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Webfs: A Filesystem Built on Top of the Web

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Re: Webfs: A Filesystem Built on Top of the Web

#31

Post by mirimir »

brendoncarroll wrote: post #28
mirimir wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, cool. I understand now. So if WebFS is running on a system with access to Tor SocksPorts, can Stores be onion URLs? Edit: If not, one could presumably route WebFS through OnionCat's IPv6 /48. But that only works with v2 onions, which are deprecated. However, tinc works with v3 onions. And either of those gives you UDP transport.

Yes, you could use the HTTP Store over Tor. I think you would have to configure the proxy environment variables for Go's HTTP client.

Thanks. I'll try it, and comment on GitHub.

Re: Webfs: A Filesystem Built on Top of the Web

#32

Post by brendoncarroll »

tootie wrote: post #2

Remember WebDAV? It was a similar concept, but never really found its footing and most of the implementations were pretty shaky. I always thought it was a good idea though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebDAV

A WebDAV file could be used as a WebFS Cell. The locking would allow emulation of the compare-and-swap functionality. The reference HTTP Cell: client and server are way less complicated than WebDAV though, as many here have alluded to.

Re: Webfs: A Filesystem Built on Top of the Web

#33

Post by zzo38computer »

tootie wrote: post #2

Remember WebDAV? It was a similar concept, but never really found its footing and most of the implementations were pretty shaky. I always thought it was a good idea though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebDAV

Someone else described my "httpdirlist" specification as "like WebDAV but better" or "like WebDAV but less messy" (actually I do not remember the exact wording).

Now I see that Wikipedia also lists several alternatives to WebDAV too, but I think httpdirlist is good.

Re: Webfs: A Filesystem Built on Top of the Web

#34

Post by jpalomaki »

Eikon wrote: post #7
tootie wrote: post #2

Remember WebDAV? It was a similar concept, but never really found its footing and most of the implementations were pretty shaky. I always thought it was a good idea though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebDAV

The rfc is super dumb though. For instance, when handling a PROPFIND request (more or less listing files / folders), it’s not mandatory for the server to honor the Depth header (how many levels are returned). There is also no mechanism for the server to advertise whether or not it’s honoring the Depth header. That means the Depth header is useless because the client has no way to know whether there was only one hiera…

Limitations on depth makes sense, because the actual storage implementation can make recursive retrievals very costly. A folder could be an abstraction for a remote resource.

Of course it would still make sense for server to tell client about this (there are files/no files/I don’t know).

Re: Webfs: A Filesystem Built on Top of the Web

#35

Post by dredmorbius »

austincheney wrote: post #23

I am working on a similar idea myself. Here is a video demo from a month ago: http://mailmarkup.org/sharefile/demo1.mp4

Watching now.

1. Thanks for the direct mp4 link.

2. Consider reducing your desktop resolution for webcasts. I can see that there are dialogues open. I can't for the life of me see what's presented in them.

Re: Webfs: A Filesystem Built on Top of the Web

#36

Post by dredmorbius »

brendoncarroll wrote: post #3

Hey everyone, I'm the author of WebFS. Happy to answer any questions.

I'm going to assume you're familiar with Plan9OS's WebFS and 9P Protcol?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9P_(protoco)

I've been kicking around similar ideas (nowhere near implemented) for a while:

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6bgowu/what_if...

Re: Webfs: A Filesystem Built on Top of the Web

#37

Post by brendoncarroll »

dredmorbius wrote: post #36
brendoncarroll wrote: post #3

Hey everyone, I'm the author of WebFS. Happy to answer any questions.

I'm going to assume you're familiar with Plan9OS's WebFS and 9P Protcol? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9P_(protoco) I've been kicking around similar ideas (nowhere near implemented) for a while: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6bgowu/what_if...

I was not aware of Plan 9's WebFS. It looks like it presents websites in the local file system. IPFS can do something very similar with its content. I have used that before.

The name here comes from using web resources (referred to by url) as building blocks for a file system. I guess "Web for FS" rather than "Web as FS".

Re: Webfs: A Filesystem Built on Top of the Web

#38

Post by sitkack »

cryptoz wrote: post #29
amelius wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought WebDAV was sabotaged by different players for some reason (e.g. Apple's implementation caused loss of data). "Never attribute to malice", but support was so bad that almost no other conclusion was possible.

"Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity" has led me astray so many times in life I've come to largely disbelieve it is a useful mantra. It lets bad actors hide behind stupidity and cause chaos on purpose, while good people let it happen because "it's simply accidental, right"?

I think it is slightly more nuanced, in that bad decisions get made on accident and overlooked on purpose. If you want to sabotage something, put lots of people that make many accidental mistakes on a project and put your people in a position to overlook them.

Re: Webfs: A Filesystem Built on Top of the Web

#40

Post by latchkey »

tootie wrote: post #2

Remember WebDAV? It was a similar concept, but never really found its footing and most of the implementations were pretty shaky. I always thought it was a good idea though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebDAV

Ah yes... I implemented Sardine [1] 10 years ago!

At the time, I worked for a large porn company and we couldn't host stuff 'in the cloud' because they didn't allow porn there.

We invested a ton of money into an Isilon NAS to store our image/video content and the best way to get stuff off it over HTTP was via webdav. Unfortunately, there wasn't a good Java client.

So, I built a simple proxy that would accept regular GET requests and on the back end, use webdav to retrieve content from the Isilon. In front of that proxy was our CDN.

Since then, Sardine has been the basis for quite a few other projects.

[1] https://github.com/lookfirst/sardine

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