Skynet: A distributed, autonomous filesystem

Abstract

Existing networked filesystems are usually either client/server - allowing storage only on one node - hard to use, or both. The advanced ones also like to use their own on-disk format, complicating migration both ways.

Skynet attempts to remedy this. It is a distributed filesystem with master/slave redundancy that is easy to use, relatively safe for your data and can be easily converted to/from a non-distributed filesystem.

It uses an existing filesystem for file storage, takes care of its own maintenance as far as possible, and supports approximate POSIX semantics, with POSIX, eventual and session coherency modes. It favors speed over correctness, where this would rarely be noticed.

Part of the project includes a cryptographically secure message-passing middleware for Haskell called Hermes, with distribution transparency and a gossip system. High-level SHA2 and AES bindings are also included.

The Hermes portion of the project is complete and usable, the Skynet portion is not.

Skynet and Hermes are designed for small-to-medium networks, achieving optimal performance at this size and suffering significant degradation in large networks. They are meant to be used for non-administrated applications in home networks.

Skynet offers single-bit security. The network is encrypted and authenticated, but there is no further security inside the network.