[fuse-devel] BitTorrent File System ideas

[Bill C. <bi...@vi...>]

Hi.

There's been just an e-mail or two on the yahoo bittorrent group about
virtual file systems.

I though you guys might be into this sort of thing, so I'm posting here,
as well as the bittorrent group.

As those guys know, a bittorrent based file system would be a massively
distributed peer-to-peer file system that only downloads data if you ask
for it.  Kind of cool.

Bill

-------- Forwarded Message --------

I thought a bit more about making a fuse based virtual file system for
BitTorrent.  If there are no objections, how about calling the idea
BTFS, for BitTorrent File System?

A directory in BTFS would simply be a torrent file.  Files within the
directory are just the files in the torrent.  Files would read-only,
world readable, and only directories are executable.  It would be
desirable to enhance this, but it may require extensions to BT.

A sub-directory is just an embedded .torrent file in a torrent. You can
cd to it and ls it, without downloading the torrent data, but if you
read a file, it will go get the needed data from the torrrent.

Link =E2=80=93 This is a new file type, but does not extend the BT protocol=
.
Instead, BTFS clients would read these files and act on them.  They are
recognized from their extension: .btlink.  It's content is a bencoded
dictionary containing the following keys:

urls =E2=80=93 List of URLs where the torrent file may be found.

signature =E2=80=93 Optional. RSA signature of the author of the torrent fi=
le.
If this key is present, then the .torrent file must also be signed to be
opened. This key allows an author of a sub-directory to change it's
data, but still prove that it's his.

What do you think?

Bill

--=20
Bill Cox <bi...@vi...>
ViASIC