MaidSafe Dev Update - July 27, 2017

[Anders]

@maidsafe

For now we’ve discarded more complicated approaches (such as adding atomic transactions to the core network features) and decided to focus on making composite operations robust and stable.

Yes, atomic transactions for storing several MD objects sounds complicated. But when storing a single MutableData object, is that an atomic operation? Or is it possible for an MD object to get corrupt/inconsistent data if several users try to update it simultaneously?

[Yerontour]

After a night on standbye mode my MacBook wakes up with a lot of browser tabs in google Chrome with safe_proxy.pac. Guess these requests are triggered by SAFE Browser

for the rest I love playing with the testnet, keep up the good work. @Joseph_Meagher, thanx for the demo…

[Blindsite2k]

@maidsafe

This request is sent to the Authenticator, prompting a user to allow or deny it. If it’s been granted, the requesting app’s key is added to the Mutable Data permissions list and the app is then allowed to modify the Mutable Data. This feature is implemented now and the pull request is being tested and reviewed.

I’d hope all these permissions for mutable data will be managed in the authenticator/launcher similar to how apps are managed. Also it might be prudent to add descriptions to the mutable data being allowed/denied.

@maidsafe

Routing, Crust and Vault now get their own config files with optional developer options. These can be used to change the behavior in local networks for these specific crates. In Crust, we added disable_external_reachability_check in the dev options so that folks can run their local network without having to make sure they are externally reachable. In Routing, one can disable/enable resource-proof with disable_resource_proof, rate-limiter with disable_client_rate_limiter and/or minimum section size the proxy should be a part of before clients are allowed to bootstrap off them via disable_min_section_size_for_client_bootstrap. Routing also gets a new option to specify the group-size in case someone is interested in experimenting with various group sizes in their locally run network. For Vaults, we’ll be adding a dev option that lets users bypass the mutation limit for client accounts.

Rate-limiter has also seen a few tweaks as a consequence to its client requirements in testnets. We have now removed the restriction on the number of clients allowed to bootstrap off a proxy. With this, the rate limiter will now leak (for the leaky bucket algorithm) at a rate of 5MiB/sec. So per sec 5MiB are going to be distributed equally among the current active clients.

We’re going to need a manual for all these config options. And why would you want a rate limiter on your local network? It makes sense during testing but why in your own network? Good to have but I can’t see the practical use in an actual safe network. Right now you’re basically faking the network using networked servers and simulations. But in an actual network either you’d have the additional resources of added nodes or you wouldn’t have the demand created by them. Right now our problem is we don’t have a fully built network and safecoin to measure things out yet. Or at least that’s what I’ve gathered so far.

[tfa]

@Blindsite2k

why would you want a rate limiter on your local network?

Just to be sure that everything is clear: there is an option to disable rate limiter. As for why you would want to enable rate limiter, I see 2 possible reasons:

• you want to test the impact of the limiter on the usability of the app you are implementing

• you want to use the local network as a company internal network independent of the global safe network and you need the limiter to have a stable network.

[nbaksalyar]

@Blindsite2k

hope all these permissions for mutable data will be managed in the authenticator/launcher similar to how apps are managed

You’re spot on, it’s handled in a very similar fashion.

@Blindsite2k

Also it might be prudent to add descriptions to the mutable data being allowed/denied

Yes, that’s a part of the implementation You can check the points 4 and 5.2 of the relevant JIRA task that describe metadata fetching - the metadata is basically an entry in the Mutable Data object that an app asks to be shared. You provide the entry key with your ShareMData request - then it could be decoded e.g. as a UTF-8 string and presented to a user.

[Krishna]

@Blindsite2k

I’d hope all these permissions for mutable data will be managed in the authenticator/launcher similar to how apps are managed. Also it might be prudent to add descriptions to the mutable data being allowed/denied.

maidsafe:

Yes, you are right. The permissions will be managed by the authenticator just the same way it does for the apps. MutableData will have a metadata key that will be read by the authenticator to display the information about the mutable data at the time of authorisation. The task in JIRA details the approach

Edit: Just noticed @nbaksalyar has replied

[harryharry89]

@maidsafe

There are quite a few changes that are coming up (see the individual sections for more info) that should be live soon. These changes are currently being tested with integration and soak tests. We’re hoping the number of times we need to restart and update the backend of the system before Alpha 2 will be minimal, and we’re hoping to get there quite soon It is partly for that reason that we are consolidating changes, frequent updates would require more network restarts. This way we hope to minimise the inconvenience for developers, website builders…etc…

Does this mean that Alpha 2 is coming “quite soon”? And does anyone have a guess for when that might happen?:)

[anon81773980]

What happened to the safe_dns from ‘safe_client_libs’?

[Cryptoskeptic]

Soon is in the short term. Shortly. Perhaps a few weeks is my reckoning

[anon81773980]

@maidsafe

Some enhancements were also made to the way the browser interprets URLs. If the URL of a safe:// website is simply safe://<service>.<public Id> (i.e. without the name of the index file), the browser will load the file index.html located in that service container by default.

One of my original thoughts (bitID / BitPages) is instead of looking for index.html, it look for “vcard” type of thing. This is great when looking for something that you need.

When webcrawl initiated, it’ll look for whatever you desire.

Example, “musician”

It’ll recursively look through to find “musician”

In vcard there is a professional of choice or some sort…

name : Random man
profession : musician
Address : nowhere, Earth
Safemail : RandomMan
Site : 2342muo352g35fasf3q5w234fasf23a

[Krishna]

@maidsafe

examples, and a friendlier experience when interacting with them

Based on the feedback from community we are designing the UI for web hosting app. Shared the same in the dev forum topic. Thanks for the valuable inputs @JPL, please do share your feedback on the latest design.