Tahoe-LAFS as website hosting storage backend

[amontero]

While playing with Tahoe, I've done a bit of research out of curiosity about one possible usage scenario, that instead of keeping in my notes I think it is a use case of interest.

I was thinking in a Tahoe-LAFS grid being the storage backend for a web app served by common httpd servers, such as nginx. Depending on your app requirements, you grid can range from a read-only cap webroot (that could be tamper-proof for free!) to more complex writtable grids, depending on your app. Your web server recieves a website GET and, instead of reading from a local filesystem directory, it reads from a dircap as the webroot. It could even execute scripts, creating a webroot not hackable if even the webserver is compromised. As far as the script cares, it's being run from a readonly filesystem.

Tahoe-LAFS would be the perfect match for distributedly hosting static sites inside anonymity networks, like Tor.

To accomplish this, I've done a bit of research and nginx looks like a good fit and well documented. The approaches I've found are:

• lafs-rpg:
  • Can not do this *as of now*. Nejucomo provided helpful comments at ​https://bitbucket.org/nejucomo/lafs-rpg/issue/12/run-tahoe-hosted-scripts
  • However, it could be a good starting point, perhaps. Just adding some more nginx config wizardry could be the way, not sure.
• FUSE under nginx
  • Available now.
  • Performance?
  • Documented at ​http://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/tutorials/ReliableFuse.html
• uWSGI
  • Docs for nginx: ​http://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/Nginx.html
  • The newest, sexiest and cloudfull kid on the block.
  • Also available under Apache: ​http://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/Apache.html
  • There is nothing done for nginx, but there are even plugins available for:
    • GlusterFS: ​http://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/GlusterFS.html
    • GridFS: ​http://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/GridFS.html
• Twisted:
  • To my knowledge, Tahoe is built on this lib. No Python knowledge here. Perhaps it has nothing to do.
  • If possible, this would be the closest to the grid?
  • Just found mentioned at:
    • ​http://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/DynamicApps.html
    • ​http://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/WebServers.html#twisted

Alongside: could not this help achieve WebDAV, just using nginx's out-of-the-box? #451

Now it's just an idea, maybe it's doable and just needs a howto. Since I haven't found none, at least linking this issue in the UseCases page could bring interested parties on the same page.