Scuttlebutt

Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) is a peer-to-peer append-only messaging system on top of which a variety networking applications can be built such as the Patchwork social network. Scuttlebutt is able to operate offline and then sync when in the presence of another peer making it perfect for meshing environments, and even supports synchronisation via removable media to work as a "sneakernet". The word "scuttlebutt" is the equivalent of "watercooler" in an office, but applies to boats and ships.

	Scuttlebutt, aims to provide a platform that is wholly modular, increasingly secure, and brilliantly inspired in order to tackle some of the roots of these problems and make the internet truly ungovernable.
	— Emmi Bevensee

Pubs

Pubs are permenantly connected peers in the Scuttlebutt network with the job of routing messages and storing them while recipients are offline. The name "pub" was used since they play a similar role to pubs in villages.

A pub can be set up on a server by running the sbot dameon, see these instructions. If you want to run it on an exiting server and avoid version conflicts or other dependency issues, you can use the Docker image as described here. The default port that the pub will run on is 8008.

A list of some of the pubs can be found here, and I set up organicdesign.pub to learn more about the process :-)

sbot commands

If you're running the Docker image, you can't call the 'sbot daemon directly, you call it as follows instead:

docker run -it --rm -v /home/USER/ssb-pub-data/:/home/node/.ssb/ -e ssb_host="YOUR-DOMAIN" ahdinosaur/ssb-pub

or you could add an sbot script to call the Docker image with the passed arguments, e.g.

#!/bin/bash
docker run -it --rm -v /home/USER/ssb-pub-data/:/home/node/.ssb/ -e ssb_host="YOUR-DOMAIN" ahdinosaur/ssb-pub $*

Find the pubs Scuttlebutt ID:

sbot whoami

Create an invitation to your pub (the number is how many times it can be used):

sbot invite.create 1

Note: To allow a web page to get invitations when sbot is in a Docker container, the page mustn't have the -it (interactive terminal) part in the command.

Give your pub a name:

sbot publish --type about --about @2mIg...5519 --name foobar.com

See more on updating profiles such as adding an image here, note that you can also add a --description field.

sbot troubleshooting

Node user: The Docker container seems to require some hard-wired paths involving the "node" UNIX account. I installed it in my own home directory as myself, and things kept failing due to missing files in /home/node, so I just made a symlink from /home/node to my own user dir and then things worked.

Calling sbot from web pages: Again this only affects Docker users, the recommended command to call sbot shown in the installation guide uses the -it (interactive terminal and TTY) options, but these will only work when you are running it from a shell and need to be removed if calling it from a web page (or a background task or something).

Differences between Scuttlebutt and...

Retroshare

Retroshare has the features all inclusive in the application, requires explicit key sharing between people in order to exchange data, does not use rumor message passing, and does not use pubs as an on-ramp (or slip road) to the network. This was a few years ago, but the process of creating and sharing your key with another person in order to share things with them was far more difficult than using SSB. Also according to the outdated wiki, Retroshare does not support IPv6.

See also

• Scuttlebutt FAQ
• List of Scuttlebutt users also on Twitter
• Intro to git-ssb for GitHub users