DistFS

A work-in-progress personal distributed file system for learning distributed systems by building one I actually use.

Updated at: May 15, 2026

DistFS is a single-user distributed storage system focused on understanding real distributed systems concepts — consensus, consistency models, replication, locking, and fault tolerance — through implementation, not just theory.

This project exists for two reasons:

1. Re-learn distributed systems deeply enough to reason about them without notes.
2. Build a personal cloud storage system I actually trust with my own data.

The product is the forcing function for the learning.

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Current Status

🚧 Work in progress — early architecture + implementation phase

Current focus:

• 3-node Raft cluster
• replicated metadata service
• CLI filesystem operations
• fault tolerance and leader election

Planned later:

• FUSE mount
• chunked file storage
• LAN deployment across real machines
• Tailscale access
• encryption support

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Goals

DistFS aims to provide:

• Strongly consistent metadata
• Replicated file storage
• Single-user edit-in-place workflows
• Fault tolerance across 3 nodes
• Practical filesystem semantics
• Explicit CAP tradeoffs

This is intentionally:

• not multi-user
• not offline-first
• not a Dropbox clone
• not a research project inventing new algorithms

The goal is to use existing ideas (Raft, replication, linearizable metadata) correctly and understand them deeply.

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Planned Architecture

          Client (CLI / FUSE)
                   |
                   v
        +-------------------+
        | Raft Metadata     |
        | Cluster (3 nodes) |
        +-------------------+
                   |
                   v
          Replicated Chunks