Channels/Setup

JVM

For windows, you'll need a modern 64-bit Java. It will work with anything greater than 8, however it was only in 10 or 11 that the OS UI scaling was respected so if you have a high resolution display you'll want newer. 64-bit is required.

For Windows and macOS, java can be downloaded here:

JDK13 Download

For linux, you probably want the openjdk from your package manager.

Download

The Channels GUI includes all the Snowblossom IceLeaf client features with additional Channels features. It can run a full node or act as a light client using other full nodes for blockchain data. It supports creating wallets, sending and receiving.

Download file from:

   https://snowblossom.org/jars/ChannelIceLeaf_deploy.jar

Run that jar file. In most systems, just click on it until something happens.

Proxy

Why

Your channels node will act as a gateway to whatever channels you access with it. The channels you access will likely be written and maintained by different folks, so in browser terms they are different sites. The browser expects different sites with different permissions to be on different host names. This is how the browser knows that Javascript from one site is not allowed to call API methods on another site. However, as far as the browser is concerned, there is one host for the sites, which is the node you downloaded above. So we need to do something to let the browser understand that each channel is a different site and they do not trust each other.

Settings

The short version is, the ChannelIceLeaf node includes a SOCKS5 proxy, answering by default on port 1080. That proxy will relay normal connections as you would expect from a proxy. However, it takes any connections to *.snowblossom.io and directs them to the HTTP port of the ChannelIceLeaf node.

Here are the network settings for Firefox:

Note the "Proxy DNS when using SOCKS v5", that is critical.

It is best to use this with a browser you don't use all the time, since these setting will send all of your traffic from that browser through your channel node, which should be fine but it will require you to have your node running for any browsing to work.

We are working on a Chrome extention to proxy only *.snowblossom.io, but it isn't don't yet:

https://github.com/snowblossomcoin/channels-chrome-extension

Test

http://05ts48m42unzgad437876g57lgtw4ucdav9zvsjp.snowblossom.io/ http://hello.snowblossom.io/

You should first see an item not found error as your node syncs the channel. Then a few seconds later, refresh and see the Success message.

Come say hello on the worst chat server:

http://xchc24kv2qdnz9uzq056x2yjvyw30xuc9pmxe3mz.snowblossom.io/ http://worstchat.snowblossom.io/