[tahoe-lafs-weekly-news] TWN 43
Patrick R McDonald
marlowe at antagonism.org
Mon Mar 18 04:09:21 UTC 2013
======================================================
Tahoe-LAFS Weekly News, issue number 43, March 18 2013
======================================================
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`_.
If you would like to view the "new and improved" TWN, complete with pictures;
please take a `look`_.
.. _Tahoe-LAFS: https://tahoe-lafs.org
.. _View TWN on the web:
https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/TahoeLAFSWeeklyNews
.. _subscribe to TWN:
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.. _look: https://tahoe-lafs.org/~marlowe/TWN43.html
Announcement and News
=====================
Tahoe-LAFS Users Group Meeting, San Francisco, Tuesday 2013-03-19
-----------------------------------------------------------------
There is a `Tahoe-LAFS Users Group meeting`_ this Tuesday in San
Francisco. A big thank you to `Rackspace`_ |Rackspace| for providing the
space and the food from Goat Hill Pizza. There are three items on the
agenda: announcing Tahoe-LAFS v1.10, Tahoe-LAFS for engineers who don't
care about security and what should we put into Tahoe-LAFS v1.11? If you
are in the area, I highly encourage you to make the meeting. It will be
a blast.
.. _`Tahoe-LAFS Users Group meeting`:
https://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2013-March/008092.html
.. _`Rackspace`: http://www.rackspace.com
.. |Rackspace| image:: logo-rackspace.png
:height: 35
:alt: Rackspace
:target: http://www.rackspace.com
Public Grid Gaining Traction
----------------------------
As described later in the newsletter, the public grid is gaining some
traction. The public grid provides a space for users new to Tahoe-LAFS
a safe space for expermination and learning. I personally would like to
extend a thank you to Paul Rabahy and the other volunteers for providing
this service. If you can spare a node, please donate it to the public
grid. You will be helping Tahoe-LAFS grow.
Tahoe-LAFS on ReDonate
----------------------
JoePie91 who runs the `Cryto Coding Collective`_ and its associated grid
has established a new site, `ReDonate`_
"ReDonate is a service for 'voluntary recurring donations'. What this
means in simple terms, is that we allow you to set up recurring
donations to a service, without ever making an automatic charge.
ReDonate works much like a calendar application - every month, you'll
receive an e-mail reminding you of your pledge. The e-mail will include
donation links, so that you can make the donation you pledged, straight
away.
If you want to skip a month or even unsubscribe from a donation
campaign, that's fine! There are no hoops to jump through, no
cancellation periods, and no other kinds of hassle involved.
Basically, it's recurring donations how they were intended - as a
voluntary periodic contribution to a campaign. No automatic charges, no
subscription lock-ins, no other nasty things." [`0`_]
Tahoe-LAFS is proud to be one of the initial campaigns along with
`Torservers`_ and others. Thank you to JoePie91 for running this
service.
.. _`Cryto Coding Collective`: http://cryto.net
.. _`ReDonate`: http://redonate.net
.. _`0`: http://redonate.net/about
.. _`Torservers`: http://torservers.net
Greenqloud Starts Test Grid
---------------------------
A wonderful thing happened on Twitter. While discussing using
`Duplicati's`_ ability to use Tahoe-LAFS as part of my backup solution,
my friend w03 stated he `would like to setup a test grid`_ at his
employer, `Greenqloud`_ |Greenqloud|. He tweeted he needed to run the
idea past management in the morning. Here was Greenqloud's response
"just do it" [`1`_]
Thank you to Greenqloud for being open to exploring Tahoe-LAFS. We
appreciate it. Looking forward to any feedback you can provide.
.. _`Duplicati's`: http://http://www.duplicati.com/
.. _`would like to setup a test grid`:
https://twitter.com/w03_/status/313361436975968257
.. _`Greenqloud`: http://greenqloud.com/
.. _`1`: https://twitter.com/Greenqloud/status/313370865565855744
.. |Greenqloud| image:: greenqloud-logo.png
:height: 35
:alt: Greenqloud
:target: http://greenqloud.com:
Weekly Dev Chat Meeting Notes
=============================
Below are Zooko's `meeting minutes`_ from the `Weekly Dev Chat`_.
in attendance: Oleksandr, Zooko (scribe), David-Sarah, Randall
"ClashTheBunny" Mason, Brian (late—one lash), Tony (late—one lash)
not in attendance: Andrew (ABSENT—two lashes)
sort-of-in-attendance (on the IRC channel): a lot of folks
Agenda: Tahoe-LAFS v1.10 (Nuts and Bolts)
SUMMARY:
This was awesome. We got lots of tickets closed, or at least pushed
forward a step or two. This was the most productive hour of
ticket-closing work ever. We're going to do it again next week! If
you like doing code-review and writing unit tests, you should join
us.
