[tahoe-dev] using Tahoe-LAFS when you only have one server

[Greg Troxel]

"Zooko O'Whielacronx" <zooko at zooko.com> writes:

> On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 5:38 PM, Greg Troxel <gdt at ir.bbn.com> wrote:
>>
>>  3) non-redundant grid: user sets up minimal private grid, wtih
>>  intention to store files, but no expectation of redundancy/reliability
>>  (beyond one disk).  At first glance this seems silly, but it gets one
>>  better confidentiality properties than NFS.
> ...
>> I would argue that case 3 is odd, because given how tahoe works, almost
>> everyone would want to set up multiple servers (or multiple server
>> processes on multiple disks) to move to 4, or at least be wanting to
>> move to 4.
>
> This is how I used to think, too! But recently I've started to wonder
> -- why should people who have only one server to work with consider
> Tahoe-LAFS to be an ill-fitting tool for their system? In fact, if you
> set (H, K, N) to (1, 1, 1) then Tahoe-LAFS is a *great* way to backup
> your files without being vulnerable to loss of integrity or
> confidentiality, even in the case that your server gets compromised.
> You can also dynamically choose to share some of your files and
> directories with certain friends, or even to publish some of them to
> the world.

Sure, I agree that if you have only one computer (and one disk), then
using tahoe is useful.   But given that support for redundancy is built
in, I would think everyone would be thinking "now, how I can I get
another disk on line, even some of the time, and have a 2nd copy".
I would expect people to find friends, old computers, computers of other
family members, etc.  And once not-always-present servers become more
comfortable, this is even more likely.

So I think it's fine to have

tahoe create-node --standalone

that sets 1/1/1, but have the docs point out that if one expects to set
up more servers then perhasp 3/1/10 is better for now.


  [git]

git lets you keep history against accidental deletion, and I don't see
tahoe doing that.  So for lots of little files, using git and then
putting the .git into tahoe makes sense to me.

What I've done so is take a directory, tar it up, gpg encrypt it, and
then drop it in a grid.   Overly paranoid maybe, but cap handling isn't
as careful as key handling.

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