[tahoe-dev] Help uploading when file exists but needs repair

[Kyle Markley]

 Hello happy hackers,

 I have a fun problem and need some advice.

 I'm having trouble uploading an immutable file (via "tahoe backup") 
 because the file already exists on the grid, but is unhealthy 
 (UploadUnhappinessError).  Upload doesn't repair; I recall there being 
 some ticket about this already.  Okay; so I should repair independently 
 before trying the tahoe backup.

 Oops - I can't!  Due to some poor planning on my part, some significant 
 chunks of the data on my grid have already expired.  In particular, I 
 have a few unrecoverable directories that prevent me from navigating 
 much in my grid.  This means I don't have the caps for the file(s) 
 giving me the UploadUnhappinessError.  (I don't think I can get them 
 from the backupdb either -- (1) I don't know how, and (2) they might 
 only exist in the backupdb in the grid, which might be unreachable.)

 As I've thought about this I've realized that this could be a pretty 
 serious issue in an environment where several people shared convergence 
 secrets.  If Alice uploads a file and it (for whatever reason) becomes 
 unhealthy, but later Bob wants to upload that same file and has the same 
 convergence secret as Alice, Bob won't be able to upload because it's 
 unhealthy, and he can't repair it because Bob doesn't have Alice's caps 
 to begin with.

 Help!  What can I do to recover from this?  (I would prefer not to 
 change the convergence secret or wipe out all the data in the grid.)

-- 
 Kyle Markley