AntFTP

AntFTP is an FTP server designed to bridge FTP commands to AntTP via gRPC and Protobuf. It allows users to access AntTP archives using standard FTP clients.

Features

• AntTP Integration: Directly interacts with AntTP archives using gRPC.
• Pointer Support: Can resolve archive addresses via AntTP pointers.
• Rclone Compatibility: Works seamlessly with rclone to provide a FUSE mount over FTP.

Design

AntFTP acts as a proxy between the FTP protocol and the AntTP gRPC interface. It uses libunftp as the core FTP engine and implements a custom storage backend (unftp-sbe-anttp) that translates file operations into gRPC calls to an AntTP node.

graph LR
    Client[FTP Client] -- FTP --> AntFTP
    AntFTP -- gRPC --> AntTP[AntTP Node]
    AntTP -- P2P --> Network[Autonomi Network]

Usage

Command Line Arguments

You can run AntFTP with the following arguments:

• -a, --archive <ARCHIVE>: The AntTP archive hash to use. (Default: efdcdc93db39d5ffef254f9bb3e069fc6315a1054f20a8b00343629f7773663b)
• -p, --pointer-name <POINTER_NAME>: Optional pointer name to resolve the archive address from AntTP.
• -l, --listen-address <LISTEN_ADDRESS>: The address and port the FTP server will listen on. (Default: 127.0.0.1:2121)
• -n, --network-sync-timer <MINUTES>: Network sync interval in minutes. Only used when a pointer is provided. (Default: 10)

Network Syncing

When a pointer name is provided via -p, AntFTP periodically synchronizes the current archive state to the Autonomi network. The sync timer (-n) determines how often (in minutes) AntFTP checks if the archive has changed and pushes any updates to the network. This ensures that your data is eventually persisted to the decentralized network while allowing for fast, local-first iterations.

Example:

./antftp --archive <your-archive-hash> --listen-address 127.0.0.1:2121

Environment Variables

• ANTTP_GRPC_ENDPOINT: The gRPC endpoint of the AntTP node. (Default: http://localhost:18887)

Connecting with an FTP Client

You can use any standard FTP CLI client to connect to AntFTP.

Using standard ftp client:

1. Connect to the server:

   ftp 127.0.0.1 2121
   

2. When prompted for a user, you can use any name (e.g., anonymous) as authentication is currently handled by the AntTP archive permissions.
3. You can now use standard FTP commands like ls, get, put, etc.

FUSE Mount with Rclone

You can use rclone to mount an AntTP archive as a local file system via AntFTP.

1. Configure Rclone: Add a new FTP remote in rclone:

   rclone config
   

   • Name: anttp
   • Type: ftp
   • Host: 127.0.0.1
   • User: anonymous
   • Port: 2121

2. Mount the Archive:

   mkdir ~/mnt/anttp
   rclone mount anttp: ~/mnt/anttp --vfs-cache-mode full
   

Now you can browse your AntTP archive as if it were a local directory.

Logging

AntFTP uses env_logger for logging. You can control the log level using the RUST_LOG environment variable.

Example:

RUST_LOG=info ./antftp

To see detailed FTP command logs, use RUST_LOG=debug.

Limitations

Currently, AntFTP asks AntTP to store files to disk, rather than Autonomi network. In a future release, AntTP will be instructed to sync files from disk to the network. This allows many changes to be performed iteratively without requiring a full sync.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.