IPFS | PantherX Operating System Wiki

Installation

guix package -i go-ipfs

Initialize a local config:

$ ipfs init
generating ED25519 keypair...done
peer identity: 12D3KooWDnSN7beiiizfizaAQP7CiCkSakjdsqoqesB5Z6fyUbe
initializing IPFS node at /home/franz/.ipfs
to get started, enter:

        ipfs cat /ipfs/QmQPeNsJPyVWPFDVHbasjdkadlqwdqasX8D2GhfbSXc/readme

Firewall configuration

For IPFS to be able to serve files from your computer, you will need to open TCP port 4001. Here’s what this looks like in the system configuration (/etc/system.scm):

#:open-ports '(("tcp" "4001"))

To apply the changes, run as root:

# (1) reconfigure
guix system reconfigure /etc/system.scm
# (2) Restart nftables firewall
herd restart nftables

You can confirm the port is open, with

$ nft list ruleset
table inet filter {
        chain input {
                type filter hook input priority filter; policy drop;
                ct state invalid drop
                ct state { established, related } accept
                iifname "lo" accept
                ip protocol icmp accept
                ip6 nexthdr ipv6-icmp accept
                tcp dport 4001 accept # <-----------
                reject
        }

        chain forward {
                type filter hook forward priority filter; policy drop;
        }

        chain output {
                type filter hook output priority filter; policy accept;
        }
}

Lastly setup TCP 4001 port forwarding on your router. Refer to NAT configuration (docs.ipfs.tech) for more information.

Run

Start ipfs:

$ ipfs daemon
Initializing daemon...
go-ipfs version: 0.11.0
Repo version: 11
System version: amd64/linux
Golang version: go1.17.11
...
API server listening on /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/5001
WebUI: http://127.0.0.1:5001/webui
Gateway (readonly) server listening on /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/8080
Daemon is ready

If you open http://127.0.0.1:5001/webui in your browser, you should see the web interface.

Usage

It’s easy enough to add a new file to IPFS via browser, but much faster with command line:

$ ipfs add Downloads/webui.png
added QmXRnLoUPWev9wNPcGEaHH7tUGhsrj9ntF44MxwYQiUfx3 webui.png
 234.72 KiB / 234.72 KiB [========================================================================================================================] 100.00%

This is me, uploading the above screenshot to IPFS.

Now I should be able to download the file from any other computer in the world, assuming it’s available (some IPFS node has a copy of the file and is able to serve it - most likely that’s just mine, for the moment). Here’s what this looks like:

$ ipfs get QmXRnLoUPWev9wNPcGEaHH7tUGhsrj9ntF44MxwYQiUfx3
Saving file(s) to QmXRnLoUPWev9wNPcGEaHH7tUGhsrj9ntF44MxwYQiUfx3
 234.72 KiB / 234.72 KiB [========================================================================================================================] 100.00%

The filename QmXRnLoUPWev9wNPcGEaHH7tUGhsrj9ntF44MxwYQiUfx3 is pretty meaningless at the moment, but most files should be recognized just fine, even without extention. To make it handling easier, we’ll rename it:

mv QmXRnLoUPWev9wNPcGEaHH7tUGhsrj9ntF44MxwYQiUfx3 webui.png

That’s it for now.