From: Zooko O'Whielacronx Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2010 04:26:02 +0000 (-0700) Subject: edit docs for English usage, rename "Tahoe" to "Tahoe-LAFS" in docs/configuration... X-Git-Tag: trac-4800~3 X-Git-Url: https://git.rkrishnan.org/%5B/frontends/%22news.html/nxhtml.html?a=commitdiff_plain;h=776eb31039d3070518add22acf7fb076c193fde7;p=tahoe-lafs%2Ftahoe-lafs.git edit docs for English usage, rename "Tahoe" to "Tahoe-LAFS" in docs/configuration.rst, rename a variable in bin/tahoe-script.template for clarity, update François's CREDITS entry --- diff --git a/CREDITS b/CREDITS index 6c6674e5..bab3ea12 100644 --- a/CREDITS +++ b/CREDITS @@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ D: packaging, buildbot E: cgalvan@enthought.com N: François Deppierraz -D: char encodings, duplicity plugin, debugging, FUSE, docs, FreeBSD, WUI +D: encodings, duplicity, debugging, FUSE, docs, FreeBSD, WUI, ARM, NEWS E: francois@ctrlaltdel.ch N: Larry Hosken diff --git a/bin/tahoe-script.template b/bin/tahoe-script.template index 347bb82b..5e2c12fa 100644 --- a/bin/tahoe-script.template +++ b/bin/tahoe-script.template @@ -6,9 +6,9 @@ where = os.path.realpath(sys.argv[0]) base = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(where)) if sys.platform == "win32": - installed_tahoe = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(sys.executable), 'Scripts', 'tahoe.pyscript') + perhaps_installed_tahoe = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(sys.executable), 'Scripts', 'tahoe.pyscript') else: - installed_tahoe = "/usr/bin/tahoe" + perhaps_installed_tahoe = "/usr/bin/tahoe" whoami = '''\ I am a "bin%stahoe" executable who is only for the convenience of running @@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ I just tried to run and found that I am not living in such a directory, so I am stopping now. To run Tahoe after it has been is installed, please execute my brother, who gets installed into the appropriate place for executables when you run "make install" (perhaps as "%s"). -''' % (installed_tahoe,) +''' % (perhaps_installed_tahoe,) sys.exit(1) # we've found our home. Put the tahoe support/lib etc. in our PYTHONPATH. @@ -96,7 +96,7 @@ I just tried to run and could not find my brother at "%s". To run Tahoe when it is installed, please execute my brother, who gets installed into the appropriate place for executables when you run "make install" (perhaps as "%s"). -''' % (script, installed_tahoe) +''' % (script, perhaps_installed_tahoe) raise except Exception, le: print whoami diff --git a/docs/about.html b/docs/about.html index bf1cd7de..ae5a38ab 100644 --- a/docs/about.html +++ b/docs/about.html @@ -11,8 +11,8 @@

Welcome to Tahoe-LAFS

Welcome to Tahoe-LAFS, the first decentralized storage system with provider-independent security.

-

provider-independent security?

-

Every seller of cloud storage services will tell you that their service is "secure". But what they mean by that is something fundamentally different from what we mean. What they mean by "secure" is that after you've given them the power to read and modify your data, they try really hard to keep this power from being abused. This turns out to be difficult! Bugs, misconfigurations, or operator error can accidentally expose your data to another customer or to the public, or can corrupt your data. Criminals routinely gain illicit access to corporate servers. Even more insidious is the fact that the employees themselves sometimes violate customer privacy out of carelessness, avarice, or mere curiousity. The most conscientious of these service providers spend considerable effort and expense trying to mitigate these risks.

+

what is "provider-independent security"?

+

Every seller of cloud storage services will tell you that their service is "secure". But what they mean by that is something fundamentally different from what we mean. What they mean by "secure" is that after you've given them the power to read and modify your data, they try really hard not to let this power be abused. This turns out to be difficult! Bugs, misconfigurations, or operator error can accidentally expose your data to another customer or to the public, or can corrupt your data. Criminals routinely gain illicit access to corporate servers. Even more insidious is the fact that the employees themselves sometimes violate customer privacy out of carelessness, avarice, or mere curiousity. The most conscientious of these service providers spend considerable effort and expense trying to mitigate these risks.

What we mean by "security" is something different. The service provider never has the ability to read or modify your data in the first place -- never. If you use Tahoe-LAFS, then all of the threats described above are non-issues to you. Not only is it easy and inexpensive for the service provider to maintain the security of your data, but in fact they couldn't violate its security if they tried. This is what we call provider-independent security.

This guarantee is integrated naturally into the Tahoe-LAFS storage system and doesn't require you to perform a manual pre-encryption step or cumbersome key management. (After all, having to do cumbersome manual operations when storing or accessing your data would nullify one of the primary benefits of using cloud storage in the first place -- convenience.)

