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In the world of git, we're not scared about internal implementation
details, and sometimes we like to dive in and tweak things by hand. Here's
some documentation to that end.
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## `.git/annex/objects/aa/bb/*/*`
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This is where locally available file contents are actually stored.
Files added to the annex get a symlink checked into git that points
to the file content.
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First there are two levels of directories used for hashing, to prevent
too many things ending up in any one directory.
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See [[hashing]] for details.
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Each subdirectory has the [[name_of_a_key|key_format]] in one of the
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[[key-value_backends|backends]]. The file inside also has the name of the key.
This two-level structure is used because it allows the write bit to be removed
from the subdirectories as well as from the files. That prevents accidentially
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deleting or changing the file contents. See [[lockdown]] for details.
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In [[direct_mode]], file contents are not stored in here, and instead
are stored directly in the file. However, the same symlinks are still
committed to git, internally.
Also in [[direct_mode]], some additional data is stored in these directories.
`.cache` files contain cached file stats used in detecting when a file has
changed, and `.map` files contain a list of file(s) in the work directory
that contain the key.
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# `.git/annex/tmp/`
This directory contains partially transferred objects.
# `.git/annex/misctmp/`
This is a temp directory for miscellaneous other temp files.
While .git/annex/objects and .git/annex/tmp can be put on different
filesystems if desired, .git/annex/misctmp
has to be on the same filesystem as the work tree and git repository.
# `.git/annex/bad/`
git-annex fsck puts any bad objects it finds in here.
# `.git/annex/transfers/`
Contains information files for uploads and downloads that are in progress,
as well as any that have failed. Used especially by the assistant.
It is safe to delete these files.
# `.git/annex/ssh/`
ssh connection caching files are written in here.
# `.git/annex/index`
This is a git index file which git-annex uses for commits to the git-annex
branch.
# `.git/annex/journal/`
git-annex uses this to journal changes to the git-annex branch,
before committing a set of changes.
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## The git-annex branch
This branch is managed by git-annex, with the contents listed below.
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The file `.git/annex/index` is a separate git index file it uses
slow, stupid, and safe index updating
Always merge the git-annex branch into .git/annex/index before making a
commit from the index.
This ensures that, when the branch has been changed in any way
(by a push being received, or changes pulled directly into it, or
even by the user checking it out, and committing a change), the index
reflects those changes.
This is much too slow; it needs to be optimised to only update the
index when the branch has really changed, not every time.
Also, there is an unhandled race, when a change is made to the branch
right after the index gets updated. I left it in for now because it's
unlikely and I didn't want to complicate things with additional locking
yet.
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to accumulate changes for the git-annex branch.
Also, `.git/annex/journal/` is used to record changes before they
are added to git.
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This branch operates on objects exclusively. No file names will ever
be stored in this branch.
add remote state logs
This allows a remote to store a piece of arbitrary state associated with a
key. This is needed to support Tahoe, where the file-cap is calculated from
the data stored in it, and used to retrieve a key later. Glacier also would
be much improved by using this.
GETSTATE and SETSTATE are added to the external special remote protocol.
Note that the state is left as-is even when a key is removed from a remote.
It's up to the remote to decide when it wants to clear the state.
The remote state log, $KEY.log.rmt, is a UUID-based log. However,
rather than using the old UUID-based log format, I created a new variant
of that format. The new varient is more space efficient (since it lacks the
"timestamp=" hack, and easier to parse (and the parser doesn't mess with
whitespace in the value), and avoids compatability cruft in the old one.
This seemed worth cleaning up for these new files, since there could be a
lot of them, while before UUID-based logs were only used for a few log
files at the top of the git-annex branch. The transition code has also
been updated to handle these new UUID-based logs.
This commit was sponsored by Daniel Hofer.
2014-01-03 20:35:57 +00:00
The files stored in this branch are all designed to be auto-merged
using git's [[union merge driver|git-union-merge]]. So each line
has a timestamp, to allow the most recent information to be identified.
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### `uuid.log`
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Records the UUIDs of known repositories, and associates them with a
description of the repository. This allows git-annex to display something
more useful than a UUID when it refers to a repository that does not have
a configured git remote pointing at it.
The file format is simply one line per repository, with the uuid followed by a
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space and then the description, followed by a timestamp. Example:
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e605dca6-446a-11e0-8b2a-002170d25c55 laptop timestamp=1317929189.157237s
26339d22-446b-11e0-9101-002170d25c55 usb disk timestamp=1317929330.769997s
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## `numcopies.log`
Records the global numcopies setting.
The file format is simply a timestamp followed by a number.
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## `remote.log`
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Holds persistent configuration settings for [[special_remotes]] such as
Amazon S3.
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The file format is one line per remote, starting with the uuid of the
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remote, followed by a space, and then a series of var=value pairs,
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each separated by whitespace, and finally a timestamp.
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Encrypted special remotes store their encryption key here,
in the "cipher" value. It is base64 encoded, and unless shared [[encryption]]
is used, is encrypted to one or more gpg keys. The first 256 bytes of
the cipher is used as the HMAC SHA1 encryption key, to encrypt filenames
stored on the special remote. The remainder of the cipher is used as a gpg
symmetric encryption key, to encrypt the content of files stored on the special
remote.
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## `trust.log`
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Records the [[trust]] information for repositories. Does not exist unless
[[trust]] values are configured.
