From: Brian Warner Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:39:35 +0000 (-0700) Subject: NEWS: description of user-visible changes in the new release X-Git-Tag: allmydata-tahoe-1.1.0~12 X-Git-Url: https://git.rkrishnan.org/components/%22news.html/configuration.txt?a=commitdiff_plain;h=aec1764baf5d50a46b4cbe4bbc23f8b5489bfbff;p=tahoe-lafs%2Ftahoe-lafs.git NEWS: description of user-visible changes in the new release --- diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS new file mode 100644 index 00000000..800c76f0 --- /dev/null +++ b/NEWS @@ -0,0 +1,119 @@ +User visible changes in Tahoe. -*- outline -*- + +* Release 1.1.0 (11-Jun-2008) + +** CLI: new "alias" model + +The new CLI code uses an scp/rsync -like interface, in which directories in +the Tahoe virtual drive are referenced by a colon-suffixed alias. The new +commands look like: + tahoe cp local.txt tahoe:virtual.txt + tahoe ls work:subdir + +More functionality is available through the CLI: creating unlinked files and +directories, recursive copy in or out of the virtual drive, hardlinks, and +retrieving the raw read- or write- caps through the 'ls' command. Please read +docs/CLI.txt for complete details. + +** webapi: new pages, new commands + +Several new pages were added to the web API: + + /helper_status : to describe what a Helper is doing + /statistics : reports node uptime, CPU usage, other stats + /file : for easy file-download URLs, see #221 + /cap == /uri : future compatibility + +The localdir=/localfile= and t=download operations were removed. These +required special configuration to enable anyways, but this feature was a +security problem, and was mostly obviated by the new "cp -r" command. + +Several new options to the GET command were added: + + t=deep-size : add up the size of all immutable files reachable from the directory + t=deep-stats : return a JSON-encoded description of number of files, size + distribution, total size, etc + +POST is now preferred over PUT for most operations which cause side-effects. + +Most webapi calls now accept overwrite=, and default to overwrite=true . + +"POST /uri/DIRCAP/parent/child?t=mkdir" is now the preferred API to create +multiple directories at once, rather than ...?t=mkdir-p . + +PUT to a mutable file ("PUT /uri/MUTABLEFILECAP", "PUT /uri/DIRCAP/child") +will modify the file in-place. + +** more munin graphs in misc/munin/ + + tahoe-introstats + tahoe-rootdir-space + tahoe_estimate_files + mutable files published/retrieved + tahoe_cpu_watcher + tahoe_spacetime + +** New Dependencies + + zfec 1.1.0 + foolscap 0.2.8 + pycryptopp 0.5 + setuptools (now required at runtime) + +** New Mutable-File Code + +The mutable-file handling code (mostly used for directories) has been +completely rewritten. The new scheme has a better API (with a modify() +method) and is less likely to lose data when several uncoordinated writers +change a file at the same time. + +In addition, a single Tahoe process will coordinate its own writes. If you +make two concurrent directory-modifying webapi calls to a single tahoe node, +it will internally make one of them wait for the other to complete. This +prevents auto-collision (#391). + +The new mutable-file code also detects errors during publish better. Earlier +releases might believe that a mutable file was published when in fact it +failed. + +** other features + +The node now monitors its own CPU usage, as a percentage, measured every 60 +seconds. 1/5/15 minute moving averages are available on the /statistics web +page and via the stats-gathering interface. + +Clients now accelerate reconnection to all servers after being offline +(#374). When a client is offline for a long time, it scales back reconnection +attempts to approximately once per hour, so it may take a while to make the +first attempt, but once any attempt succeeds, the other server connections +will be retried immediately. + +A new "offloaded KeyGenerator" facility can be configured, to move RSA key +generation out from, say, a webapi node, into a separate process. RSA keys +can take several seconds to create, and so a webapi node which is being used +for directory creation will be unavailable for anything else during this +time. The Key Generator process will pre-compute a small pool of keys, to +speed things up further. This also takes better advantage of multi-core CPUs, +or SMP hosts. + +The node will only use a potentially-slow "du -s" command at startup (to +measure how much space has been used) if the "sizelimit" parameter has been +configured (to limit how much space is used). Large storage servers should +turn off sizelimit until a later release improves the space-management code, +since "du -s" on a terabyte filesystem can take hours. + +The Introducer now allows new announcements to replace old ones, to avoid +buildups of obsolete announcements. + +Immutable files are limited to about 12GiB (when using the default 3-of-10 +encoding), because larger files would be corrupted by the four-byte +share-size field on the storage servers (#439). A later release will remove +this limit. Earlier releases would allow >12GiB uploads, but the resulting +file would be unretrievable. + +The docs/ directory has been rearranged, with old docs put in +docs/historical/ and not-yet-implemented ones in docs/proposed/ . + +The Mac OS-X FUSE plugin has a significant bug fix: earlier versions would +corrupt writes that used seek() instead of writing the file in linear order. +The rsync tool is known to perform writes in this order. This has been fixed.