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This FAQ for stunnel is no longer being updated. Please go to the FAQ section on www.stunnel.org instead.

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Compiling/Installing Stunnel

This section gives you basic information on how to install the Stunnel distribution.

How do I use the pre-compiled Windows binaries?

To use the pre-compiled Windows binaries do the following:

Download stunnel.exe distribution sites.
Download the libssl32.dll and libeay32.dll from the distribution sites, found in the Win32 directory. Copy them into the \windows\system directory.
Note: these files contain the crypto libraries used by stunnel. You may not be able to use them legally in the US because of RSA patents.
Check with your lawyers. They'll be happy to bill you for their time.
Download the stunnel.pem from the Win32 directory.
Skip to the next chapter to learn how to run stunnel.

These instructions are also contained in the INSTALL.W32 file.

How do I compile stunnel from sources?

First you must already have either OpenSSL or SSLeay compiled for your system. Stunnel itself does not have any cryptographic algorithms in it, instead it links against the functions contained in one of the two above packages.

FreeBSD:
If you are on FreeBSD, then you may already have the sources to OpenSSL and stunnel on your system. Simply do the following:
```
	# cd /usr/ports/security/stunnel
	# make install
	
```
It will compile and install both OpenSSL and stunnel for you. If you don't have the necessary source files in your system, those are automatically fetched for you. Easy and convenient :-)
Unix in general:
To install stunnel from the sources, download the tar files and place them in a temporary directory. Read the INSTALL file. Then do the following:
```
	# gzip -dc stunnel-3.8.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
	# cd stunnel-3.8
	# ./configure
	# make
	# make install
	
```
Assuming all went well you should now have stunnel installed in /usr/local
Windows:
Stunnel is known to compile with the mingw compiler and the Visual C++ compiler. It is best if you compile stunnel with the same compiler you used for compiling OpenSSL or SSLeay.
You must uncompress and unpack the stunnel-3.8.tar.gz file onto your hard drive. Various zip/unzip programs can handle that format. (Suggestions to the stunnel FAQ maintainer are welcome.)
A Makefile.W32 is provided on the distribution sites for compiling stunnel on the Windows platform. You do not need to run the configure steps above.

Configure options.

The purpose of the configure script is to determine a few compile-time options specific to your computer and environment.

Aside from the standard GNU configure options, there are a few stunnel-specific flags you can give:

--with-random=FILE: FILE is the name of a file (socket, etc) which can provide random numbers for stunnel.
Defaults to /dev/urandom which is the standard location on most Linux and *BSD systems.
--with-ssl=DIR: DIR is the name of the directory in which your OpenSSL/SSLeay libraries and certs directory is. If you've installed your SSL library in a non-standard location specify it here.