{"id":687,"date":"2020-03-04T18:06:47","date_gmt":"2020-03-04T17:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/people.iola.dk\/arj\/?p=687"},"modified":"2020-03-04T20:43:30","modified_gmt":"2020-03-04T19:43:30","slug":"how-to-setup-a-pub-for-ssb-browser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.iola.dk\/arj\/2020\/03\/04\/how-to-setup-a-pub-for-ssb-browser\/","title":{"rendered":"How to setup a PUB for SSB browser"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SSB-browser<\/a> as mentioned in my last blog post runs a SSB client in the browser. In order to communicate with other peer it needs a pub to relay messages through. Furthermore the pub acts as a super node allowing the browser peer to do partial replication<\/a> without necessarily needing to store the full feeds of peers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don’t really gain very much compared to the classical client-server setup if we rely too much on especially a single pub. The browser client can of course run fully off-line, but still when it needs to communicate messages with other peers it needs some intermediary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this post I will show how to setup a pub that can be used together with ssb browser. I will also show how this can be used to build a totally seperate network from the main scuttlebutt network for local groups and communities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First of all one needs to install the basic ssb-server. On my pub I use ssb-minimal-pub-server<\/a>. The good thing is that this already comes with everything we need for peer invites. So we just need to install the before mentioned ssb-partial-replication<\/a> module into ~\/.ssb\/node_modules\/. Easiest is just to git clone and npm install it from the directory. It is also recommended to install ssb-tunnel<\/a> but this is not required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lastly we need to configure ssb-server to use the modules and to enable web sockets so the browser will be able to connect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

{
   \"connections\": {
     \"incoming\": {
       \"net\": [{ \"port\": 8008, \"host\": \"::\", \"scope\": \"public\", \"transform\": \"shs\", \"external\": [\"between-two-worlds.dk\"] }],
       \"ws\": [{ \"port\": 8989, \"host\": \"::\", \"scope\": \"public\", \"transform\": \"shs\", \"external\": [\"between-two-worlds.dk\"], \"key\": \"\/etc\/letsencrypt\/live\/between-two-worlds.dk\/privkey.pem\", \"cert\": \"\/etc\/letsencrypt\/live\/between-two-worlds.dk\/cert.pem\" }]
     },
     \"outgoing\": {
       \"net\": [{ \"transform\": \"shs\" }],
       \"tunnel\": [{ \"transform\": \"shs\" }]
     }
   },
   \"logging\": {
     \"level\": \"info\"
   },
   \"plugins\": {
     \"ssb-device-address\": true,
     \"ssb-identities\": true,
     \"ssb-peer-invites\": true,
     \"ssb-tunnel\": true,
     \"ssb-partial-replication\": true
   },
 }<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
As one can see this uses letsencrypt, but that is not strictly needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lastly we need to start up the server. I run it using the following bash script that will make sure the pub keeps running even if it should crash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n#!\/bin\/bash\nwhile true; do
     sbot server --port 8008 >> log.txt 2>&1
     sleep 30
 done<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
This is everything you need to run your own scuttlebutt pub that supports browser clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Separate network<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
If one wants to run a totally different network than the main scuttlebutt network one needs to use a different caps key. This means that messages from this network will never appear on the main network. This can generated using using node:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
crypto.randomBytes(32).toString('base64')<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
And can be added to the config file on the pub using:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\"caps\": {
  \"shs\": \"72I4EC\/gZUuNffHEwooHob4hhtXHAj0HE5xKM3njRSg=\"
 }<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
SSB-browser-core<\/a> needs a little tweak to use the same caps.  Change browser.js to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
require('.\/core').init(dir, { \n  caps: { \n   shs: '72I4EC\/gZUuNffHEwooHob4hhtXHAj0HE5xKM3njRSg=' \n  }\n})<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
It might also be a good idea to change hops to 2 in the client. In order to bootstrap the network, generate an invite or follow the first user from the command line of the pub in order for messages to start propagating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
sbot publish --type contact --contact '@feedId=.ed25519' --following<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
That is all you need to run your seperate network \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SSB-browser as mentioned in my last blog post runs a SSB client in the browser. In order to communicate with other peer it needs a pub to relay messages through. Furthermore the pub acts as a super node allowing the browser peer to do partial replication without necessarily needing to store the full feeds of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[308],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.iola.dk\/arj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.iola.dk\/arj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.iola.dk\/arj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.iola.dk\/arj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.iola.dk\/arj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/people.iola.dk\/arj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":704,"href":"https:\/\/people.iola.dk\/arj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions\/704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.iola.dk\/arj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.iola.dk\/arj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.iola.dk\/arj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}