kaircs 0.2.0

A small File Cloud Storage over Riak KV

===============================================
KairCS - Small File Cloud System over Riak KV
===============================================

This project allows to put mostly immutable files (written once,
updated mostly never) on a Riak KV store, that are read sequentially
(no random access to a file is supported).

This project is not meant to be a substitute of Riak CS:

- There's a single file space in KairCS. No butcket, no users. It's
almost a file-system you can write to, that expects your files don't
change much.

- No encryption of data.


Architecture
============

KairCS is split in two main components:

- The KairCS Very Simple Blob Store
- The KairCS Service


KairCS Very Simple Blob Store (VSBS)
------------------------------------

It's responsible to actually manage the storage of blobs. It DOES NOT
keep a notion of directories so there's no way to list all the blobs
in the store. In fact, this layer support only two operations:

- Write a blob
- Read a blob from begin to end

The `KiarCS Service`_ leverage these function to provide *some*
support for listing and deletion.

When storing a blob, you must provide a name which is used to create a
*master key* of the blob. The master key is actually a SHA256 of the
blob name.

The blob is divided in chunks of 1 MB. Each chunk is stored
individually under an automatically generated key composed by the
blob's *master key* and a counter.

The first chunk contains both metadata and data. The metadata record
is like this::

record metadata {

uint8 metadata_size;
# The size of the metadata including this byte. Currently this
# is 1 + 8 bytes.

uint64 size_of_the_blob;
}

The maximum size of the first chunk is thus 1 MB plus 9 bytes. Other
chunks are just data and the size of the chunk is the size of the
data.

To write a blob you need the name and the size. To read a blob you
just need the name.

VSBS store the chunks in Riak KV.



KiarCS Service
--------------

This is a high level component. It exposes a REST API over HTTP/1.1:

``GET /path/to/x``

Read the file or directory under the given path. It may return 404
if the file is not found.

.. todo:: If path is a directory, reply with a 300 Multiple Choices?


``PUT /path/to/a/file``

Create or replace the file under the given path.

If the given path exists and points to a directory, reply with a 400
Bad request.

This method creates the directories as needed.

Trying to upload large files may fail if the client does not support
chunked transfer.

The Content-Length header MUST be sent

.. todo:: Chunked response replies.


``DELETE /path/to/a/file``

Remove the file. Deleting a directory is not supported. If by
removing a file a directory becomes empty further requests for the
directory MAY get 404 responses.


Security
~~~~~~~~

RiakCS has no authentication mechanism. You must ensure that only
authoritative parties may reach the server. A common way to deploy it
is behind a nginx proxy


Configuration
-------------

When setting up a KiarCS cluster you must:

- Set up as many Riak KV nodes you need that match your space and RAM
requirement.

Join them in a cluster.

See the document `Configure Riak KV for KiarCS`.

- Set up Kiar CS nodes and connect them to the Riak KV nodes.
There're several possible configurations:

- 1 to 1.
- 1 to many.

See the document `KiarCS cluster layout`.


Copyright and license
=====================

Copyright (c) Merchise Autrement [~º/~] and Contributors.


This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the :abbr:`GNU (GNU is Not Unix)` General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See
the:abbr:`GNU (GNU is Not Unix)` General Public License for more
details. You should have received a copy of the :abbr:`GNU (GNU is
Not Unix)` General Public License along with this program. If not,
see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

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