The Most Efficient Gnutella Client
gtk-gnutella is a server/client for the Gnutella peer-to-peer network. It runs on Microsoft Windows, MacOS and every Unix-like system which supports GTK+ (1.2 or above). The GNOME desktop environment is not required. It is currently developed and tested under Linux (Debian) as well as NetBSD. It is known to run at least on Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, Solaris, Tru64 UNIX (OSF/1), SGI IRIX, BeOS whereas CPU architectures include x86, AMD64, PowerPC, SPARC, MIPS. And of course Microsoft Windows (XP at least).
gtk-gnutella is free open-source software and released under the GNU General Public License (GPL-2).
gtk-gnutella is not finished yet, but it is fully functional: you may share, search, and download. And it is stable too, users usually just leave it run unattended for days.
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All ideas and comments are welcome to the gtk-gnutella-devel mailing list. Bugs should be reported to the SourceForge.net Bug Tracker
We need additional contributors for C development, documentation, software translation and website translation.
News
6 March 2026, Version 1.3.0 Released
This is a maintenance release with minor bug fixes.
Improvements
- Removed expiration date: this version will now run forever.
Under the Hood
- Merged various enhancements from a side project reusing GTKG's library.
- Added experimental logfilter (see extra_files/logfilter.sample).
3 March 2024, Version 1.2.3 Released
This is a maintenance release with minor bug fixes.
Improvements
- Allow final address to be used as a search and sorting column in GUI.
- Do not hide the "random stats" shell command in the help.
- Shell "node add" now supports g2:IP:port for G2 nodes.
Bug Fixes
- Avoid assertion failure in
xmalloc()when the page size is not 4K - Fix build on NetBSD with SSP.
- Avoid conflicting symbol with NetBSD's powerpc/frame.h
- Force supervisor to quit if child gets a SIGKILL.
- Forgot to set te->ptid in discovered threads.
Under the Hood
- Add
aq_on_available()to hide waiter object. - Add debugging #define XMALLOC_DISABLED to remap
xmalloc()tomalloc(). - Add randomness every minute instead of 30 seconds.
- Dump held locks when suspending thread with locks.
- Fix
thread_lock_dump()logic. - Recent version of glib define G_NORETURN already.
- Use library
popcount()if it exists. - Use an integer for atomic_lock_t (or it fails on Darwin ppc32).
atio_get_lock(): no need to hash file descriptor.crash_hook_add(): watch out for early inits.crash_init(): ignore subsequent calls, loudly.crash_mode(): disable locking on concurrent crash.dump_hex_vec(): do not re-emit header if reached end.entropy_collect_gateway(): cache initial gateway information.entropy_harvest_many(): accelerate processing.evq_close(): forgot to free local callout queue.getgateway(): avoid endless warnings.- hashlist: avoid race condition for moveto operations.
random_double_generate(): ensure value is in [0, 1[.ripening_set_expire(): remove faulty assertion.rwlock_deadlocked(): trace locking thread owner.rwlock_lock_granted(): verify waiter presence.rwlock_readers_downto(): issue a memory barrier.shared_file_free(): give more details on assert failure.semaphore_emulate(): was not handling timeout properly.sig_get_pc_index(): also trap SIGBUS for OS/X.socket_tls_upgrade(): synchronous upgrade logged but no longer fatal.str_private(): must useNOT_LEAKING_Z()forwalloc().str_slice(): change semantics of `to'.thread_element_reset(): also clear lock stack overflow.thread_lock_dump(): can now omit details if necessary.thread_lock_released(): give more context on problems.thread_sig_handle(): add default handling of TSIG_TERM.vmm_mmap_anonymous(): optimize re-locking.walloc_get_zone(): do not keep lock whilst allocating zone.xmalloc_chunk_allocate(): validate chunk head is sound.- zalloc: do not keep lock whilst extending the zone.
zget(): limit scope of global spinlock to a minimum.
25 February 2022, Version 1.2.2 Released
This is a maintenance release with major bug fixes.
There were several shortcomings with bandwidth management: capping was not performed correctly and could overuse uploading bandwidth. Also when the DHT is turned off or on, we need to recompute proper bandwidth stealing.
Corruption of the DHT disk databases could also lead to a crash.
There was a critical old bug in the Dynamic Querying layer that affected Ultrapeers mostly: we could corrupt memory and/or crash when the current node was removed and we were processing a Dynamic Query for that node. This is more likely to happen when running as an Ultrapeer but it could also affect nodes running as leaves, although the probability of that bug happening is much less in that case.
Finally, it is best to not iterate on a global list that could get changed due to a node removal. This was the case when sending pongs to neighbouring nodes, so we now take a private copy.
Improvements
- Extended "props" shell command with -e (exact) and -i (ignore missing).
- The "props" command now takes a set of properties, handled as one batch.
Bug Fixes
- Properly recompute bandwidth stealing on DHT changes.
- Avoid crashing in D-Bus lib when filename is improperly UTF-8 encoded.
- DHT: protect against corrupted database.
bw_available(): fix invalid logic for I/O source capping.pong_all_neighbours_but_one(): iterate on local list.dq_node_removed(): must free dq object asynchronously.
Under the Hood
- Update IRC network information: moved from freenode to libera.chat
- Chunk size limiting for uploads accounts for bandwidth.
- Reduce memory footprint for statx_t if no data kept.
- CQ: defer freeing of dispatched event.
- watchdog: be more verbose within critical messages.
node_parse(): signal to callers when we have BYE-ed the node.cq_event_called(): use better diagnostic on assert failure.dbus_util_send_message(): protect against invalid text.prepare_entry(): ensure entry invariant remains true.wd_expire(): do nothing if watchdog was asleep.
