Pingfs: A filesystem where data is stored as ICMP Echo packets (2016)

https://github.com/yarrick/pingfs

by signa11 • 9 years ago

119 44 9 years ago

github.com

coolspot• 9 years ago

This needs IPO.

vthriller• 9 years ago

You mean ICO, right?

TeMPOraL• 9 years ago

Want to buy some ICMPCoins?

zaptheimpaler• 9 years ago

This is exactly what I needed - not a lot of people are doing eventually inconsistent databases yet. If theres a network partition, shits probably fucked anyways so its best to throw away all your data.

Unfortunately the metadata (list of files) is stored in memory, not network. Not quite as unreliable as I would like.

techdragon• 9 years ago

Sounds like your looking for something like MangoDb https://github.com/dcramer/mangodb

Note: joke assumes parent poster was somewhat humorous

emptyroads• 9 years ago

nsafs might be another good choice: https://github.com/freedomtools/nsafs

DarronWyke• 9 years ago

Obligatory: "Tokutek claims to improve MongoDB performance 20x. It is unclear if this also means losing 20x as many documents."

dragonwriter• 9 years ago

Eventually inconsistent databases could save a lot of the effort developers faced with databases without inconsistency guarantees put into implementing eventual inconsistency at the application level.

cvwright• 9 years ago

This is the perfect transport for GNU Terry Pratchett.

http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com/

chillaxtian• 9 years ago

Just had a quick look to see the general flow.

Only looked at the read path, which is roughly:

* filesystem receives read

* blocks on a semaphore (https://github.com/yarrick/pingfs/blob/master/chunk.c#L141)

* network thread wakes up semaphore when ICMP reply containing data is received

* filesystem thread copies data into new buffer to return from syscall

* filesystem relinquishes chunk back to network thread, which wakes up, sends it back to be echoed on the network via ICMP, and frees the in-memory buffer (https://github.com/yarrick/pingfs/blob/master/chunk.c#L107)

How silly :)

Annatar5• 9 years ago

Linux is the only intended target OS, portability is not a goal.

Goodbye then.

chrisper• 9 years ago

You can fork it and port it to something like dokany to make it work in Windows.

Const-me• 9 years ago

Based on Annatar's profile, he'd like it to work on FreeBSD.

djsumdog2• 9 years ago

wosh

thsealienbstrds• 9 years ago

redundancy == broadcast ping

robin_reala• 9 years ago

This reminds me of delay line memory, storing information in the echo of a sound: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory . LEO had long tubes of mercury for this, not sure I would have wanted to work in that office.

datenwolf• 9 years ago

Same principle, but using slabs of glass, was used in PAL analog color television until digital memory got cheap enough to implement the delay line.

avian2• 9 years ago

I think very few bits here are actually stored in-flight on the copper/fiber/radio at any time. Most of them are probably stored in various buffers of networking equipment (which are ordinary semiconductor RAM). It would be interesting to see someone do an actual breakdown for, say, a transatlantic link.

My gut feeling says that only geostationary satellite links have any significant number of bits in-flight.

detaro• 9 years ago

Very simplified, but assuming a 5000 km cable and 300 000 km/s speed of light (is slightly slower in fiber), light needs 0.01666... seconds for that. At 10 Gbit/s (fairly slow), that'd mean ~ 166 Mbit or ~ 20 Megabyte in flight. (I hope I didn't forget a factor 1000 somewhere)

dbcurtis• 9 years ago

Actually, Engineering Research Associates (predecessor of Univac) built a CPU with mercury delay line memory using acoustic transducers to create a shift register. It did bit-serial binary arithmetic. You could get two logic gates or one latch out of a dual pentode, so a bit-serial ALU could fit easily in a single rack.

I'm not familiar with the overall architecture, though, unfortunately. I do remember having to do a most-significant-bit first, bit-serial, two's complement adder as a homework assignment that was inspire by the machine.

thelomen• 9 years ago

Reminds me a little of PingTunnel :) https://www.cs.uit.no/~daniels/PingTunnel

catwell• 9 years ago

The author of PingFS is actually the same as iodine (IP over DNS: http://code.kryo.se/iodine/).

SwellJoe• 9 years ago

Can't wait for the ICO.

kelson• 9 years ago

Prior art https://www.shysecurity.com/post/20120401-PingFS

thoastbrot• 9 years ago

not exactly new: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=pingfs&sort=byPopularity&prefi...

dang• 9 years ago

Previous discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Pingfs%20points%3E3&sort=byDat....

mmjaa• 9 years ago

Cool .. all we need now is a host waaaaay out in space, and we can just use space itself to store all our data (not that we aren't already) ..

speedplane• 9 years ago

Of course the gut reaction to this is "why?" and the obvious answer is "because I can"... that's fine, but there's been plenty of filesystems built on protocols or things that weren't really supposed to be filesystems.

I remember way back when gmail first announced giving away 1GB of storage, there were a bunch of hacky things to turn SMTP into a real filesystem.

So, I get the answer to "why make this weird filesystem", but I'd really like to know: why is this weird filesystem, weirder or more intriguing than the others that have come before it.

Pingfs: A filesystem where data is stored as ICMP Echo packets (2016)

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