[Noisebridge-discuss] M.A.I.D. was: Freespace / slackspace file system

Sai Emrys noisebridge at saizai.com
Fri Sep 25 08:06:30 UTC 2009


On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 11:12 PM, Mountain Sky
<mountainoceansky at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 1) Have the data frequently monitored to see which redundant segments are on
> short supply?

Yep. Ideally your daemon would have some sort of hook into the file
system so it could spy on its allocations, compare those to its own
table of "soft-allocated" space, and further replicate stuff that
falls below some replication threshold.

If not, it'd have to either scan occasionally (which is slow and not
as quickly reactive) or just give up and be willing for stuff to
disappear.

I think of it like memcache in that regard - you put stuff in, and if
it's there it's fastish, but if it's not there (any more?) then you
have to go to some other option (e.g. asking its cover distributed
storage system, a la Chord or Freenet et al - which is slower 'cause
it's over the wire, but better replicated).

> 2) Have the whole shebang frequently re-install itself equi-informationally
> into the fragged niches, overwriting any chinks it used to occupy and
> rooting out the fresh bits?

I don't understand thius one.

> A) and wouldn't this draw detectably on the user's CPU performance?

Ideally you'd have some sort of self-handicapper so that it first
figures out what CPU, RAM, & HD speed capacities are and only uses
extra speed that the user isn't.

I want it to be absolutely deferential to the user or system - it
should never choke resources.

> B) and could the program that executes this, itself be tucked away in
> fragments and still be able to run?

Yeah, that part's not easy to fix. Where to store the bootstrapper?

But that's the same issue every other system like this deals with, so
at least it's not a special vulnerability. :-P

> Hey Sai, <s>if</s> when you make this, would you consider
> naming it something to do with dandelions? They're my favourite flower, and
> i can't help but imagine them jutting up innocuously between slabs of data,
> spanning out their lives, and then casting a thousand self-replicating seeds
> to the wind.

Heh, that's a cute image. ;-)

FWIW though: I don't have currently the skills to make this - not even
close really. I'm not sure if I'm interested enough to gain 'em; it's
a whole lot of stuff I'd need to learn to be able to do this.

I'd rather first see if someone else who does have the skills has
already done it (or would find the idea interesting themselves). Which
is what I'm trying to do here - just putting the idea out there.

- Sai



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