[tahoe-dev] Proposed short description of tahoe-LAFS for personal backup

[Saint Germain]

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 15:03:52 -0300, "Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn"
<zooko at zooko.com> wrote :

> On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 7:44 PM, Saint Germain <saintger at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > tahoe-LAFS is not really a backup software but rather a storage
> > solution.
> 
> How about:
> 
> """
> Tahoe-LAFS is not just a backup tool, but rather a distributed file
> system. It also comes with an integrated backup tool.
> """
> 

Ok I have changed it.

> > A few remarkable points:
> >  - I like its "paranoid" approach. The idea is to trust no one (and
> > especially not your online storage provider)
> 
> This is fine and I don't think you need to change it, but for your
> information whenever I see the word "trust" a little warning flag goes
> up in my brain, and I go back and mentally rewrite the sentence
> without the word "trust". This is because that word combines two
> things: 1. Whether you think a person or tool is going to fail or
> betray you, and 2. Whether your system relies on that person or tool
> operating correctly and loyally.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> Doing that transformation on your sentence above would give something
> like:
> 
> """
> I like its "paranoid" approach. The idea is that no one (not even your
> online storage provider) should have read or write access to your
> backups.
> """
> 

Changed it also.

> >  - Don't need any redundant PAR2 checksum, given that the data are
> 
> By the way, zfec is an alternative to PAR2.
> 
> https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/zfec/browser/zfec/README.rst
> 
> zfec is much more efficient than PAR2 for some settings. (See the
> benchmarks in the README.rst.)
> 
> I don't know of anyone who is actively using zfec's command-line tool
> in the way that one uses PAR2's command-line tool, though. There are
> lots of people using zfec as a library inside other tools.
> 

Yes I have already included zfec as an alternative to par2 (I have read
someone from tahoe-LAFS running some tests and found zfec much faster).
I have never heard about it until very recently (I was using par2
because it was integrated into DAR which was my backup tool until now).

> Looking forward to reading your article! Maybe I'll painfully struggle
> through the first 10 words in French and then get my Francophone wife
> to read it to me. :-)
> 

It is ready. I'm just waiting for some remaining answers from Obnam and
Backshift.

Thanks a lot for your answers !