Re:S3QL: an S3 FS with encryption, de-dup, immutable trees a...
by cperciva on Tuesday September 01, 2015 @03:55AM
(#10151217)
I'm also curious. I hadn't seen S3QL before it appeared at the top of HN.
Two things jump out at me from a quick glance at the site:
1. "S3QL splits files in blocks of a configurable size (default: 10 MB)" <-- this is quite a large block size and will result in significantly less deduplication than tarsnap's variable-length average 64kB blocks. (On the other hand, large blocks significantly reduce the amount of work and RAM needed; S3QL's tuning probably makes sense for a "live" filesystem.)
2. "all data can AES encrypted with a 256 bit key" <-- leaving aside the grammatical problem, I can't find anything beyond this about key management. At best this means that anyone who can decrypt data can encrypt it, and vice versa; but the usual rule about crypto documentation applies here: If people don't realize that the details matter, they're probably doing something wrong. (Unfortunately it's 1AM and I'm allergic to snakes, or else I would dig into the code to see exactly how their crypto works.)
Two things jump out at me from a quick glance at the site:
1. "S3QL splits files in blocks of a configurable size (default: 10 MB)" <-- this is quite a large block size and will result in significantly less deduplication than tarsnap's variable-length average 64kB blocks. (On the other hand, large blocks significantly reduce the amount of work and RAM needed; S3QL's tuning probably makes sense for a "live" filesystem.)
2. "all data can AES encrypted with a 256 bit key" <-- leaving aside the grammatical problem, I can't find anything beyond this about key management. At best this means that anyone who can decrypt data can encrypt it, and vice versa; but the usual rule about crypto documentation applies here: If people don't realize that the details matter, they're probably doing something wrong. (Unfortunately it's 1AM and I'm allergic to snakes, or else I would dig into the code to see exactly how their crypto works.)