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, such code must be released under these
25 same terms including the 12-month grace period clause. See the COPYING file
29 GETTING PRECOMPILED BINARIES:
31 See http://allmydata.org . Currently pre-compiled binaries are available
32 only for Debian or Ubuntu. For any other platform you have to build it
33 yourself from source, which is what this text file is all about.
36 GETTING THE SOURCE CODE:
38 The code is available via darcs by running the following command:
40 darcs get http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk tahoe
42 This will create a directory named "tahoe" in the current working directory
43 and put a copy of the latest source code into it. Later, if you want to get
44 any new changes, then cd into that directory and run the command "darcs
47 Tarballs of sources are available at:
49 http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/
54 Note: All of the following dependencies can probably be installed through
55 your standard package management tool if you are running on a modern Unix
58 For example, on an debian-like system, you can do "sudo apt-get install
59 gcc make python-dev python-twisted python-nevow python-pyopenssl".
61 + a C compiler (language)
63 + GNU make (build tool)
65 + Python 2.4 or newer (tested against 2.4, and 2.5.1 -- on Windows-native
66 Python 2.5 or higher is required), including development headers (language)
70 + Python Twisted (tested against both 2.4 and 2.5) (network and operating
71 system integration library)
73 http://twistedmatrix.com/
75 You need the following subpackages, which are included in the default
78 * core (the standard Twisted package)
81 Twisted requires zope.interface, a copy of which is included in the
84 + Python Nevow (0.9.18 or later) (web presentation language)
86 http://divmod.org/trac/wiki/DivmodNevow
88 + Python setuptools (build and distribution tool)
90 Note: The build process will automatically download and install setuptools
91 if it is not present. However, if an old, incompatible version of
92 setuptools is present (< v0.6c6 on Cygwin, or < v0.6a9 on other
93 platforms), then the build will fail.
95 So if the build fails due to setuptools not being compatible, you can
96 either upgrade or uninstall your version of setuptools and try again.
98 http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall#installation-instructions
100 + Python PyOpenSSL (0.6 or later) (secure transport layer)
102 http://pyopenssl.sourceforge.net
104 To install PyOpenSSL on Windows-native, download this:
105 http://allmydata.org/source/pyOpenSSL-0.6.win32-py2.5.exe
107 To install PyOpenSSL on Windows-cygwin, install the OpenSSL development
108 libraries with the cygwin package management tool, then get the pyOpenSSL
109 source code, cd into it, and run "python ./setup.py install".
111 + the pywin32 package: only required on Windows
113 http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/
115 (Tested with build 210, and known to not work with build 204.
116 Feedback with details of other builds is greatly appreciated)
119 Tahoe uses a few additional libraries which are included in this source
120 distribution for convenience. These will be automatically built when you type
121 'make', but if you have separate installations of them you may wish to modify
122 the makefile to use those in preference to the included versions. They
123 include Foolscap (a secure remote-object-invocation library), zfec (erasure
124 coding), and a modified version of PyCrypto (enhanced to provide a faster
130 Just type 'make' in the top-level tahoe directory. This works on Windows
131 too, provided that you have the dependencies mentioned above. (Either a
132 normal cygwin build or a mingw-style native build will be done by the
133 makefile, depending on whether the version of python that you have installed
134 is the Windows-native python or the cygwin python.)
136 If the desired version of 'python' is not already on your PATH, then type
137 'make PYTHON=/path/to/your/preferred/python'.
139 'make test-all' runs the unit test suites. (This can take a long time on
140 slow computers. There are a lot of tests and some of them do a lot of
141 public-key cryptography.)
146 There are three ways to do it: The Debian Way, The Python Way, and The
147 Running-In-Place Way. Choose one:
151 The Debian Way is to build .deb files which you can then install with
154 This requires the debian packages build-essential, fakeroot, devscripts,
155 and the packages listed as "Build-Depends" in the DIST/debian/control in
156 the top-level tahoe directory, replacing the word DIST with etch, dapper,
157 edgy, or feisty as appropriate:
159 If you're running on a debian system, run 'make deb-dapper', 'make
160 deb-sid', 'make deb-edgy', or 'make deb-feisty' from within the tahoe
161 top-level directory to construct two debian packages named
162 'allmydata-tahoe' and 'python-foolscap' which you can then install with
167 Just run make install. (This works on cygwin and Windows, too.)
169 In case you want to configure the location or other install options you can
170 learn how it is done here:
172 The Python Way is to execute "setup.py install" for each Python package.
174 You'll need to run "setup.py install" four separate times, one for each of
175 the four subpackages (allmydata, allmydata.Crypto, foolscap, and zfec).