DETAILS:
You can see also use the Trac Timeline:
https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/timeline
ClashTheBunny has some patches for IPv6 for Tahoe-LAFS and Foolscap
(#867), and has some tests of them but needs more thorough tests.
However, we didn't look at that this time, because we focused on
tickets for Tahoe-LAFS v1.10.
Nejucomo said on IRC that he wasn't going to get around to manually
verifying that the bug we fixed in ticket #1679 was the same as the
bug he reported. I decided to just close the ticket for the
following reasons: there *is* a bug that we understand, there is a
fix which is clear, there is a unit test that exercises the bug that
is red without the fix and green with the fix, and The
Dod manually verified that it fixed the problem in practice for him.
The only reason we've left the ticket open waiting for Nejucomo to
test is in case Nathan actually has a *different* bug than this one.
But we don't need to keep the ticket open for that eventuality.
ClashTheBunny did design review on #1732. He approved the design and
made good comments that showed that he actually had thought about it.
Subsequently Zooko added another design question and assigned it to
Brian for design re-re-re-review.
We looked at #1926. It is a blocker because it makes the SFTP frontend
incompatible with the current stable release of Twisted. However it is
closed as a duplicate of #1525 because the improvement in #1525 would
remove the incompatibility. We briefly considered kludging it by
requiring people to install an older Twisted, but instead decided to
fix it the good way. David-Sarah had already implemented the fix to
#1525 but there was something wrong with the unit test.
NEWFLASH! This just in! As we were going to press, David-Sarah posted on
#1525 a comment that they are currently working on it.
We discussed #1767. David-Sarah had an idea for how to make the
implementation simple, by incrementing the server-wide counter once for
each service. Brian will work on it. It and #1732 are the two blockers
that require new code to be written before we release Tahoe-LAFS v1.10.
We closed #1484 as fixed. Yay!
#1746 is finished, reviewed, and ought to go into Tahoe-LAFS v1.10, but
I can't figure out how to merge it into master using git. I don't
understand how to use git very well, since I've only been using it on a
daily basis for a little more than two years now...
#1812 was already applied, but there was something wrong with it
according to Brian. Do we need to fix that as a blocker for 1.10 release?
We agreed to drop support for Python 2.5 and therefore for CentOS 5.
In the last few minutes of the hangout, we agreed that next week's
hangout will be another Nuts And Bolts like this one, hopefully bringing
Tahoe-LAFS v1.10 close to completion. Brian will work on #1767. Someone
(maybe Zooko??) will work on #1732.
Then we briefly mentioned the possibility of switching from a "semantic
versioning" style version number, to a YEAR.RELEASE_COUNT version number
like Twisted does. So instead of Tahoe-LAFS v1.10, this might be
Tahoe-LAFS v13.0. Then if there is another release in 2013, that would be
Tahoe-LAFS v13.1. We also considered leaving it alone for the "v1.10"
release, and switching styles for the next release.
Currently we use the "1." in "Tahoe-LAFS v1.10" to mean that it has
backward-compatibility with all of the stable Tahoe-LAFS releases since
v1.0 (released March 25, 2008:
https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/Doc#TheParadeofReleaseNotes
). I'm not sure that's accurate. While we have never deliberately
violated that goal, and we are not aware of any change that we've made
which would break that compatibility, on the other hand we don't have
automated or manual testing of backwards compatibility. Anyway, I
suspect that there aren't any users of Tahoe-LAFS versions older than
1.9.2: https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/OSPackages
tickets mentioned in this letter:
* https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/867# use ipv6
* https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1484# CLI: overzealous
quoting of error messages
* https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1525# SFTP: handle
download failures correctly; remove use of IFinishableConsumer
* https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1679# Nondeterministic
NoSharesError for direct CHK download in 1.8.3 and 1.9.1
* https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1732# consider changes
to webapi "Move" API before release
* https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1746# write test for
anti-Ubuntu-crash-reporter exception-catching code
* https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1767# update
Announcement "timestamp": sequence number?
