NAME

       gnunet-directory - display directories

SYNOPSIS

       gnunet-directory [OPTIONS] (FILENAME)*

DESCRIPTION

       gnunet-directory  lists  the  contents of one or more GNUnet directories.  A GNUnet directory is a binary
       file that contains a list of GNUnet file-sharing URIs and meta data.  The names of  the  directory  files
       must be passed as command-line arguments to gnunet-directory.

       -c FILENAME, --config=FILENAME
              configuration  file  to  use  (useless option since gnunet-directory does not really depend on any
              configuration options)

       -h, --help
              print help page

       -L LOGLEVEL, --loglevel=LOGLEVEL
              Change the loglevel.  Possible values for LOGLEVEL are ERROR, WARNING, INFO and DEBUG.

       -v, --version
              print the version number

NOTES

       A GNUnet directory is a file containing a list of GNUnet URIs and meta  data.   The  keys  can  point  to
       files,  other  directories or files in namespaces.  In other words, a GNUnet directory is similar to UNIX
       directories.  The difference to tar and zip is that GNUnet directory does not contain  the  actual  files
       (except  if  they are really small, in which case they may be inlined), just symbolic (links), similar to
       directories with symbolic links in UNIX filesystems.  The benefit is that the  individual  files  can  be
       retrieved  separately  (if desired) and if some of the files are inserted to another node in GNUnet, this
       just increases their availability but does not produce useless duplicates (for example, it  is  a  better
       idea  to  publish  a collection of pictures or compressed sound files using a GNUnet directory instead of
       processing them with archivers such as tar or zip first).  Directories can contain  arbitrary  meta  data
       for each file.

       If a directory has missing blocks (for example, some blocks failed to download), GNUnet is typically able
       to  retrieve  information  about  other  files  in  the  directory.   Files in a GNUnet directory have no
       particular order; the GNUnet code that generates a directory can reorder the entries in order  to  better
       fit  the  information  about files into blocks of 32k.  Respecting 32k boundaries where possible makes it
       easier for gnunet-directory (and other tools) to recover information from partially downloaded  directory
       files.

       At the moment, directories can be created by gnunet-fs-gtk and gnunet-publish.  Just like ordinary files,
       a directory can be published in a namespace.

       GNUnet  directories use the (unregistered) mimetype application/gnunet-directory.  They can show up among
       normal search results.  The directory file can be downloaded to  disk  by  gnunet-download(1)  for  later
       processing or be handled more directly by gnunet-fs-gtk(1).

REPORTING BUGS

       Report   bugs   by   using   mantis   <https://gnunet.org/bugs/>   or   by  sending  electronic  mail  to
       <gnunet-developers@gnu.org>

SEE ALSO

       gnunet-fs-gtk(1), gnunet-publish(1), gnunet-search(1), gnunet-download(1)

GNUnet                                             25 Feb 2012                               gnunet-directory(1)