This is a distributed network for backup data storage. Each participant of the network provides a portion of his hard drive for other users. In exchange, he is able to store his data on other peers.
The redundancy in backup makes it so if someone loses your data, you can rebuild what was lost and give it to someone else to hold. And all of this happens without you having to do a thing - the software keeps your data in safe.
All your data is encrypted before it leaves your computer with a private key your computer generates. No one else can read your data, even BitDust Team! Recover data is only one way - download the necessary pieces from computers of other peers and decrypt them with your private key.
BitDust is written in Python using pure Twisted framework and published under GNU AGPLv3.
Current project stage is about to only research opportunities of building a holistic eco-system that protects your privacy in the network by establishing p2p communications of users and maximize distribution of information flows in the network.
At the moment exists a very limited alpha version of the BitDust software. We decided to publish those earlier works to verify/test/share our ideas and experiments with other people.
Seems like in Ubuntu (probably most other distros) you can install all dependencies in that way:
sudo apt-get install git python-dev python-setuptools python-pip python-virtualenv python-twisted python-django python-crypto python-pyasn1 python-psutil libffi-dev libssl-dev
Optionally, you can also install miniupnpc tool if you want BitDust automatically deal with UPnPc configuration of your network router so it can also accept incoming connections from other nodes.:
sudo apt-get install miniupnpc
Second step is to get the BitDust sources:
git clone https://github.com/bitdust-io/public.git bitdust
Then you need to build virtual environment with all required Python dependencies, BitDust software will run fully isolated.
Single command should make it for you, all required files will be generated in ~/.bitdust/venv/ sub-folder:
cd bitdust
python bitdust.py install
Last step to make BitDust software ready is to make a short alias in your OS, then you can just type bitdust in command line to fast access the program:
sudo ln -s /home/<user>/.bitdust/bitdust /usr/local/bin/bitdust
Start using the software by creating an identity for your device in BitDust network:
bitdust id create <some nick name>
I recommend you to create another copy of your Private Key in a safe place to be able to recover your data in the future. You can do it with such command:
bitdust key copy <nickname>.bitdust.key
Your settings and local files are located in that folder: ~/.bitdust
Type this command to read more info about BitDust commands:
bitdust help
To run the software type:
bitdust
Start as background process:
bitdust detach
To get some more insights or just to know how to start playing with software you can visit BitDust Commands page.
If you are installing BitDust on Windows platforms, you may require some binary packages already compiled and packaged for Microsoft Windows platforms, you can check following locations and download needed binaries and libraries:
- cygwin: cygwin.com
- git: git-scm.com
- python 2.7 (python3 is not supported yet): python.org
- twisted 11.0 or higher: twistedmatrix.com
- pyasn1: pyasn1.sourceforge.net
- pyOpenSSL: launchpad.net/pyopenssl
- pycrypto: dlitz.net/software/pycrypto
- wxgtk2.8: wxpython.org
- miniupnpc: miniupnp.tuxfamily.org