IPFS Mac Guide

ipfs-guide-mac.md

IPFS Guide

Mac Installation

1. Install Homebrew
2. ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
3. Install prerequisites
4. brew install git hg
5. brew install osxfuse (see Mac issues to troubleshoot common errors)
6. Install Go
7. Follow go-ipfs installation instructions
8. go get github.com/jbenet/go-ipfs/cmd/ipfs
9. cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/jbenet/go-ipfs/cmd/ipfs
10. go install
11. ipfs init (default configuration location is ~/.go-ipfs)

Getting started

Manipulating objects

1. ipfs add <path to file or directory>

• note the resulting object hash

Interfaces

Mount

When running in mount mode, go-ipfs attempts to mount IPFS inside directories on your system with FUSE. This allows for referencing and accessing objects as if they were a part of your local filesystem.

1. ipfs mount

• see General Issues to troubleshoot common errors
• when working correctly, you should see mounting ipfs at <mount path> and mounting ipns at <mount path>, followed by a blank line. This means it's running! Subsequent commands will need to be run at a separate terminal prompt

1. Verify your object is available: ls <mount point>/<object hash>

• This uses the system directory listing command NOT go-ipfs
• Running ls against a bad hash should result in "No such file or directory"

HTTP

TODO

General issues

When running ipfs mount, you may get errors similar to the following:

• ipfs mount: exit status 64: mount_osxfusefs: /ipfs: No such file or directory
  • Make sure the mounting directory exists
  • Default values are /ipfs and /ipns
  • Supply custom values with flags: ipfs mount -f="/Users/myaccountname/ipfs" -n="/Users/myaccountname/ipns"
• ipfs mount: exit status 71: mount_osxfusefs: failed to mount /ipfs@/dev/osxfuse0: Operation not permitted
  • Make sure the mounting directory has correct permissions. For exmaple, mount in a location in your user directory

Mac issues

• System crash when using ipfs mount
  • Install the latest Fuse with brew install osxfuse
• Brew error osxfuse: osxfuse is already installed from the binary distribution and conflicts with this formula.
  • Fuse may have been installed as part of another binary package
  • Install latest Fuse for OS X including Preferences Pane. After installation is complete, navigate to System Preferences -> FUSE for OS X -> Click "Remove OSXFUSE"
  • Try to brew install osxfuse again

Hm. I have no errors (after figuring out exactly what I ought to do), but also no files on the ipfs and ipns directories (I placed them inside my user because I was trouble getting the file permissions right).

Why? The system mount command shows the two mount points via Fuse. ipfs is running, I can access all my files from the IPFS Desktop, via web to the usual port, or even using ipfs ls <hash> (or even see that the files are correctly being retrieved using ipfs cat <hash> > /tmp/filename). Nevertheless, using either the Finder or the command line to navigate to the mounted folders, they are either empty, or, if I place anything inside them, they are just local files — not sync'ed with IPFS.

(Note that there is an .ipfs directory for my user — presumably set up by IPFS Desktop — which holds data in a completely different structure; I believe this is as it ought to be).

Some more info: I'm running macOS Big Sur version 11.0.1 (20B29), IPFS Desktop 0.13.2 and go-ipfs 0.7.0; I also use Brave with the IPFS extension (2.15.0). The actual command line to run ipfs is /Applications/IPFS Desktop.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/go-ipfs/go-ipfs/ipfs daemon --migrate --enable-gc --routing dhtclient.