Changes between Version 57 and Version 58 of FAQ


Ignore:
Timestamp:
2011-11-26T03:30:27Z (13 years ago)
Author:
davidsarah
Comment:

a client might do stuff automatically in the background in future

Legend:

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  • FAQ

    v57 v58  
    123123'''[=#Q18_unobtrusive_software Q18:] Will this thing run only when I tell it to? Will it use up a lot of my network bandwidth, CPU, or RAM?'''
    124124
    125 A: Tahoe-LAFS is designed to be unobtrusive. First of all, it doesn't start at all except when you tell it to—you start it with {{{tahoe start}}} and stop it with {{{tahoe stop}}}. Secondly, the software doesn't act as a server unless you configure it to do so—it isn't like peer-to-peer software which automatically acts as a server as well as a client. Thirdly, the client doesn't do anything except in response to the user starting an upload or a download—it doesn't do anything automatically or in the background. Fourthly, with two minor exceptions described below, the server doesn't do anything either, except in response to clients doing uploads or downloads. Finally, even when the server is actively serving clients it isn't too intensive of a process. It uses between 40 and 56 MB of RAM on a 64-bit Linux server. We used to run eight of them on a single-core 2 GHz Opteron and had plenty of CPU to spare, so it isn't too CPU intensive.
     125A: Tahoe-LAFS is designed to be unobtrusive. First of all, it doesn't start at all except when you tell it to—you start it with {{{tahoe start}}} and stop it with {{{tahoe stop}}}. Secondly, the software doesn't act as a server unless you configure it to do so—it isn't like peer-to-peer software which automatically acts as a server as well as a client. Thirdly, the client doesn't do anything except in response to the user starting an upload or a download—it doesn't do anything automatically or in the background (this might change in future, to support background repair for example, but probably only if you explicitly enable it). Fourthly, with two minor exceptions described below, the server doesn't do anything either, except in response to clients doing uploads or downloads. Finally, even when the server is actively serving clients it isn't too intensive of a process. It uses between 40 and 56 MB of RAM on a 64-bit Linux server. We used to run eight of them on a single-core 2 GHz Opteron and had plenty of CPU to spare, so it isn't too CPU intensive.
    126126
    127127The two minor exceptions are that the server periodically inspects all of the ciphertext that it is storing on behalf of clients. It is configured to do this "in the background", by doing it only for a second at a time and waiting for a few seconds in between each step. The intent is that this will not noticably impact other users of the same server. For all the details about when these background processes run and what they do, read the documentation in [http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/trunk/src/allmydata/storage/crawler.py?annotate=blame&rev=4164 storage/crawler.py] and [http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/trunk/src/allmydata/storage/expirer.py?annotate=blame&rev=4329 storage/expirer.py].