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This is how to run a Tahoe-LAFS client or a complete Tahoe-LAFS grid. First you have to install the Tahoe-LAFS software, as documented in INSTALL.rst.
The tahoe program in your virtualenv's bin directory is used to
create, start, and stop nodes. Each node lives in a separate base
directory, in which there is a configuration file named tahoe.cfg.
Nodes read and write files within this base directory.
A grid consists of a set of storage nodes and client nodes running the Tahoe-LAFS code. There is also an introducer node that is responsible for getting the other nodes talking to each other.
If you're getting started we recommend you try connecting to the public test grid as you only need to create a client node. When you want to create your own grid you'll need to create the introducer and several initial storage nodes (see the note about small grids below).
To construct a client node, run “tahoe create-client”, which will create
~/.tahoe to be the node's base directory. Acquire the introducer.furl
(see below if you are running your own introducer, or use the one from the
TestGrid page), and paste it after introducer.furl = in the
[client] section of ~/.tahoe/tahoe.cfg. Then use “tahoe run
~/.tahoe”. After that, the node should be off and running. The first thing
it will do is connect to the introducer and get itself connected to all other
nodes on the grid.
By default, “tahoe create-client” creates a client-only node, that
does not offer its disk space to other nodes. To configure other behavior,
use “tahoe create-node” or see configuration.rst.
To construct an introducer, create a new base directory for it (the
name of the directory is up to you), cd into it, and run
“tahoe create-introducer .”. Now run the introducer using
“tahoe start .”. After it starts, it will write a file named
introducer.furl into the private/ subdirectory of that base
directory. This file contains the URL the other nodes must use in order
to connect to this introducer. (Note that “tahoe run .” doesn't
work for introducers, this is a known issue: #937.)
The “tahoe run” command above will run the node in the foreground.
On Unix, you can run it in the background instead by using the
“tahoe start” command. To stop a node started in this way, use
“tahoe stop”. tahoe --help gives a summary of all commands.
See configuration.rst for more details about how to configure Tahoe-LAFS, including how to get other clients to connect to your node if it is behind a firewall or NAT device.
By default, Tahoe-LAFS ships with the configuration parameter
shares.happy set to 7. If you are using Tahoe-LAFS on a grid with fewer
than 7 storage nodes, this won't work well for you — none of your uploads
will succeed. To fix this, see configuration.rst to learn how to set
shares.happy to a more suitable value for your grid.
This is how to use your Tahoe-LAFS node.
Point your web browser to http://127.0.0.1:3456 — which is the URL of the gateway running on your own local computer — to use your newly created node.
Create a new directory (with the button labelled “create a directory”). Your web browser will load the new directory. Now if you want to be able to come back to this directory later, you have to bookmark it, or otherwise save a copy of the URL. If you lose the URL to this directory, then you can never again come back to this directory.
Prefer the command-line? Run “tahoe --help” (the same command-line tool
that is used to start and stop nodes serves to navigate and use the
decentralized filesystem). To get started, create a new directory and mark it
as the 'tahoe:' alias by running “tahoe create-alias tahoe”. Once you've
done that, you can do “tahoe ls tahoe:” and “tahoe cp LOCALFILE
tahoe:foo.txt” to work with your filesystem. The Tahoe-LAFS CLI uses
similar syntax to the well-known scp and rsync tools. See CLI.rst for more
details.
To backup a directory full of files and subdirectories, run “tahoe backup
LOCALDIRECTORY tahoe:”. This will create a new LAFS subdirectory inside the
“tahoe” LAFS directory named “Archive”, and inside “Archive”, it will create
a new subdirectory whose name is the current date and time. That newly
created subdirectory will be populated with a snapshot copy of all files and
directories currently reachable from LOCALDIRECTORY. Then tahoe backup
will make a link to that snapshot directory from the “tahoe” LAFS directory,
and name the link “Latest”.
tahoe backup cleverly avoids uploading any files or directories that
haven't changed, and it also cleverly deduplicates any files or directories
that have identical contents to other files or directories that it has
previously backed-up. This means that running tahoe backup is a nice
incremental operation that backs up your files and directories efficiently,
and if it gets interrupted (for example by a network outage, or by you
rebooting your computer during the backup, or so on), it will resume right
where it left off the next time you run tahoe backup.
See frontends/CLI.rst for more information about the tahoe backup
command, as well as other commands.
As with the WUI (and with all current interfaces to Tahoe-LAFS), you are responsible for remembering directory capabilities yourself. If you create a new directory and lose the capability to it, then you cannot access that directory ever again.
You can access your Tahoe-LAFS grid via any SFTP or FTP client.
See FTP-and-SFTP.rst for how to set
this up. On most Unix platforms, you can also use SFTP to plug
Tahoe-LAFS into your computer's local filesystem via sshfs, but see
the FAQ about performance problems.
The SftpFrontend page on the wiki has more information about using SFTP with Tahoe-LAFS.
Want to program your Tahoe-LAFS node to do your bidding? Easy! See webapi.rst.
You can chat with other users of and hackers of this software on the
#tahoe-lafs IRC channel at irc.freenode.net, or on the tahoe-dev mailing
list.
Bugs can be filed on the Tahoe-LAFS "Trac" instance, at https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/ .
You can also "fork" the repo and submit Pull Requests on Github: https://github.com/tahoe-lafs/tahoe-lafs .