IPFS: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:34, 17 December 2023

IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) is a protocol, hypermedia and file sharing peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system. IPFS aims to make the web more efficient, resilient, and open by using content-addressing to uniquely identify each file in a global namespace. IPFS also enables persistent availability of data with or without internet backbone connectivity, and complements HTTP.

Installation

Install and enable kubo, which is the recommended IPFS implementation

services.kubo = {
  enable = true;
};

Note that after enabling this option and rebuilding your system, you need to log out and back in for the "IPFS_PATH" environment variable to be present in your shell. Until you do that, the CLI tools won't be able to talk to the daemon by default.

Usage

Publish a file and read it afterwards

# echo "hello world" > hello
# ipfs add hello
This should output a hash string that looks something like:
QmT78zSuBmuS4z925WZfrqQ1qHaJ56DQaTfyMUF7F8ff5o
# ipfs cat <that hash>

Download a file given a hash

# ipfs get <hash>

Publish and print directory content. For the ls command, use the hash of the root directory.

# ipfs add -r folder
# ipfs ls <hash>
# ipfs ls <hash>/subdirectory

@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 services.kubo = {
    enable = true;
-  settings.Addresses.API = ["/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/5001"];
 };
 </syntaxhighlight>
-Currently <code>settings.Addresses.API</code> need to be non-empty, otherwise Kubo will not start. See [https://github.com/ipfs/kubo/issues/10056#issuecomment-1674104498 this issue] for details.
+Note that after enabling this option and rebuilding your system, you need to log out and back in for the "IPFS_PATH" environment variable to be present in your shell. Until you do that, the CLI tools won't be able to talk to the daemon by default.
 == Usage ==