[katzenpost] Issue Setting Up Katzenpost Mixnet

[dawuud]

Hello Luke,

Thank you for writing us and thanks also for working on your mixnet project.

I'm very sorry that you were following our tutorial because it is out
of date and lead you astray.  In particular our tutorial incorrectly
tells you to run these two commands:

go get -u -v github.com/katzenpost/daemons/authority/nonvoting
go get -u -v github.com/katzenpost/daemons/server

That is wrong! We no longer use the daemons repo.

Secondly, we have two authority servers. Nonvoting and voting. The
idea behind the nonvoting server is that it is for testing or
prototyping mixnet software but it is NOT to be used in production
because it is a single monolithic server instead of the voting
authority which is supposed to be operated by several entities.

So... The build instructions for the mix server binary and the authority server binaries are located
in the README for each git repo:

https://github.com/katzenpost/server

and

https://github.com/katzenpost/authority

In particular to build the mix server you should do this
from within the mix server source code directory:

export GO111MODULE=on
cd cmd/voting # (or cmd/nonvoting)
go build

And actually if you are running a fairly new version of golang then
you do not actually have to set that environment variable because
golang will automatically use go-modules to install the correct
version of all the library dependencies.

Probably "go get ..." would probably work but I haven't installed it that way in a long
time since I always have a copy of the local git repositories.

All that having been said, you should probably start off using our
docker images using a docker-compose to build you a local mixnet all
on one machine it runs on. There are two docker images: one of them is
for the mix server and the other is for authority server... with the
option to either use voting or nonvoting.

Instructions for running a docker based mixnet locally are here:
https://github.com/katzenpost/docker



Please do write us another e-mail and tell us how your progress is going.


Sincerely,
David Stainton




On Fri, Sep 25, 2020 at 12:50:50PM +0000, MORRICE Luke wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> I’m a final year AI and Computer Science student at Edinburgh University working on my honours project to optimise mix network security parameters. I’m trying to use Katzenpost to simulate a mix net but I’m having trouble setting up.
> 
> I’m following the tutorial at https://katzenpost.mixnetworks.org/docs/setup.html. My problem is when I run the following line:
> 
> go get -u -v github<http://github.com/katzenpost/daemons/server>.<http://github.com/katzenpost/daemons/server>com<http://github.com/katzenpost/daemons/server>/<http://github.com/katzenpost/daemons/server>katzenpost<http://github.com/katzenpost/daemons/server>/<http://github.com/katzenpost/daemons/server>daemons<http://github.com/katzenpost/daemons/server>/<http://github.com/katzenpost/daemons/server>server<http://github.com/katzenpost/daemons/server>
> 
> The downloading fails towards the end. Here is my terminal output:
> 
> github.com/jackc/pgtype<http://github.com/jackc/pgtype> (download)
> github.com/katzenpost/server/internal/sqldb<http://github.com/katzenpost/server/internal/sqldb>
> # github.com/katzenpost/server/internal/sqldb<http://github.com/katzenpost/server/internal/sqldb>
> ../src/github.com/katzenpost/server/internal/sqldb/pgx.go:51:8:<http://github.com/katzenpost/server/internal/sqldb/pgx.go:51:8:> undefined: pgx.ConnPool
> ../src/github.com/katzenpost/server/internal/sqldb/pgx.go:163:18:<http://github.com/katzenpost/server/internal/sqldb/pgx.go:163:18:> undefined: pgx.ParseConnectionString
> ../src/github.com/katzenpost/server/internal/sqldb/pgx.go:169:13:<http://github.com/katzenpost/server/internal/sqldb/pgx.go:169:13:> undefined: pgx.ConnPoolConfig
> ../src/github.com/katzenpost/server/internal/sqldb/pgx.go:183:19:<http://github.com/katzenpost/server/internal/sqldb/pgx.go:183:19:> undefined: pgx.NewConnPool
> ../src/github.com/katzenpost/server/internal/sqldb/pgx.go:378:24:<http://github.com/katzenpost/server/internal/sqldb/pgx.go:378:24:> undefined: pgx.PgError
> 
> It seems to me that there is a bug in the pgx.go file located at /katzenpost/server/internal/sqldb/ with a variable called “pgx”.
> 
> Do I have to install some prerequisite libraries to get this to work, or is there something else I’m doing wrong?
> Would appreciate any support or advice for this. I’m really looking forward to working with Katzenpost. Thanks very much in advance.
> 
> Kind regards,
> Luke Morrice
> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

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