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 + pysqlite3 (database library)
114 + the pywin32 package: only required on Windows
116 http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/
118 (Tested with build 210, and known to not work with build 204.
119 Feedback with details of other builds is greatly appreciated)
122 Tahoe uses a few additional libraries which are included in this source
123 distribution for convenience. These will be automatically built when you type
124 'make', but if you have separate installations of them you may wish to modify
125 the makefile to use those in preference to the included versions. They
126 include Foolscap (a secure remote-object-invocation library) and zfec
127 (erasure coding). There are also pieces of PyCrypto copied into
128 allmydata.Crypto, modified to provide a faster CTR-mode API.
133 Just type 'make' in the top-level tahoe directory. This works on Windows
134 too, provided that you have the dependencies mentioned above. (Either a
135 normal cygwin build or a mingw-style native build will be done by the
136 makefile, depending on whether the version of python that you have installed
137 is the Windows-native python or the cygwin python.)
139 If the desired version of 'python' is not already on your PATH, then type
140 'make PYTHON=/path/to/your/preferred/python'.
142 'make test-all' runs the unit test suites. (This can take a long time on
143 slow computers. There are a lot of tests and some of them do a lot of
144 public-key cryptography.)
149 There are three ways to do it: The Debian Way, The Python Way, and The
150 Running-In-Place Way. Choose one:
154 The Debian Way is to build .deb files which you can then install with
157 This requires certain debian packages (build-essential, fakeroot,
158 devscripts, debhelper, cdbs) to be installed first, since they are used to
159 construct the tahoe .deb files. A full list of these required packages can
160 be found in the "Build-Depends" line in the misc/DIST/debian/control in the
161 top-level tahoe directory (replacing the word DIST with etch, dapper, edgy,
162 or feisty as appropriate).
164 If you're running on a debian system, run 'make deb-etch', 'make deb-sid',
165 'make deb-edgy', or 'make deb-feisty' from within the tahoe top-level
166 directory to construct a debian package named 'allmydata-tahoe' which you
167 can then install with dpkg.
171 Just run make install. (This works on cygwin and Windows, too.)
173 In case you want to configure the location or other install options you can
174 learn how it is done here:
176 The Python Way is to execute "setup.py install" for each Python package.
178 You'll need to run "setup.py install" four separate times, one for each of
179 the four subpackages (allmydata, foolscap, simplejson, and zfec).
181 for PACKAGE in zfec foolscap simplejson; do
182 cd src/${PACKAGE} && python setup.py install && cd ../..
185 # the tahoe subpackage's setup.py script is in the root directory
187 python setup.py install
189 The Running-In-Place Way:
191 The Running-In-Place Way is to add a directory to your PYTHONPATH.
193 To run from a source tree (without installing first) just build it
194 (i.e. type 'make'), which will put all the necessary libraries into a local
195 directory named "./instdir/lib", which you can then add to your
196 PYTHONPATH . It will put executables into "./instdir/bin".
199 TESTING THAT IT IS PROPERLY INSTALLED
201 To test that all the modules got installed properly, cd to the root
202 directory of the tahoe source distribution (the directory which contains
203 this README file), start a python interpreter and import modules as follows.
204 If each one imports successfully instead of raising ImportError then it is
208 Python 2.4.4 (#2, Jan 13 2007, 17:50:26)
209 [GCC 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-21)] on linux2
210 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
212 >>> import allmydata.Crypto
214 >>> import allmydata.interfaces
219 If you installed one of the debian packages constructed by "make deb-*", or
220 installed "The Python Way", then it creates an 'allmydata-tahoe' executable,
221 usually in /usr/bin . Else, you can find allmydata-tahoe in ./instdir/bin/ .
222 This tool is used to create, start, and stop nodes. Each node lives in a
223 separate base directory, inside of which you can add files to configure and
224 control the node. Nodes also read and write files within that directory.
226 A grid consists of a single central 'introducer and vdrive' node and one or
227 more 'client' nodes. If you are joining an existing grid, the
228 introducer-and-vdrive node will already be running, and you'll just need to
229 create a client node. If you're creating a brand new grid, you'll need to
230 create both an introducer-and-vdrive and a client (and then invite other
231 people to create their own client nodes and join your grid).
233 The introducer (-and-vdrive) node is constructed by running 'allmydata-tahoe
234 create-introducer --basedir $HERE'. Once constructed, you can start the
235 introducer by running 'allmydata-tahoe start --basedir $HERE' (or, if you
236 are already in the introducer's base directory, just type 'allmydata-tahoe
237 start'). Inside that base directory, there will be a pair of files
238 'introducer.furl' and 'vdrive.furl'. Make a copy of these, as they'll be
239 needed on the client nodes.
241 To construct a client node, pick a new working directory for it, then run
242 'allmydata-tahoe create-client --basedir $HERE'. Copy the two .furl files
243 from the introducer into this new directory, then run 'allmydata-tahoe start
244 --basedir $HERE'. After that, the client node should be off and running.
245 The first thing it will do is connect to the introducer and introduce itself
246 to all other nodes on the grid. You can follow its progress by looking at
247 the $HERE/logs/twistd.log file.
249 To actually use the client, enable the web interface by writing a port
250 number (like "8080") into a file named $HERE/webport and then restarting the
251 node with 'allmydata-tahoe restart --basedir $HERE'. This will prompt the
252 client node to run a webserver on the desired port, through which you can
253 view, upload, download, and delete files. This 'webport' file is actually a
254 "strports specification", defined in
255 http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/current/api/twisted.application.strports.html
256 , so you can have it only listen on a local interface by writing
257 "tcp:8080:interface=127.0.0.1" to this file, or make it use SSL by writing
258 "ssl:8443:privateKey=mykey.pem:certKey=cert.pem" instead.
260 A client node directory can also be created without installing the code
261 first. Just use 'make create-client', and a new directory named 'CLIENTDIR'
262 will be created inside the top of the source tree. Copy the relevant .furl
263 files in, set the webport, then start the node by using 'make start-client'.
264 To stop it again, use 'make stop-client'. Similar makefile targets exist
265 for making and running an introducer node.
267 If you are behind a firewall and you can configure your firewall to forward
268 TCP connections on a port to the computer running your Tahoe node, then you
269 can configure the Tahoe node to announce itself as being available on that
270 IP address and port. The way to do this is to create a file named
271 $HERE/advertised_ip_addresses, in which you can put IP addresses and port numbers in
272 "dotted-quad:port" form, e.g. "209.97.232.113:1345". You can put multiple
273 IP-address-and-port-number entries into this file, on separate lines.
275 There is a public grid available for testing. Look at the wiki page
276 (http://allmydata.org) for the necessary .furl data.