<!DOCtype HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html lang="en"> <head> <title>Running Tahoe</title> <link rev="made" class="mailto" href="mailto:zooko[at]zooko[dot]com"> <meta name="description" content="how to run Tahoe"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="keywords" content="tahoe secure decentralized filesystem operation"> </head> <body> <h1>How To Start Tahoe</h1> <p>This is how to run a Tahoe node or a complete Tahoe grid. First you have to install the Tahoe source code, as documented in <a href="install.html">install.html</a>.</p> <p>The <cite>tahoe</cite> executable in the <cite>bin</cite> directory is used to create, start, and stop nodes. Each node lives in a separate base directory in which you can add files to configure the node. Nodes also read and write files within that directory.</p> <p>A grid consists of a single introducer and one or more nodes. If you are creating a new grid, you'll need to create both an introducer and a node (and then invite other people to create their own nodes and join your grid). If you are joining an existing grid (such as <a href="http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/TestGrid">the public test grid</a>), the introducer will already be running, and you'll need to create a node.</p> <p>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 "<cite><strong>path-to-the-tahoe-bin-directory</strong>/tahoe create-introducer .</cite>". Now start the introducer by running "<cite>tahoe start .</cite>". After it starts, there will be a file named <cite>introducer.furl</cite> in that base directory. This file contains the URL the nodes must use in order to connect to this introducer.</p> <p>To construct a node run "<cite><strong>path-to-the-tahoe-bin-directory</strong>/tahoe create-client</cite>", which will create <cite>~/.tahoe</cite> to be the node's base directory. Acquire a copy of the <cite>introducer.furl</cite> from the introducer and put it into this directory, then run "<cite><strong>path-to-the-tahoe-bin-directory</strong>/tahoe start</cite>". 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, a node will serve as a Storage Server, meaning that it offers its disk space to other nodes. To configure other behavior, see <a href="configuration.txt">configuration.txt</a>.</p> <p>To stop a running node run "<cite><strong>path-to-the-tahoe-bin-directory</strong>/tahoe stop</cite>".</p> <h2>Do Stuff With It</h2> <p>Now you have a decentralized filesystem. See <a href="using.html">using.html</a> for instructions about how to interact with it.</p> </body> </html>