
GNU name system - ashitlerferad
https://www.gnunet.org/gns
======
code_research
Please, do not make me spend the whole afternoon just to get one gnu domain
up. One little quickstart page should show just two commands, e.g.

    
    
      docker run gnunet/ngs
      gns-register mydomain.gnu
    

Thanks!

~~~
skratlo
What about having every command run in ducker container as a service? Like,
say, `ls` would be a client to a `ls-server` ducker container (based on
Ubuntu)? I think there are many benefits to it.

------
JonathonW
> A petname is a name that can be freely chosen by the user. This results in
> non-unique name-value mappings as www.bob.gnu to one user might be
> www.friend.gnu for someone else.

If names aren't fixed, how do you (for example) link from one website to
another? Or share a name with another user?

One of the advantages of the public DNS system, with unique, canonical names,
is that the same name should mean the same thing to everyone.

~~~
smilliken
A public DNS with unique canonical names would be nice, but we don't have one
of those. The DNS we actually have is inconsistent for several reasons:
replication lag, ownership disputes, legal and political disputes (governments
disagree what content is ok), VPNs with custom entries, firewalls, host files,
etc, etc.

URIs are incredibly important and deserve a more solid foundation to build
upon. To make them truly unique, we should use some form of GUIDs. Pet names
are a usability layer on top of GUIDs for us humans , but we should
communicate the GUID instead of or alongside the pet name.

~~~
vog
Take this idea one step further, and you have IPFS, which is a very promising
approach:

[https://ipfs.io/](https://ipfs.io/)

~~~
chris_wot
I tried to setup ipfs on El Capitan yesterday. I stalked the OS X Homebrew
FUSE package, mounted ipfs and it immediately fails complaining too many file
descriptors are being used.

ipfs is awesome, but I want to first be able to mount it as the file system
:-)

~~~
matt_kantor
I haven't tried using IPFS, but the default ulimit setting on OS X is
tragically low. You might want to try bumping it up.

~~~
chris_wot
I tried - increased it to unlimited and it still had the same error :-(

I have zero knowledge of Go, so not even sure how to start troubleshooting.

------
nikolay
Isn't GNUnet dead though? I'm been trying to set it up on a Mac for years and
after spending hours without success, I've given up every single time. Even in
Homebrew GNUnet is in the boneyard.

~~~
jcoffland
I can't get it to work so it must not work. That's Mythbuster logic there.

~~~
justinlardinois
I read it more as "I can't get it to work so it's not worth my time." Which
seems reasonable in this case.

------
z3t4
It's funny how much value can be created out of nothing by setting artificial
rules. Like a domain name, that is designed to be unique.

~~~
Nursie
Bitcoin....

------
abecedarius
If you're curious about the 'petnames' mentioned on that page,
[http://www.erights.org/elib/capability/pnml.html](http://www.erights.org/elib/capability/pnml.html)
was where the term came from, in the early 2000s. (At least I assume it's the
same idea; I clicked around the GNS documentation very briefly without finding
their explanation.) There's also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petname](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petname)

------
fiatjaf
This is much better than IPNS. If you're using IPFS, maybe you should use GNS
for tracking your stuff.

~~~
chris_wot
What are the advantages?

------
MoSal
Christian Grothoff is an excellent academic. In fact, he is one of the most
knowledgeable in the field worldwide.

Unfortunately, that's why ,IMHO, GNUnet didn't succeed. To build a successful
product/network, you need to be practical, and you need to make useful
features/services available as early as possible (without compromising
security of course). Designing with pluggability and forward-compatibility in
mind helps in this regard.

Academic perfectionism, however, can delay your product/network launch
indefinitely. And that's what seems to have happened with GNUnet.

------
chris_wot
Does this hook into the resolver?

Sounds like something a variety of sites might like to use. Say for instance
Wikileaks. Or, more obviously, SciHub.

~~~
gumby
The last of the summary bullets: > Compatibility with DNS

~~~
chris_wot
Curious though how this is done... Ill read further :-)

------
dbalan
Is .gnu hosted in the root servers? If so, it isn't still possible to take it
down?

~~~
caf
No, the resolver recognises it (and .zkey) and knows to look up the name using
GNS, not DNS.

------
teisman
Thinking about GNS and the Sci-Hub issues got me wondering. Isn't there an
interesting application for blockchain technology as a DNS "ledger"?

Is this a feasible application? Do there already exist projects that do this?

~~~
Canada
In addition to Namecoin there's also Onename, which used to use Namecoin and
has now migrated to Bitcoin. Details on why and how it works are on their
blog:

[http://blog.onename.com/](http://blog.onename.com/)

~~~
arm
Exact link:

[http://blog.onename.com/namecoin-to-
bitcoin/](http://blog.onename.com/namecoin-to-bitcoin/)

