InterPlanetary File System

Full Title

The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a protocol and peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system. IPFS uses content-addressing to uniquely identify each file in a Global Namespace connecting all computing devices.

Context

• IPFS was first deployed in 2015 and grew by word-of-mouth as a replacement to HTTP for static content.
• It allows users to host content as well as to search for it.
• If users do not wish to host content, they can access IPFS by a public gateway.

Swarm

Swarm addresses are addresses that the local daemon will listen on for connections from other IPFS peers. You should try to ensure that these addresses can be accessed from a separate computer and that there are no firewalls blocking the ports you specify. Typically port will be 4001.

API

The API address is the address that the daemon will serve the http API from. This API is used to control the daemon through the command line, or simply via curl if you're feeling adventurous. You should ensure that this address is not accessible from outside of your machine or VPN, to prevent potentially malicious parties sending commands to your IPFS daemon. Typically port will be 5001.

Gateway

The Gateway address is the address that the daemon will serve the gateway interface from. The gateway may be used to view files through IPFS, and serve static web content. This port may or may not be accessible from outside of your machine; that's entirely optional. The gateway address if left blank will not start the gateway service. Typically port will be 8080.

Windows

The context of this wiki page is windows, but the typical context of go is GNU so some helpful translations are

• ~ tilde is the same as $HOME which in Powershell is $env:USERPROFILE
• ~/ipfs is the default directory for all things ispf include the config file
• the most significant part of the config that might want to be changed are here - note in particular "API": "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/5001", which may need to be changed to 0.0.0.0 if you need to access ipfs from any devices other than localhost.

  "Addresses": {
    "Swarm": [
      "/ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/4001",
      "/ip6/::/tcp/4001",
      "/ip4/0.0.0.0/udp/4001/quic",
      "/ip6/::/udp/4001/quic"
    ],
    "Announce": [],
    "NoAnnounce": [],
    "API": "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/5001",
    "Gateway": "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/8080"
  },
  "Mounts": {
    "IPFS": "/ipfs",
    "IPNS": "/ipns",
    "FuseAllowOther": false
  }

Installing

• go ipfs installation instructions
• go ipfs on Github from Google has installation and test advice using the command line interpreter (CLI) instructions.

For Windows using chocolatey.

> choco install go-ipfs
> ipfs init
> ipfs daemon

By default the client looks for a daemon at http://localhost:5001. This can be overridden by either setting the environment variable IpfsHttpUrl or initializing the client with an URL.

// js-ipfs likes this address
static readonly IpfsClient ipfs = new IpfsClient("http://127.0.0.1:5002");

Test to see if the daemon is running by typing this in your browser.

http://localhost:5001/ipfs/bafybeianwe4vy7sprht5sm3hshvxjeqhwcmvbzq73u55sdhqngmohkjgs4/#/

Using

IPFS can run in either online or offline mode. Online mode is when when you have IPFS running separately as a daemon process. If you do not have an IPFS daemon running, you are in offline mode. Some commands, like ipfs swarm peers, are only supported when online.

• The WebUI instructions at the place where CORS headers are addressed for enabling access between computers.

Solutions

• the Sidetree protocol uses IPFS to insure that Identifiers are unique.
• A nice view of the CLI interface to ipfs from infura.

Troubleshooting

Check out the installation guide in the IPFS Docs, or try these common fixes:

Is your IPFS daemon running? Try starting or restarting it from your terminal:

ANY SHELL
$ ipfs daemon
Initializing daemon...
API server listening on /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/5001
or if you are running on multiple computers
API server listening on /ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/5001

Is your IPFS API configured to allow cross-origin (CORS) requests? If not, run these commands and then start your daemon from the terminal:

 WINDOWS POWERSHELL ONLY
$a =  '[\"http://localhost:3000\", \"https://webui.ipfs.io\", \"http://127.0.0.1:5001\"]'
$a
[\"http://localhost:3000\", \"https://webui.ipfs.io\", \"http://127.0.0.1:5001\"]
ipfs config --json API.HTTPHeaders.Access-Control-Allow-Origin $a

$ ipfs config --json API.HTTPHeaders.Access-Control-Allow-Origin '["http://192.168.254.24:5001", "http://localhost:3000", "http://127.0.0.1:5001", "https://webui.ipfs.io"]'
$ ipfs config --json API.HTTPHeaders.Access-Control-Allow-Methods '["PUT", "POST"]'

References

Other Material

• IPFS Shipyard - Incubated projects by the IPFS Community.