How to install and use Signal messenger without a smartphone · ctrl.alt.coop

/signal-without-a-smartphone

  • How to install and use Signal messenger without a smartphone · ctrl.alt.coop
    https://ctrl.alt.coop/en/post/signal-without-a-smartphone

    Signal-cli + Signal-Desktop

    Signal-cli is a command line interface for Signal. It’s used to register a new signal account and then link a Signal-Desktop app to this account. If you really use Signal without a smartphone, signal-cli functions as the single-point-of-truth.

    Go to the following link and download the latest signal-cli release: https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/releases/latest

    In our case this is v0.6.2

    $ wget https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/releases/download/v0.6.2/signal-cli-0.6.2.tar.gz
    $ tar xfv signal-cli-0.6.2.tar.gz
    $ cd signal-cli-0.6.2

    To be able to use Signal you have to register yourself with a phone number (doesn’t has to be a mobile number).

    $ bin/signal-cli -u YOUR_NUMBER register

    You will then get a SMS with a verfication number if it’s a mobile number or else a call. You use this number then to verify your account:

    $ bin/signal-cli -u YOUR_NUMBER verify VERIFICATIONCODE

    Install the latest version of Signal-Desktop from here: https://signal.org/download

    Now you have to start Signal-Desktop and extract the actual QR-Code. For this, start Signal-Desktop. It should display a barcode to link your Signal-Desktop app to a Signal device. You can either decode the barcode on your local machine or use a smartphone to scan the barcode.

    Android:

    Install Barcode Scanner on your device
    Scan barcode and tsdevice-Link should appear

    Linux:

    Toggle Developer Tools, go to Network Tab
    search for data:image/png entry, click on it and the actual barcode should be displayed
    Right click on the bar code to save it for instance as /tmp/qr.png
    use zbarimg (zbar-tools) to decode it: $ zbarimg /tmp/qr.png QR-Code:tsdevice:/?uuid...
    Copy tsdevice-Link

    Now you can link your Signal-Desktop to your Signal account through signal-cli:

    $ bin/signal-cli -u YOUR_NUMBER addDevice —uri “tsdevice:/?uuid...”

    Add contacts

    We use signal-cli daemon to synchronise contacts (with names^^) with our Signal-Desktop instance.

    On Ubuntu, you have to install libunixsocket-java package (otherwise the signal-cli daemon can’t start)

    Fill in contacts in the signal-cli config: .local/share/signal-cli/data/YOUR_NUMBER in the dict

    “contactStore” : {
    “contacts” : [ {
    “name” : “name”,
    “number” : “+49xxxx”
    }, {
    “name” : “name2”,
    “number” : “+49yyyyy”,
    }]}

    Start signal-cli daemon:

    $ bin/signal-cli -u YOUR_NUMBER daemon

    And then synchronise contacts in the Signal Desktop App (File->Preferences->Contacts->Import Now)
    Troubleshooting

    If signal-cli daemon reports following error Envelope from: <yournumer> (device: 2) Timestamp: xxxxx Exception: org.whispersystems.libsignal.InvalidMessageException: No valid sessions. (ProtocolInvalidMessageException) Failed to decrypt message.

    then:

    $ bin/signal-cli -u YOUR_NUMBER send -e -m “foo” YOUR_NUMBER

    In the same config, set the Active parameter for all groups to true, in order to be able to send messages in groups.

    Signal-cli as a daemon

    You may want to run signal-cli as a user systemd service to prevent that the key material gets out of sync for signal-cli.

    Symlink the signal-cli executable to ~/.bin/signal-cli:

    $ ln -s <ABSOLUTE-PATH-TO>/signal-cli-0.X.X/bin ~/.bin/signal-cli

    (This way you only have to update the symlink and not all the configs, if you get a newer signal-cli version.)

    Add following line to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile:

    export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.bin

    And place following systemd service config in ~/.config/systemd/user/signal-cli@.service:

    [Unit]
    Description=Signal cli for %I
    Requires=dbus.socket
    After=dbus.socket
    Wants=network-online.target
    After=network-online.target

    [Service]
    Type=dbus
    Environment="SIGNAL_CLI_OPTS=-Xms2m"
    ExecStart=%h/.bin/signal-cli -u %I daemon —ignore-attachments
    BusName=org.asamk.Signal

    [Install]
    WantedBy=multi-user.target

    Start the service with:

    $ systemctl —user start signal-cli@<YOUR NUMBER>

    And verify it is running with:

    $ systemctl —user status signal-cli@<YOUR NUMBER>

    If you change something in the config, stop the service:

    $ systemctl —user stop signal-cli@<YOUR NUMBER>

    reload the daemon:

    $ systemctl —user daemon-reload

    And start it again.

    That’s it! Happy messaging.