I don't even have the keys

backed up yet.

I recommend PiCore for raspberries. They operate without commiting data to the SD card so you can have them running for ages without wasting the card. Just ensure you commit the data to either the card or somewhere else every now and then so you don't have to restart from zero if there is a blackout.

2021-10-19 15:23 from zelgomer
Okay, that explains why I'm not able to connect via I2P anymore. I

thought it was something on my end because I had rejiggered my tunnel

so that I could connect to it a little differently.
I will say that--as you might expect--it was painfully slow. Worse

than connecting with ssh over TOR. I don't think that I2P is really

designed for real-time interactive protocols like this. Not sure if the

user experience can be made to be any more tolerable without a client

of some kind.

There are ways of playing around latency.

Standard tunnels can be configured to serve interactive applications (in fact they have a quick option for that somewhere). I have done a lot of SSHing to i2p servers, and it is usable (not pleasant, but usable).

The best way of beating latency in this case would be for people to download the already existing Citadel client tunnel its connection through a tunnel to 

Uncensored, but that may be a bit too cumbersome.

2021-10-19 18:14 from IGnatius T Foobar
Right. The client really is designed to help mitigate that, by sending

and receiving blocks of data at a time instead of individual
characters. When I get my router up and running again I'll open a
second server tunnel that goes directly to the server port. Then
anyone who is willing to trust the client (or compile it themselves)
can point at it. I'll also see if we can make use of the router's
built-in SOCKS proxy -- maybe that will eliminate the need for users to

manually configure a client tunnel.

The SOCKS proxy is a bit of a last ditch ressource and the devs don't recommend it. It is very easy for users to leak information using it.

I recommend PiCore for raspberries. They operate without commiting
data to the SD card so you can have them running for ages without
wasting the card. Just ensure you commit the data to either the card or

I considered redeploying with a layered filesystem for just that reason.
In the end I simply ditched the SD Card completely and I'm running it on an old 2.5" laptop HDD connected to the USB port. Even at USB 2.0 speed it's faster than an SD Card, and I don't have to worry about destroying it with too many writes.

This is like something I did about six years ago when I needed a quick NAS to store offsite backups. I built it on a Raspberry Pi 1B+ and then moved the root partition to a USB-attached hard disk, leaving only /boot on the SD card. It ran that way for about three years before I got a bigger machine and didn't need it anymore.

The best way of beating latency in this case would be for people to
download the already existing Citadel client tunnel its connection
through a tunnel to

Uncensored, but that may be a bit too cumbersome.

And that's exactly what we've settled on.

Telnet tunnel: d77ompkdxbd6fq6mfxba2ulx46r37jlncvyy5fmvbmhqf4hlmgjq.b32.i2p
Client tunnel: czesg4qmyrkbybkngoldpcv2ndem4lwo5y2f4paf6e377es43oga.b32.i2p

zelgomer said that using a dedicated Citadel client is working well. darknetuser, you should try it too. If there is continued success then perhaps I will see about publishing some sort of standalone trustworthy build of the client for this purpose.