[tahoe-dev] Newbie help

[Dimitri Yioulos]

--- On Mon, 9/14/09, Zooko O'Whielacronx <zookog at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Zooko O'Whielacronx <zookog at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [tahoe-dev] Newbie help
> To: tahoe-dev at allmydata.org
> Date: Monday, September 14, 2009, 8:57 AM
> Hello Dmitri Yioulos!
> 
> Thank you for trying Tahoe-LAFS and posting your
> questions.
> 
> It sounds like the introductory docs of Tahoe-LAFS need to
> be extended
> a bit.  Or maybe we just need to link to them more
> prominently!  Did
> you read the doc link from the front page -- http://allmydata.org --
> with the anchor text "Download and install it on your own
> system." ?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Zooko
> _______________________________________________
> tahoe-dev mailing list
> tahoe-dev at allmydata.org
> http://allmydata.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev
> 

Hi, Zooko.

First, thanks for the kind reply.

I've read most of the documentation.  Understand that I feel it's pretty good.  However, I'm not always able to grasp what are probably simple tasks.  I've figured out a good many through trial-and-error.  I do think, however, that a basic "how-to" that walks one from installing tahoe through to backing up and restoring would be useful.  It would be kind of a "quick start" how-to, with other docs such as CLI.txt serving to fill in more details.  Just a thought.

As mentioned in a previous post, I have successfully backed up the contents of a test directory to the public grid kindly provided by okfn.org.  I've used other commands, such as rm, cp, etc. with success, as well.  Again, I've had to somewhat feel my way along.  And, to be honest, maybe I should expect that.

Anyway, here are my question again, and where I currently stand on them:

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

Answered that one myself :-).

> 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?

More or less answered this one myself.  But, further, can I backup all three directories or filesystems with one command, or must I back them up individually?

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

I now know how to restore individual files, but am not quite sure about entire directories or filesystems.

> 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"?

Still not sure about this one.

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

Still not sure about this one, either.  One would think it would be intuitive, but I'm a bit short on intuition lately :-).

Many thanks for your help.

Dimitri