[volunteergrid2-l] Query about VolunteerGrid2

[Johannes Nix]

Hello,

I am interested in joining VolunteerGrid2.

Professionally, I am doing algorithm development for signal
processing. I have a lot of Python background and a few
experiences with parallel computing and small messy Linux networks.

My personal interest is that I want to be able to connect laptop,
netbook and Linux smartphone via a reliable, wide-area capable
system.

I have a strong interests in topics around new cryptographic techniques 
(such as GnuPG and Bitcoin) and distributed systems (such as
git and CODA) and was reading some time about tahoe-lafs.  Today I
found the time to try it out a bit. After fighting quite some time with 
CODA's repair mechanism, I was positively amazed about how 
easy it is to install and how well it works. 

I also think such distributed systems address important issues 
about how the internet of the future will look, because
I believe that decentralization raises a lot of democratic 
potential of the net. I'd love to see such networks used for 
services as Diaspora and friend-to-friend networking. 


So, I'd like to know whether I can make a useful contribution.
I am running a small NAS Device (D-Link DNS-323) at home 
which does file service and also serves a bit of mostly nonpublic HTTP
via lighttpd and MoinMoin wiki.
The box has two redundant disks and has had only a few hours of 
downtime in the last two years. The longest was a preventive shutdown
because of intense lightning (and I installed over-voltage 
protection subsequently). The device is behind a NAT router 
receiving dynamic IPs and reachable via dyndns.org . 

At the moment, I do not have 500 GB capacity  but I 
think if I acquire another backup disk I can swap out about 
350 G in the next weeks. If the grid works well and this evolves
to a long-term involvement I see no problem in upgrading with 
larger disks later.

What I would like to do is mostly just to run the service and 
I'd use it myself as an additional backup for valuable files
and perhaps for mobile networking. When I have time, I'd also 
be quite interested to try out new hacks and extensions.

I'd also like to know what is your policy about giving
friends and family members read-only access.


Cheers,

Johannes