[tahoe-dev] blocks instead of files?

[David-Sarah Hopwood]

Jody Harris wrote:
> Has the Tahoe Dev ever discussed the possibility of encrypting and storing
> blocks instead of files?
> 
> I don't know:
> 1) if this has already been discussed, or
> 2) if it would actually solve the problem it seems to me it would solve.
> 
> If the encrypt/store algorithms encrypt in (for example) 128 KB blocks,
> then
>  - you would never hit the large memory overhead problems seen with 100 MB
> and larger files.
>  - processing and storage would just take the file one chunk at a time
>  - retrieval and decryption (seems) that it would stream nicely since
> allocation of the next block(s) could take place while the current block is
> streaming out.

This should all already be the case for immutable files.

That it isn't true for mutable files is, as far as I know, just a temporary
limitation of the current mutable download/upload code (which does work in
terms of segments, but hasn't been optimized to reduce its memory usage by
doing so).

-- 
David-Sarah Hopwood  ⚥  http://davidsarah.livejournal.com

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