lcsync - Librecast Multicast Sync Tool

Librecast file and data syncing tool.

https://librecast.net/lcsync.html

Compare data with merkle trees, sync via multicast.

Work in progress.

File Syncing

Data is compared by generating a merkle tree using BLAKE3 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 BLAKE3. 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.

Forward Error Correction (FEC) is enabled by default using RaptorQ (RFC 6330) from the Librecast LCRQ library.

Symmetric encryption is provided using the XSalsa20 stream cipher from libsodium with Poly1305 MAC authentication tags. A keyfile can be provided, or a key can be derived from a user-supplied password.

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 (MLD) 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 more 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.

Bloom Filters

NB: The bloom filter code has been removed for the moment. This section is left here for reference. This option will likely return in a future release, once the bloom filter code is merged into the librecast library.

If configured with the option --enable-bloom-filters 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 linked-list such as the Linux kernel uses is more appropriate, which is the default since v0.0.2.

Building

Prerequisites:

• liblibrecast - the Librecast IPv6 multicast library
• libcrq - the Librecast RaptorQ library
• libsodium - a modern, easy-to-use software library for encryption

Installation:

NB: GNU Make is required. On *BSD install and use gmake. The bash shell is also required for make test.

./configure
make
make test (optional)
make install # requires root privileges

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

-a / --archive

set archive options [presently only -p]

--hex

print file hashes in hex

-i / --interface interface

send/recv on specified interface

--loglevel integer

set loglevel

-n / --dry-run

don't copy any data

-p / --perms

set file permissions on destination

-q / --quiet

shhh - we're hunting wabbits

-v / --verbose

increase verbosity

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

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This project was funded through the NGI0 Discovery and NGI Assure Funds, 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 agreements 825322 and 957073. *Applications are still open, you can apply today*