SAFE Drive - access SAFE storage on your local drive

Apps
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SAFE Drive virtual drive for SAFE Network (using FUSE)

Features so far (development branch):

  • access SAFE data as if it is on your local drive as ~/SAFE on Linux or Mac and as C:\SAFE on Windows
  • read/write/create/delete files under _public, _documents etc
  • read only access to public names and services under _publicNames
  • copy, sync and backup files to SAFE as if it was a local drive using command line programs and applications. E.g. use rsync for backup, or to keep files synchronised with SAFE network across devices.
  • mounting a public folder owned by someone else on your SAFE Drive using a safe: URI under _webMounts
  • anonymous encrypted file sharing via _webMounts folders

To Do:

  • decentralised git via headless repositories shared as _webMounts folders (work in progress)
  • distributed in executable format, nothing extra to install (scripts and process needs updating)
  • creating a public name and uploading a website from the command line
  • cross platform support for Windows and Mac OS (testers needed)

Status and What Needs Doing:

  • Linux
    • try out and help test the features listed above right now
    • help fix bugs or write code
  • Windows
    • help with testing and debugging: right now it just needs someone to try it and let us know what happens
  • Mac
    • help with testing and debugging: we have a work around for the last know problem so need someone to check that out and document the steps so anyone can follow and start testing

Any problems or suggestions, please create an issue

An earlier release is also available as a built executable for Linux. This only supports read-only access of files in your _public container, but is a little easier to try out: v0.1.0 Linux 64bit - instructions here

Get involved

To help with:

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This is going to be a major component that will advance the use of the SAFE network. Itā€™d allow almost any program to store/retrieve files/data from the SAFE network without modification. Companies could get rid of their file servers with a simple update of their SOE.

And the associated (very expensive) backup procedures and have simple (or not recommended - no) backup of files seeing as SAFE is mostly doing that anyhow.

Excellent work here Mark.

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Indeed - this is great stuff. Iā€™m really busy at the moment but look forward to tinkering with it at the weekend. Is there anything you particularly want us to look out for @happybeing?

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Just to thrash all the bugs out of it by trying it out in different ways on different accounts, and to note any improvements or extra features you think of.

It isnā€™t quite ready yet BTW, but I will announce as soon as it is.

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Iā€™m preparing a Linux build for everyone but would like somebody to do a quick test of it before I assume it works for anyone else.

This involves me getting a zip file to you, you unzipping it and running the executable on your Linux system.

Can anyone do this fairly quickly?

cc @tmark

UPDATE: For brave souls the first release is now available:

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Announcing SAFE Drive v0.1

The first release is now available, Linux only so far but we are working on Windows and will help anyone with a Mac get it working - get in touch if you fancy a go.

Any problems or suggestions, please create an issue

Get involved

Did you notice I said ā€œwe are workingā€? Iā€™m getting lots of help from testers, @bzee sorting tricky stuff and now @lukas is going to look at getting it working on Windows. Thank you everyone.

To help with:

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Excellent. Iā€™ll give it a whirl at the weekend. :smiley:

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Can confirm it works on Debian 9 and Fedora 28. For Fedora you need to install dependencies xdg-utils, fuse and fuse-devel.

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Whoop! Thank you John, thatā€™s very helpful :slight_smile:

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Excellent! This is huge!
It means the only place on this planet to store your data safely without fear of loss, corruption, piracy or NSA surveillance. Dropbox and other Google Drive are dead!
It is safe for private documents, passwords or even crypto wallet access codes right?

Waiting for the Mac versionā€¦

Thanks!

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Well done @happybeing
Keep up the great work!

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There a good chance this will ā€˜just workā€™ on Mac because of the similarities with Linux.

But we (I now have three people as well as myself who have contributed to the repos)ā€¦ we need somebody with a Mac to build and test it.

Iā€™ll be on hand to walk anyone with a Mac who wants to try this through the process. @lukas is helping me do this for Windows right now.

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Status Update

Iā€™ve been testing the ability to create directories and copy files to your SAFE storage mounted as a SAFE Drive and so far it is going well!

  • using mock network, copied a 129M .git directory tree to a SAFE network directory, then did a file by file comparison with no differences

  • then did a commit on the original, repeated the compare, and those changes showed up

The adventurous can try this before it is released, see the topic below for more (or visit the github repo). The features referred to in this post are available in the development branch.

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Thank you for all your work on this, Mark. I see SAFE Drive as one of the truly essential features of the network.
I look forward to testing this again soon - once I can actually access Alpha 2 againā€¦

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Hello happybeing,

If you are still willing to test the SAFE storage on Mac I am interested.
I would need instructions by email or through the forum though as I am very busy all day and can only try this at night (from 22:00 to 01:00 Paris time).

