lcsync - Librecast Multicast Sync Tool

Work in progress.

Librecast file and data syncing tool.

https://librecast.net/lcsync.html

Compare data with merkle trees, sync via multicast.

File Syncing

Data is compared by generating a merkle tree using blake2s hashes.

For local file syncing we walk the trees and compare the hashes to find which data blocks are different.

To sync remote files, each file is split into blocks and a merkle tree is built by hashing the blocks using BLAKE2S. On the sending/server side, this tree is sent on Librecast Channel (IPv6 multicast group) that is formed from the hash of the filename. The receiver/client joins this channel, and receives the tree. If the client already has some data to compare, it builds a merkle tree of the destination file and uses this to quickly compare which blocks differ. It builds a bitmap with this information, and then joins the Channel(s) for the block(s) required which are sent by the server.

There is no unicast communication with the server. There are no requests sent, and the server can sit behind a firewall which is completely closed to inbound TCP and UDP traffic. Instead, the server listens on a raw socket for Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD2) reports. It compares any MLD multicast group JOINs against the index it built on startup and finds matches for file (tree) and blocks. In this way, the server only sends data when at least one client is subscribed. If further clients want to download the data, the server need take no further action. Thus, the load on the server does not change at all, regardless of whether there is one client or a billion.

lcsync uses an experimental form of MLD triggering. Instead of using linked-lists for tracking multicast groups, as the Linux kernel does, I wanted to test something more scalable. There can potentially be 2^112 multicast groups in IPv6, so beyond a certain point the O(n) search on a linked-list does not scale. lcsync uses SIMD (CPU vector operations) to implement counted bloom filters, as well as what I'm calling a "bloom timer", which lets us track active multicast groups in O(1) constant time. This works, but has the drawback that even for 0 active groups, CPU usage is constant. The size of the bloom filters can be tuned depending on the expected number of simultaneous groups. It really only makes sense to use this approach for a large number or groups. For smaller numbers of groups, a binary tree or even a linked-list such as the Linux kernel uses is more appropriate. The option to use a simpler structure will be added in a future release.

Usage

Syncing local files:

lcsync source destination

lcsync assumes source and destination are network addresses unless told otherwise. To refer to a local destination, you must specify the path. For files in the local directory, prefix them with ./

Fetch remote file, save as localfile in current directory:

lcsync remote ./localfile

or

lcsync share/dir/file ./localfile

The following command fetches share/dir/file from the network and saves it as /tmp/oot/file:

lcsync share/dir/file /tmp/oot/

Serve local file:

lcsync /path/to/localfile

Serve local directory files. lcsync will index and serve all files under the source directory:

lcsync /path/to/files/

Options

--blocksz integer

hash file in /integer/ sized chunks

-c / --channels integer

maximum number of channels (multicast groups) to use when syncing

--delay integer

delay between packeets in microseconds

-n / --dry-run

don't copy any data

--hex

dump file hashes in hex

--loglevel integer

set loglevel

--mld

use MLD triggering

-q / --quiet

shhh - we're hunting wabbits

-v / --verbose

increase verbosity

-a / --archive

set archive options [presently only -p]

-p / --perms

set file permissions on destination

Testing

sudo make net-setup (sudo make net-teardown when finished)

sudo ip netns exec vnet0 sudo -u `id -un` /bin/bash

Now we can run make test and sudo make cap in our test namespace.

License

GPLv2 or (at your option) GPLv3

---

This project was funded through the NGI0 Discovery Fund, a fund established by NLnet with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology under grant agreement No 825322. *Applications are still open, you can apply today*