1 Welcome to the Allmydata-Tahoe project. This project implements a secure,
2 distributed, fault-tolerant storage grid. All of the source code is available
3 under a Free Software licence.
5 The basic idea is that the data in this storage grid is spread over all
6 participating nodes, using an algorithm that can recover the data even if a
7 majority of the nodes are no longer available.
9 The interface to the storage grid allows you to store and fetch files, either
10 by self-authenticating cryptographic identifier or by filename and path.
12 See the web site for all kinds of information, news, and community
13 contributions, and prebuilt packages for Debian-like systems:
20 Tahoe is offered under the GNU General Public License (v2 or later), with
21 the added permission that, if you become obligated to release a derived work
22 under this licence (as per section 2.b), you may delay the fulfillment of
23 this obligation for up to 12 months. If you are obligated to release code
24 under section 2.b of this licence, you are obligated to release it under
25 these same terms, including the 12-month grace period clause. See the
30 GETTING PRECOMPILED BINARIES:
32 See http://allmydata.org . Currently pre-compiled binaries are available
33 only for Debian or Ubuntu. For any other platform you have to build it
34 yourself from source, which is what this text file is all about.
37 GETTING THE SOURCE CODE:
39 The code is available via darcs by running the following command:
41 darcs get http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk tahoe
43 This will create a directory named "tahoe" in the current working directory
44 and put a copy of the latest source code into it. Later, if you want to get
45 any new changes, then cd into that directory and run the command "darcs
48 Tarballs of sources are available at:
50 http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/
55 Note: All of the following dependencies can probably be installed through
56 your standard package management tool if you are running on a modern Unix
59 For example, on an debian-like system, you can do "sudo apt-get install
60 gcc make python-dev python-twisted python-nevow python-pyopenssl".
62 + a C compiler (language)
64 + GNU make (build tool)
66 + Python 2.4 or newer (tested against 2.4, and 2.5.1 -- on Windows-native
67 Python 2.5 or higher is required), including development headers (language)
71 + Python Twisted (tested against both 2.4 and 2.5) (network and operating
72 system integration library)
74 http://twistedmatrix.com/
76 You need the following subpackages, which are included in the default
79 * core (the standard Twisted package)
82 Twisted requires zope.interface, a copy of which is included in the
85 + Python Nevow (0.9.18 or later) (web presentation language)
87 http://divmod.org/trac/wiki/DivmodNevow
89 + Python setuptools (build and distribution tool)
91 Note: The build process will automatically download and install setuptools
92 if it is not present. However, if an old, incompatible version of
93 setuptools is present (< v0.6c6 on Cygwin, or < v0.6a9 on other
94 platforms), then the build will fail.
96 So if the build fails due to setuptools not being compatible, you can
97 either upgrade or uninstall your version of setuptools and try again.
99 http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall#installation-instructions
101 + Python PyOpenSSL (0.6 or later) (secure transport layer)
103 http://pyopenssl.sourceforge.net
105 To install PyOpenSSL on Windows-native, download this:
106 http://allmydata.org/source/pyOpenSSL-0.6.win32-py2.5.exe
108 To install PyOpenSSL on Windows-cygwin, install the OpenSSL development
109 libraries with the cygwin package management tool, then get the pyOpenSSL
110 source code, cd into it, and run "python ./setup.py install".
112 + the pywin32 package: only required on Windows
114 http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/
116 (Tested with build 210, and known to not work with build 204.
117 Feedback with details of other builds is greatly appreciated)
120 Tahoe uses a few additional libraries which are included in this source
121 distribution for convenience. These will be automatically built when you type
122 'make', but if you have separate installations of them you may wish to modify
123 the makefile to use those in preference to the included versions. They
124 include Foolscap (a secure remote-object-invocation library) and zfec
125 (erasure coding). There are also pieces of PyCrypto copied into
126 allmydata.Crypto, modified to provide a faster CTR-mode API.
131 Just type 'make' in the top-level tahoe directory. This works on Windows
132 too, provided that you have the dependencies mentioned above. (Either a
133 normal cygwin build or a mingw-style native build will be done by the
134 makefile, depending on whether the version of python that you have installed
135 is the Windows-native python or the cygwin python.)
137 If the desired version of 'python' is not already on your PATH, then type
138 'make PYTHON=/path/to/your/preferred/python'.
140 'make test-all' runs the unit test suites. (This can take a long time on
141 slow computers. There are a lot of tests and some of them do a lot of
142 public-key cryptography.)
147 There are three ways to do it: The Debian Way, The Python Way, and The
148 Running-In-Place Way. Choose one:
152 The Debian Way is to build .deb files which you can then install with
155 This requires certain debian packages (build-essential, fakeroot,
156 devscripts, debhelper, cdbs) to be installed first, since they are used to
157 construct the tahoe .deb files. A full list of these required packages can
158 be found in the "Build-Depends" line in the misc/DIST/debian/control in the
159 top-level tahoe directory (replacing the word DIST with etch, dapper, edgy,
160 or feisty as appropriate).