The file format is one line per repository, with the uuid followed by a
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space, and then either `1` (trusted), `0` (untrusted), `?` (semi-trusted),
`X` (dead) and finally a timestamp.
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Example:
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e605dca6-446a-11e0-8b2a-002170d25c55 1 timestamp=1317929189.157237s
26339d22-446b-11e0-9101-002170d25c55 ? timestamp=1317929330.769997s
Repositories not listed are semi-trusted.
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## `group.log`
Used to group repositories together.
The file format is one line per repository, with the uuid followed by a space,
and then a space-separated list of groups this repository is part of,
and finally a timestamp.
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## `preferred-content.log`
Used to indicate which repositories prefer to contain which file contents.
The file format is one line per repository, with the uuid followed by a space,
then a boolean expression, and finally a timestamp.
Files matching the expression are preferred to be retained in the
repository, while files not matching it are preferred to be stored
somewhere else.
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## `aaa/bbb/*.log`
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These log files record [[location_tracking]] information
add remote state logs
This allows a remote to store a piece of arbitrary state associated with a
key. This is needed to support Tahoe, where the file-cap is calculated from
the data stored in it, and used to retrieve a key later. Glacier also would
be much improved by using this.
GETSTATE and SETSTATE are added to the external special remote protocol.
Note that the state is left as-is even when a key is removed from a remote.
It's up to the remote to decide when it wants to clear the state.
The remote state log, $KEY.log.rmt, is a UUID-based log. However,
rather than using the old UUID-based log format, I created a new variant
of that format. The new varient is more space efficient (since it lacks the
"timestamp=" hack, and easier to parse (and the parser doesn't mess with
whitespace in the value), and avoids compatability cruft in the old one.
This seemed worth cleaning up for these new files, since there could be a
lot of them, while before UUID-based logs were only used for a few log
files at the top of the git-annex branch. The transition code has also
been updated to handle these new UUID-based logs.
This commit was sponsored by Daniel Hofer.
2014-01-03 20:35:57 +00:00
for file contents. These are placed in two levels of subdirectories
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for hashing. See [[hashing]] for details.
The name of the key is the filename, and the content
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consists of a timestamp, either 1 (present) or 0 (not present), and
the UUID of the repository that has or lacks the file content.
Example:
1287290776.765152s 1 e605dca6-446a-11e0-8b2a-002170d25c55
1287290767.478634s 0 26339d22-446b-11e0-9101-002170d25c55
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## `aaa/bbb/*.log.web`
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These log files record urls used by the
[[web_special_remote|special_remotes/web]]. Their format is similar
to the location tracking files, but with urls rather than UUIDs.
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add remote state logs
This allows a remote to store a piece of arbitrary state associated with a
key. This is needed to support Tahoe, where the file-cap is calculated from
the data stored in it, and used to retrieve a key later. Glacier also would
be much improved by using this.
GETSTATE and SETSTATE are added to the external special remote protocol.
Note that the state is left as-is even when a key is removed from a remote.
It's up to the remote to decide when it wants to clear the state.
The remote state log, $KEY.log.rmt, is a UUID-based log. However,
rather than using the old UUID-based log format, I created a new variant
of that format. The new varient is more space efficient (since it lacks the
"timestamp=" hack, and easier to parse (and the parser doesn't mess with
whitespace in the value), and avoids compatability cruft in the old one.
This seemed worth cleaning up for these new files, since there could be a
lot of them, while before UUID-based logs were only used for a few log
files at the top of the git-annex branch. The transition code has also
been updated to handle these new UUID-based logs.
This commit was sponsored by Daniel Hofer.
2014-01-03 20:35:57 +00:00
## `aaa/bbb/*.log.rmt`
These log files are used by remotes that need to record their own state
about keys. Each remote can store one line of data about a key, in
its own format.
Example:
1287290776.765152s e605dca6-446a-11e0-8b2a-002170d25c55 blah blah
1287290767.478634s 26339d22-446b-11e0-9101-002170d25c55 foo=bar
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## `aaa/bbb/*.log.met`
These log files are used to store arbitrary [[design/metadata]] about keys.
Each key can have any number of metadata fields. Each field has a set of
values.
Lines are timestamped, and record when values are added (`field +value`),
but also when values are removed (`field -value`). Removed values
are retained in the log so that when merging an old line that sets a value
that was later unset, the value is not accidentially added back.
For example:
1287290776.765152s tag +foo +bar author +joey
1291237510.141453s tag -bar +baz
The value can be completely arbitrary data, although it's typically
reasonably short. If the value contains any whitespace
(including \r or \r), it will be base64 encoded. Base64 encoded values
are indicated by prefixing them with "!"
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## `schedule.log`
Used to record scheduled events, such as periodic fscks.
The file format is simply one line per repository, with the uuid followed by a
space and then its schedule, followed by a timestamp.
There can be multiple events in the schedule, separated by "; "
The format of the scheduled events is the same described in
the SCHEDULED JOBS section of the man page.
Example:
42bf2035-0636-461d-a367-49e9dfd361dd fsck self 30m every day at any time; fsck 4b3ebc86-0faf-4892-83c5-ce00cbe30f0a 1h every year at any time timestamp=1385646997.053162s
## `transitions.log`
Used to record transitions, eg by `git annex forget`
Each line of the file is a transition, followed by a timestamp.
Example:
ForgetGitHistory 1387325539.685136s
ForgetDeadRemotes 1387325539.685136s
