Octopod: secure file sharing made easy
What is Octopod?
Octopod is a system that lets you share files securely with a private
group of other users anywhere on the Internet. With Octopod, users can
have 'share' directories that Octopod automatically synchronizes with
other share members. Octopod is decentralized in that no one
user or server is responsible for holding a share's data (instead, all
users store data locally), is secure in that only members of a
share can access the contents of the share or its member list, and is
cool because it just is.
An Octopod share is set up in three easy steps:
- Alice creates a new share and designates a directory dir1 for
the share by typing octo -n dir1. The octopod configuration tool,
octo, will return a randomly generated shareid such as
octopod://AFDF6833A8990571D14BD305E40DE0C1B8CF9917 which Alice can copy and paste into emails or messages to her friends.
- Alice adds her friend Bob to the share with write
access by typing octo -A bob@hackers.edu dir1. (She can add other users similarly.)
- Bob runs octo -j
octopod://AFDF6833A8990571D14BD305E40DE0C1B8CF9917 otherdir to join
Alice's share in some local directory otherdir.
After doing this, files that these users place in their respective share
directories will be available for retrieval (and can be auto-retrieved)
by other share members.
What is Octopod not?
Octopod is not a (source code) version control system, a network
filesystem, or a personal file synchronization tool. While it may be
useful to some users for these purposes, it's not designed with them in
mind. Personally, I use CVS
for version control and Unison for file
sync.
Where can I get Octopod?
Octopod is currently not available for public testing.
How do I install/use Octopod? What else can it do?
See the Octopod User's Guide for more
information.
Who wrote Octopod?
Octopod was written by Barath Raghavan. The
project began with the generous support of Scott Shenker during an
internship at ICIR in Summer '05.
Send comments, questions, and bug reports to
barath@cs.ucsd.edu