[tahoe-dev] Newbie help

[Dimitri Yioulos]

Greetz to all.

Apologies up front for some very basic help Q's I'll ask.  I've read most of the Tahoe documentation, but am still struggling with the basics, it seems.  My simple mind isn't "getting it" completely.  So, I beg your indulgence.

Let me lay out the scenario first:

I successfully installed allmydata-tahoe-1.4.1 on an OpenSolaris box.  It didn't take me too long to realize that I also needed to also install pysqlite.  Following the basic "Running" and "Using" docs, and using the kindly provided okfn grid for testing, I used the Web gui to create a storage directory called "firstfiles" on that grid.  I couldn't see a way to store an entire directory or filesystem from the Web gui, so I turned to the CLI.  Having previously created a directory on my host named "test", and having put a single text file in it, I wanted to store that test directory and its contents.  After a lot of thrashing around, I finally used the command "tahoe backup /test tahoe:/firstfiles" to work(I think, as I had tried several previous combinations, and a couple seemed to work.  By work, I mean that tahoe returned info that 1 directory and 1 file had been backed up).  I did a "tahoe ls" and< lo and behold", I saw my "firstfiles"
 directory.  A  "tahoe ls firstfiles" returned Archive, Latest, and test".  I found my test text file in Archives/2009-09-10_22:10:27Z, in Latest, and in test/Archives/2009-09-10_22:10:27Z and test/Latest.  That the file showed up in so many locations is only the product of different backup commands that I tried.

I hope the above hasn't completely confused you.  I feel I'm oh-so-close here, but need a bit of hand-holding to get to the finish line.  So:

1. Was I right to create a storage directory on the grid (firstfiles, in my  test)?

2. If I have 3 directories or file systems named data1, data2, and data3, what's the CLI command I use to store them on the grid?

3. What's the CLI command I use to restore them to my host?  To restore individual files?

4. If I want to make sure that I'm storing data securely, do I create my SSL keys beforehand and make them known to tahoe, or do I use "tahoe create-key-generator"?

5. I should be able to cron the CLI command (question 2) to create a backup schedule, correct?

I've probably left out a question or two which, of course, I'll ask, but answers to the above represent the lion's share.

Many thanks for your patience and help.

Dimitri