docs: document the private/convergence configuration file

This commit is contained in:
Zooko O'Whielacronx 2008-03-25 11:22:41 -07:00
parent dfdbb95648
commit 29b844efaf

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@ -84,6 +84,28 @@ private/root_dir.cap (optional): The command-line tools will read a directory
cap out of this file and use it, if you don't specify a '--dir-cap' option or
if you specify '--dir-cap=root'.
private/convergence (automatically generated): An added secret for encrypting
immutable files. Everyone who has this same string in their private/convergence
file encrypts their immutable files in the same way when uploading them. This
causes identical files to "converge" -- to share the same storage space since
they have identical ciphertext -- which conserves space and optimizes upload
time, but it also exposes files to the possibility of a brute-force attack by
people who know that string. In this attack, if the attacker can guess most of
the contents of a file, then they can use brute-force to learn the remaining
contents.
So the set of people who know your private/convergence string is the set of
people who converge their storage space with you when you and they upload
identical immutable files, and it is also the set of people who could mount such
an attack.
The content of the private/convergence file is a base-32 encoded string. If the
file doesn't exist, then when the Tahoe client starts up it will generate a
random 256-bit string and write the base-32 encoding of this string into the
file. If you want to converge your immutable files with as many people as
possible, put the empty string (so that private/convergence is a zero-length
file).
== Node State ==