* https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1812#
parse_abbreviated_size doesn't accept T for terabytes (and other
quibbles with the regex it uses)
* https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1926# Failed to load
application: cannot import name IFinishableConsumer
.. _`meeting minutes`:
https://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2013-March/008082.html
.. _`Weekly Dev Chat`:
https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/WeeklyMeeting
Monthly State of the Public Grid
================================
Below is Paul Rabahy's `monthly status of the public grid`_.
"The new public grid appears to be gaining traction quite well. I figure
now that it has been in operation a little more than a month it would be
good to give a quick overview of its status and any other observation
that I have had.
I want to thank the storage nodes that have been reliably connected
including the following:
claude
kapiteined
rebuilder_tx
PRabahy
wander
pubgrid-ecd10741
The public writable test directory has been used by several people
(including myself) for various experiments. So far I haven't noticed any
abuse."
"Currently the shares directory on the PRabahy node weighs in at about
650MB. The largest individual share is about 172MB (~25% of the total
stored).
I encourage everyone that is able to setup a storage node to help
newcomers dive into Tahoe-LAFS as easily as possible. My goal is to have
at least 10 storage nodes connected to the public grid at any time.
Warning - The public grid is a service provided for experimentation and
learning. Please do not store any important files on the public grid.
The grid may go offline at anytime without prior notice."
.. _`monthly status of the public grid`:
https://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2013-March/008080.html
Glowing Quotes
==============
This issue's glowing quote is a little different. It comes from inside
Tahoe-LAFS, but I feel it really hits on something really awesome about
Tahoe-LAFS.
"A 20-minute demo of installing the Tahoe-LAFS software, deploying a
grid of storage servers, using them to upload, download and browse
files. Then the punch line: did you notice what we *didn't* do during
this demo? Screw around with certificates, keys, encryption, or
decryption! You don't have to spend your time messing with that stuff
in order to use Tahoe-LAFS." - Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn [`2`_]
.. _`2`:
https://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2013-March/008092.html
Tahoe-LAFS on Twitter
=====================
Awesome, my UI redesign finally landed in @tahoelafs:
https://github.com/tahoe-lafs/tahoe-lafs/commit/709be93a29e20026e61a436dac3fa1c160e9cef2"
[`3`_]
.. _`3`: https://twitter.com/bascule/status/313347964485648384
Patches Needing Review of the Week
==================================
There are five (5) ticket still needing review for 1.10.0:
* `#1713`_: redesigned welcome page
* `#1761`_: Insufficient documentation about how to administer the
convergence secret
* `#1159`_: stop using .tac files: make it possible to change appname,
Python package-directory name, perhaps other names
* `#166`_: command line order is problematic
* `#1539`_: stop putting pkg_resources.require() into .tac files
There are six (6) tickets still needing review of 1.11.0:
* `#1818`_: leasedb: track leases in a sqlite database, not inside
shares
* `#1265`_: New Visualizer is insufficiently labelled/documented (plus
layout problem)
* `#1864`_: turn off the AUTOINCREMENT feature in our use of sqlite?
* `#1411`_: sftp server does not accept pubkey auth
* `#1807`_: cleanup: HUMAN_RE regexes in uri.py are never used
* `#1382`_: immutable peer selection refactoring and enhancements
.. _`#1713`: https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1713
.. _`#1761`: https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1761
.. _`#1159`: https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1159
.. _`#166`: https//tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/166
.. _`#1539`: https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1539
.. _`#1818`: https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1818
.. _`#1265`: https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1265
.. _`#1864`: https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1864
.. _`#1411`: https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1411
.. _`#1807`: https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1807
.. _`#1382`: https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1382
----
*The Tahoe-LAFS Weekly News is published once a week by The Tahoe-LAFS*
*Software Foundation, President and Treasurer: Peter Secor* |peter|
*. Scribes: Patrick "marlowe" McDonald* |marlowe| *, Zooko
Wilcox-O'Hearn* |zooko| *, Editor Emeritus: 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
.. |peter| image:: psecor.jpg
:height: 35
:alt: peter
:target: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/AboutUs
.. |marlowe| image:: marlowe-x75-bw.jpg
:height: 35
:alt: marlowe
:target: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/AboutUs
.. |zooko| image:: zooko.png
:height: 35
:alt: zooko
:target: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/AboutUs
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