177 for PACKAGE in zfec Crypto foolscap ; do
178 cd src/${PACKAGE} && python setup.py install && cd ../..
181 # the tahoe subpackage's setup.py script is in the root directory
183 python setup.py install
185 The Running-In-Place Way:
187 The Running-In-Place Way is to add a directory to your PYTHONPATH.
189 To run from a source tree (without installing first) just build it
190 (i.e. type 'make'), which will put all the necessary libraries into a local
191 directory named "./instdir/lib", which you can then add to your
192 PYTHONPATH . It will put executables into "./instdir/bin".
195 TESTING THAT IT IS PROPERLY INSTALLED
197 To test that all the modules got installed properly, cd to the root
198 directory of the tahoe source distribution (the directory which contains
199 this README file), start a python interpreter and import modules as follows.
200 If each one imports successfully instead of raising ImportError then it is
204 Python 2.4.4 (#2, Jan 13 2007, 17:50:26)
205 [GCC 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-21)] on linux2
206 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
208 >>> import allmydata.Crypto
210 >>> import allmydata.interfaces
215 If you installed one of the debian packages constructed by "make deb-*", or installed "The Python Way",
216 then it creates an 'allmydata-tahoe' executable, usually in /usr/bin .
217 Else, you can find allmydata-tahoe in ./instdir/bin/ . This tool is used to
218 create, start, and stop nodes. Each node lives in a separate base
219 directory, inside of which you can add files to configure and control the
220 node. Nodes also read and write files within that directory.
222 A grid consists of a single central 'introducer and vdrive' node and one or
223 more 'client' nodes. If you are joining an existing grid, the
224 introducer-and-vdrive node will already be running, and you'll just need to
225 create a client node. If you're creating a brand new grid, you'll need to
226 create both an introducer-and-vdrive and a client (and then invite other
227 people to create their own client nodes and join your grid).
229 The introducer (-and-vdrive) node is constructed by running 'allmydata-tahoe
230 create-introducer --basedir $HERE'. Once constructed, you can start the
231 introducer by running 'allmydata-tahoe start --basedir $HERE' (or, if you
232 are already in the introducer's base directory, just type 'allmydata-tahoe
233 start'). Inside that base directory, there will be a pair of files
234 'introducer.furl' and 'vdrive.furl'. Make a copy of these, as they'll be
235 needed on the client nodes.
237 To construct a client node, pick a new working directory for it, then run
238 'allmydata-tahoe create-client --basedir $HERE'. Copy the two .furl files
239 from the introducer into this new directory, then run 'allmydata-tahoe start
240 --basedir $HERE'. After that, the client node should be off and running.
241 The first thing it will do is connect to the introducer and introduce itself
242 to all other nodes on the grid. You can follow its progress by looking at
243 the $HERE/twistd.log file.
245 To actually use the client, enable the web interface by writing a port
246 number (like "8080") into a file named $HERE/webport and then restarting the
247 node with 'allmydata-tahoe restart --basedir $HERE'. This will prompt the
248 client node to run a webserver on the desired port, through which you can
249 view, upload, download, and delete files. This 'webport' file is actually a
250 "strports specification", defined in
251 http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/current/api/twisted.application.strports.html
252 , so you can have it only listen on a local interface by writing
253 "tcp:8080:interface=127.0.0.1" to this file, or make it use SSL by writing
254 "ssl:8443:privateKey=mykey.pem:certKey=cert.pem" instead.
256 A client node directory can also be created without installing the code
257 first. Just use 'make create-client', and a new directory named 'CLIENTDIR'
258 will be created inside the top of the source tree. Copy the relevant .furl
259 files in, set the webport, then start the node by using 'make start-client'.
260 To stop it again, use 'make stop-client'. Similar makefile targets exist
261 for making and running an introducer node.
263 If you are behind a firewall and you can configure your firewall to forward
264 TCP connections on a port to the computer running your Tahoe node, then you
265 can configure the Tahoe node to announce itself as being available on that
266 IP address and port. The way to do this is to create a file named
267 $HERE/advertised_ip_addresses, in which you can put IP addresses and port numbers in
268 "dotted-quad:port" form, e.g. "209.97.232.113:1345". You can put multiple
269 IP-address-and-port-number entries into this file, on separate lines.
271 There is a public grid available for testing. Look at the wiki page
272 (http://allmydata.org) for the necessary .furl data.