162 If you're running on a debian system, run 'make deb-etch', 'make deb-sid',
163 'make deb-edgy', or 'make deb-feisty' from within the tahoe top-level
164 directory to construct a debian package named 'allmydata-tahoe' which you
165 can then install with dpkg.
169 Just run make install. (This works on cygwin and Windows, too.)
171 In case you want to configure the location or other install options you can
172 learn how it is done here:
174 The Python Way is to execute "setup.py install" for each Python package.
176 You'll need to run "setup.py install" four separate times, one for each of
177 the four subpackages (allmydata, foolscap, simplejson, and zfec).
179 for PACKAGE in zfec foolscap simplejson; do
180 cd src/${PACKAGE} && python setup.py install && cd ../..
183 # the tahoe subpackage's setup.py script is in the root directory
185 python setup.py install
187 The Running-In-Place Way:
189 The Running-In-Place Way is to add a directory to your PYTHONPATH.
191 To run from a source tree (without installing first) just build it
192 (i.e. type 'make'), which will put all the necessary libraries into a local
193 directory named "./instdir/lib", which you can then add to your
194 PYTHONPATH . It will put executables into "./instdir/bin".
197 TESTING THAT IT IS PROPERLY INSTALLED
199 To test that all the modules got installed properly, cd to the root
200 directory of the tahoe source distribution (the directory which contains
201 this README file), start a python interpreter and import modules as follows.
202 If each one imports successfully instead of raising ImportError then it is
206 Python 2.4.4 (#2, Jan 13 2007, 17:50:26)
207 [GCC 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-21)] on linux2
208 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
210 >>> import allmydata.Crypto
212 >>> import allmydata.interfaces
217 If you installed one of the debian packages constructed by "make deb-*", or
218 installed "The Python Way", then it creates an 'allmydata-tahoe' executable,
219 usually in /usr/bin . Else, you can find allmydata-tahoe in ./instdir/bin/ .
220 This tool is used to create, start, and stop nodes. Each node lives in a
221 separate base directory, inside of which you can add files to configure and
222 control the node. Nodes also read and write files within that directory.
224 A grid consists of a single central 'introducer and vdrive' node and one or
225 more 'client' nodes. If you are joining an existing grid, the
226 introducer-and-vdrive node will already be running, and you'll just need to
227 create a client node. If you're creating a brand new grid, you'll need to
228 create both an introducer-and-vdrive and a client (and then invite other
229 people to create their own client nodes and join your grid).
231 The introducer (-and-vdrive) node is constructed by running 'allmydata-tahoe
232 create-introducer --basedir $HERE'. Once constructed, you can start the
233 introducer by running 'allmydata-tahoe start --basedir $HERE' (or, if you
234 are already in the introducer's base directory, just type 'allmydata-tahoe
235 start'). Inside that base directory, there will be a pair of files
236 'introducer.furl' and 'vdrive.furl'. Make a copy of these, as they'll be
237 needed on the client nodes.
239 To construct a client node, pick a new working directory for it, then run
240 'allmydata-tahoe create-client --basedir $HERE'. Copy the two .furl files
241 from the introducer into this new directory, then run 'allmydata-tahoe start
242 --basedir $HERE'. After that, the client node should be off and running.
243 The first thing it will do is connect to the introducer and introduce itself
244 to all other nodes on the grid. You can follow its progress by looking at
245 the $HERE/logs/twistd.log file.
247 To actually use the client, enable the web interface by writing a port
248 number (like "8080") into a file named $HERE/webport and then restarting the
249 node with 'allmydata-tahoe restart --basedir $HERE'. This will prompt the
250 client node to run a webserver on the desired port, through which you can
251 view, upload, download, and delete files. This 'webport' file is actually a
252 "strports specification", defined in
253 http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/current/api/twisted.application.strports.html
254 , so you can have it only listen on a local interface by writing
255 "tcp:8080:interface=127.0.0.1" to this file, or make it use SSL by writing
256 "ssl:8443:privateKey=mykey.pem:certKey=cert.pem" instead.
258 A client node directory can also be created without installing the code
259 first. Just use 'make create-client', and a new directory named 'CLIENTDIR'
260 will be created inside the top of the source tree. Copy the relevant .furl
261 files in, set the webport, then start the node by using 'make start-client'.
262 To stop it again, use 'make stop-client'. Similar makefile targets exist
263 for making and running an introducer node.
265 If you are behind a firewall and you can configure your firewall to forward
266 TCP connections on a port to the computer running your Tahoe node, then you
267 can configure the Tahoe node to announce itself as being available on that
268 IP address and port. The way to do this is to create a file named
269 $HERE/advertised_ip_addresses, in which you can put IP addresses and port numbers in
270 "dotted-quad:port" form, e.g. "209.97.232.113:1345". You can put multiple
271 IP-address-and-port-number entries into this file, on separate lines.
273 There is a public grid available for testing. Look at the wiki page
274 (http://allmydata.org) for the necessary .furl data.