Here's how it works.

diff --git a/docs/configuration.rst b/docs/configuration.rst index 53be9fe9..ca162410 100644 --- a/docs/configuration.rst +++ b/docs/configuration.rst @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ ======================== -Configuring a Tahoe node +Configuring a Tahoe-LAFS node ======================== 1. `Overall Node Configuration`_ @@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Configuring a Tahoe node 8. `Backwards Compatibility Files`_ 9. `Example`_ -A Tahoe node is configured by writing to files in its base directory. These +A Tahoe-LAFS node is configured by writing to files in its base directory. These files are read by the node when it starts, so each time you change them, you need to restart the node. @@ -89,7 +89,7 @@ set the tub.location option described below. value is a directory name (~username is allowed, and non-absolute names are interpreted relative to the node's basedir) which can contain HTML and other files. This can be used to serve a javascript-based frontend to - the Tahoe node, or other services. + the Tahoe-LAFS node, or other services. The default value is "public_html", which will serve $BASEDIR/public_html . With the default settings, http://127.0.0.1:3456/static/foo.html will @@ -105,8 +105,8 @@ set the tub.location option described below. tub.location = (string, optional) - In addition to running as a client, each Tahoe node also runs as a - server, listening for connections from other Tahoe clients. The node + In addition to running as a client, each Tahoe-LAFS node also runs as a + server, listening for connections from other Tahoe-LAFS clients. The node announces its location by publishing a "FURL" (a string with some connection hints) to the Introducer. The string it publishes can be found in $BASEDIR/private/storage.furl . The "tub.location" configuration @@ -180,7 +180,7 @@ set the tub.location option described below. Most users will not need to set tub.location . Note that the old 'advertised_ip_addresses' file from earlier releases is - no longer supported. Tahoe 1.3.0 and later will ignore this file. + no longer supported. Tahoe-LAFS 1.3.0 and later will ignore this file. log_gatherer.furl = (FURL, optional) @@ -254,7 +254,7 @@ Client Configuration [client] introducer.furl = (FURL string, mandatory) - This FURL tells the client how to connect to the introducer. Each Tahoe + This FURL tells the client how to connect to the introducer. Each Tahoe-LAFS grid is defined by an introducer. The introducer's furl is created by the introducer node and written into its base directory when it starts, whereupon it should be published to everyone who wishes to attach a @@ -302,7 +302,7 @@ Client Configuration to the hash trees that are created. Large values of k will cause downloads to be marginally slower, because more servers must be involved. N cannot be larger than 256, because of the 8-bit erasure-coding - algorithm that Tahoe uses. + algorithm that Tahoe-LAFS uses. shares.happy allows you control over the distribution of your immutable file. For a successful upload, shares are guaranteed to be initially @@ -474,7 +474,7 @@ identical immutable files, and it is also the set of people who could mount such an attack. The content of the private/convergence file is a base-32 encoded string. If -the file doesn't exist, then when the Tahoe client starts up it will generate +the file doesn't exist, then when the Tahoe-LAFS client starts up it will generate a random 256-bit string and write the base-32 encoding of this string into the file. If you want to converge your immutable files with as many people as possible, put the empty string (so that private/convergence is a zero-length @@ -484,7 +484,7 @@ Other files =========== logs/ - Each Tahoe node creates a directory to hold the log messages produced as + Each Tahoe-LAFS node creates a directory to hold the log messages produced as the node runs. These logfiles are created and rotated by the "twistd" daemonization program, so logs/twistd.log will contain the most recent messages, logs/twistd.log.1 will contain the previous ones, @@ -504,7 +504,7 @@ my_nodeid Backwards Compatibility Files ============================= -Tahoe releases before 1.3.0 had no 'tahoe.cfg' file, and used distinct files +Tahoe-LAFS releases before 1.3.0 had no 'tahoe.cfg' file, and used distinct files for each item listed below. For each configuration knob, if the distinct file exists, it will take precedence over the corresponding item in tahoe.cfg. @@ -535,7 +535,7 @@ were previously combined, controlled by the presence of a BASEDIR/authorized_keys.SSHPORT file, in which the suffix of the filename indicated which port the ssh server should listen on, and the contents of the file provided the ssh public keys to accept. Support for these files has been -removed completely. To ssh into your Tahoe node, add [node]ssh.port and +removed completely. To ssh into your Tahoe-LAFS node, add [node]ssh.port and [node].ssh_authorized_keys_file statements to your tahoe.cfg. Likewise, the functionality of [node]tub.location is a variant of the @@ -555,7 +555,7 @@ these are not the default values), merely a legal one. :: [node] - nickname = Bob's Tahoe Node + nickname = Bob's Tahoe-LAFS Node tub.port = 34912 tub.location = 123.45.67.89:8098,44.55.66.77:8098 web.port = 3456