RetroShare - ArchWiki

# RetroShare

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Reason: How to use, (if required) needed Arch Linux steps, how to exchange certificates? (Discuss in Talk:RetroShare#)

Retroshare is a free software, cross-platform Friend-to-Friend application that offers secure chat and file sharing features.

## Installation

Retroshare is available in the AUR as retroshareAUR and retroshare-gitAUR.

## Usage

First, you have to create new profile. Then you need to explicitly add friends to be able to connect to them. In order to connect to your friends you need to exchange your certificates.

It is strongly recommended to use Retroshare with Tor for privacy reasons when connecting to people you don't know and trust IRL.

- Retroshare over Tor: Use this onion chat server with the TBB to find new friends.
- No Tor (not recommended): Use this chat server to find new friends.

### Retro-Tor

Since version 0.6.0, Retroshare is able to run over the Tor network, using a Tor hidden service to create a so-called “Hidden node” which IP is not visible even to friends of this node.

To do this install Tor and edit `/etc/tor/torrc` as per the manual. Then start the systemd service and use `journalctl` to see if it bootstrapped successfully.

There is currently no way to migrate an existing non-Tor identity to Retro-Tor. If you already created a user before installing Tor you can re/move the `~/.retroshare/` directory.

## See also

- RetroShare on Wikipedia
- Release notes about Tor

Category:

- Internet applications

Hidden category:

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