[tahoe-dev] Newbie help

[Dimitri Yioulos]

--- On Sat, 9/12/09, Dimitri Yioulos <dyioulos at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: Dimitri Yioulos <dyioulos at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Newbie help
> To: tahoe-dev at allmydata.org
> Date: Saturday, September 12, 2009, 1:01 PM
> 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
> 
> 

Can anyone help with this.  I'm sure it will be useful to other newbies.

Thanks.

Dimitri