#1311 closed defect (fixed)

user of tahoe client thinks "storage=true" means that their client can use storage

Reported by: zooko Owned by: david-sarah@…
Priority: major Milestone: 1.8.2
Component: code-nodeadmin Version: 1.8.1
Keywords: usability defaults reviewed Cc:
Launchpad Bug:

Description (last modified by davidsarah)

My wife (who, by the way, is super smart and knowledgeable) is setting up a tahoe client. From her perspective what she is doing has nothing to do with servers. She may or may not be aware that the same source code and configuration file is used for servers as is used for clients. In any case her only goal was to set up a client so she would have been justified in skipping over any documentation that appeared to be about setting up servers.

So, when she was editing tahoe.cfg, she saw helper=False and storage=False and, since she thought that she was configuring a client, she thought she ought to turn those two settings on, because the only interpretation of those settings was whether this client can use those services.

Possible fix would be to add comments in the default tahoe.cfg file, such as a line next to helper=False saying # Shall this node run a helper service that clients can use?. Also, maybe big visible separators delineating which configuration options are about clients and which are about servers.

A larger fix might be to split the client-related and server-related configuration into two separate files, possibly named ~/.tahoe/client.cfg and ~/.tahoe/server.cfg.

(Tahoe-LAFS grew out of the P2P tradition and we often thought of a single "node" performing both client and server behavior. But in practice nowadays that is a very rare way to use it. Note that I'm not proposing that we make it impossible for a single node to do both! I'm only proposing that the terminology, docs, and configuration files assume that one node is going to perform only one of those roles, the better to match user assumptions and common usage.)

Attachments (1)

clarify-tahoe-cfg-sections.darcs.patch (13.6 KB) - added by davidsarah at 2011-01-15T21:27:21Z.
create_node.py: add comments to default tahoe.cfg to clarify the meaning of each section. refs #1311

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (9)

Changed at 2011-01-15T21:27:21Z by davidsarah

create_node.py: add comments to default tahoe.cfg to clarify the meaning of each section. refs #1311

comment:1 Changed at 2011-01-15T21:30:43Z by davidsarah

  • Description modified (diff)
  • Keywords review-needed added
  • Milestone changed from undecided to soon

comment:2 in reply to: ↑ description Changed at 2011-01-15T21:35:03Z by davidsarah

  • Description modified (diff)

Replying to zooko:

A larger fix might be to split the client-related and server-related configuration into two separate files, possibly named ~/.tahoe/client.cfg and ~/.tahoe/server.cfg.

-1, this would cause disruption and multiple places to set the same options (since we would have to support existing tahoe.cfg files in addition to any new ones).

[sorry, edited the Description field by mistake in the last comment]

comment:3 Changed at 2011-01-15T21:38:34Z by davidsarah

The comment lines need \n endings; I'll add those to the patch after responding to any suggestions on wording.

comment:4 Changed at 2011-01-16T03:43:45Z by zooko

  • Keywords reviewed added; review-needed removed

+1 on the patch (with newlines). Agreed on not splitting tahoe.cfg.

comment:5 Changed at 2011-01-17T05:59:01Z by david-sarah@…

  • Owner set to david-sarah@…
  • Resolution set to fixed
  • Status changed from new to closed

In d3f24736caa21b55:

create_node.py: add comments to default tahoe.cfg to clarify the meaning of each section. fixes #1311

comment:6 Changed at 2011-01-17T22:16:06Z by davidsarah

8a3cb60bf744e424 fixed some tests.

comment:7 Changed at 2011-01-17T22:17:39Z by davidsarah

  • Milestone changed from soon to 1.8.2

comment:8 Changed at 2011-01-20T10:04:59Z by david-sarah@…

In [4976/ticket1306]:

create_node.py: add comments to default tahoe.cfg to clarify the meaning of each section. fixes #1311

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