[tahoe-lafs-weekly-news] TWN #10

[Patrick R McDonald]

========================================================
 Tahoe-LAFS Weekly News, issue number 10, August 7, 2011
========================================================

Welcome to the Tahoe-LAFS Weekly News (TWN).  Tahoe-LAFS_ is a
secure, distributed storage system. `View TWN on the web`_ *or*
`subscribe to TWN`_.

.. _Tahoe-LAFS: http://tahoe-lafs.org
.. _View TWN on the web: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/TahoeLAFSWeeklyNews
.. _subscribe to TWN: http://tahoe-lafs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-lafs-weekly-news

Announcements and News
======================

Progress_ towards 1.9 continues.  This week saw the inclusion of the
following four "defect" tickets:

1384_: detect available space with storage/shares/ instead of storage/
1398_: make docs/performance.rst more precise
1441_: tahoe debug --help is wrong about running coverage on debian
1454_: remove misc/debian/

The development team `landed and closed`_ numerous tickets for 1.9.
Among these tickets are 1385_ (stop respecting pre-v1.3.0 config files)
and 1268_ (speed up large downloads by merging Share.loop() calls)

Hopefully beta1 for 1.9 will be coming out this week.

.. _Progress: http://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2011-August/006631.html
.. _1384: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1384 
.. _1398: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1398
.. _1441: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1441
.. _1454: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1454
.. _`landed and closed`: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/query?status=closed&milestone=1.9.0&group=status&order=priority
.. _1385: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1385
.. _1268: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1268

Free and Open Source Project of the Week
========================================

`puppet-tahoe`_ is the Free and Open Source Project of the Week.
François Deppierraz's creation allows you to administer your Tahoe
installation through the use of Puppet_.  Using Puppet helps to ease
administrative changes, ensure various files exist and have the
appropriate permissions.

.. _`puppet-tahoe`: http://github.com/ctrlaltdel/puppet-tahoe
.. _Puppet: http://www.puppetlabs.com/

From the tahoe-dev Mailing List
===============================

Joseph Ming and others discussed `protecting caps`_.  One interesting
quote from the discussion is 

  "Knowledge of the rootcap is both necessary and sufficient to retrieve
  your data." Tahoe Security Mantra [1_]

A discussion started into constructing the pubgrid_ so it could continue
to demonstrate Tahoe functionality without being abused.  Last week we
disabled the grid as the result of people abusing it, storing database
files, hacking tools, etc.  To this end, we reestablished the pubgrid
introducer, but not the gateway.  With the introducer, people can test
Tahoe by downloading, put in the furl of the introdcuer and thus access
the test grid.  Among the current suggestions are:

* extremely short lease expirations on all storage servers
* write size limits
* read size limits
* rate limit

The dev team provide Olaf a solution_ to his compilation issue on OS X.
The issue is the result of a problem with Nevow_.  Nevow needs to be
updated to fix the conflict, but the new version hasn't been released
yet.

.. _`protecting caps`: http://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2011-August/006627.html
.. _1: http://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2011-August/006645.html
.. _pubgrid: http://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2011-August/006647.html
.. _solution: http://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2011-August/006634.html
.. _Nevow: http://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2011-August/006638.html

Patch Needing Review of the Week
================================

Rather than single out any new patch, this week is dedicated to all the
new patches going into 1.9.  So headed on here_ and pick a patch to
review.  Currently there are 6 patches needing review for 1.9.  Let's
see if we can't halve that number by next week.  Awesome job by everyone
to reduce this number by 7 patches from last week.

.. _here: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/query?status=!closed&keywords=~review-needed&group=milestone&col=id&col=summary&col=keywords&col=status&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&col=time&col=changetime&desc=1&order=changetime

----

*The Tahoe-LAFS Weekly News is published once a week by The Tahoe-LAFS
Software Foundation, President and Treasurer: Peter Secor. Scribes:
Patrick "marlowe" McDonald, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn, Editor: Zooko.* `View
TWN on the web`_ *or* `subscribe to TWN`_ *. Send your news stories to*
marlowe at antagonism.org_ *— submission deadline: Friday night.*

.. _marlowe at antagonism.org: mailto:marlowe at antagonism.org

-- 
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| Patrick R. McDonald                       GPG Key: 668AA5DF  |                
| https://www.antagonism.org/         <marlowe at antagonism.org> |                
|                               <mcdonald.patrick.r at gmail.com> |                
|                         <patrick at opensecurityfoundation.org> |                
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| Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium           |                
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