Thank you,

Axl

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By all means yes, please have a go. We have, or rather @stout77 and @joshuef have made some progress, but it still needs help to get over the finish line.

You can see much of whatā€™s needed and where we are on the following topic in the Dev forum. If you can follow that, great, but post there if you get stuck and help will be along:

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Many thanks to @JPL for jumping in to help test the latest features before I inflict them on a wider public (heā€™s found two bugs already!) but howā€™s about putting him out of a job?

Not quite AI, but a lot of what heā€™s been doing could be automated to create a set of tests (regression tests) that can be run from a command line script.

If anyone fancies setting this up, or helping out by writing some of the tests let us know. Even small amounts of your time can be useful, such as writing a single test, and it neednā€™t be very technical once the framework is set up.

This would involve setting up the framework using something like BATS and then for one or more people to write the individual tests, or small groups of tests (so even a small contribution will help). I might do it myself, but if anyone is interested I could stay focused on the code, adding the last few features and fixing bugs.

See this post:

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I made a big breakthrough this week with SAFE Drive and want want to give an update and a request for more help testing now it can do useful stuff.

So whatā€™s the big deal?

  • file stuff: Well, we can do lots of normal stuff with files and folders, although with some limitations. So you can make directories save files and, wait for it, get them back!

  • decentralised github: You can create a git repo on SAFE, clone it, make local changes and push them back. At least in theory, Iā€™ve tested all the parts of this but not actually used the live network to publish a git repo to somebody else, and have them submit their changes back. So who wants to be the first to try a decentralised SAFE github replacement?

  • decentralised dropbox: you can copy whole directory trees to and from SAFE using rsync (or cp etc) and use it to keep a backup on SAFE, or to keep local directories and files in sync with a copy on SAFE. You can also share those files with others, see next.

  • share public files: if you have uploaded files to a public folder that is accessible using one of your public names, anybody can use SAFE Drive to access those files. To see and browse files at a public name that you know exists, SAFE Drive shows them when you access ~/SAFE/_webMounts/publicName where ā€˜publicNameā€™ is a public name belonging to anyone) or if you have a subName (service) as well, at ~/SAFE/_webMounts/subName.publicName

    So, in Linux for example, you can see the files for the website safe://cat.ashi with the command:

    ls ~/SAFE/_webMounts/cat.ashi

I have not yet created a packaged build, but anyone can try all this - and it would help a lot if you would :wink: - if you are willing to install node and run it from the command line, with hand holding from myself and others if needed.

The reason is that the above works, fairly well, in the ways that @JPL and I have been able to test. But if SAFE Drive is to be any use at all it has to be rock solid, and not just work 99.9% of the time. So we need more people trying more things, to find what does not work when you do x followed by y followed by z on a wet Tuesday morning. Even one more person saving a few files from a different machine helps, so donā€™t think you arenā€™t helping if you can only spend a small amount of time. This is one of those things where more people doing even simple things can help a lot because we all have different setups, and will do things a bit differently than others.

Weā€™ve all seen the value of this with testing the alpha network and it is exactly the same with SAFE Drive.

@JPL has been doing this to help me test things recently, and it is a great help, as well as encouraging and supportive, believe me. Not to leave out all the others who have had a go as well. Iā€™m very grateful to everyone who has had a hand in testing so far. Thank you all very much.

So if you fancy helping, please sign up to the Dev forum, reply to the following post and weā€™ll get you started. And if any devs want to help others get going, rather than do testing yourself then that would also be a great help because if you read the post below, you can see Iā€™m running out of steam here. At least for a bit.

Basically, we need to find out what doesnā€™t work yet, and so need as many people as possible to try different apps, different ways of messing with files and folders, and to make a big list of what doesnā€™t work. Or maybe it will be a small list! I wish :grinning:

NEW - a post to get you started

If you want to dive in and help with testing, or just want to try SAFE Drive out privately Iā€™ve written a short post to get you started (also see how you can try it out on MacOS and Windows): SAFE Drive - help with testing - #141 by happybeing - Apps - Safe Dev Forum

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:revolving_hearts::heart::heartbeat::two_hearts::two_hearts:

Iā€™m very excited. Thank you for your hard work.

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One man on a boat and a ton of insight. It is like watching a new nebula forming. Great stuff, truly great stuff and fun, the most important part, itā€™s fun that can potentially help millions of people. They may never know, but these are the things that will change lives and do so quietly and without need for accolades, but we know so we can say thank you Mark :beers: have one on us and wet that dry dock :+1:

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