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

getting started #1: say: "note the resulting hash value" or similar

bah, silly markdown! had the words enclosed in angle brackets that got stripped

Looks like the brew recipe has been moved to cask, it's installing for me via

brew cask install osxfuse

I have IPFS working correctly and have installed the latest version of FUSE from the installer (3.8.2).

Following the instructions here:https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/blob/master/docs/fuse.md

But getting errors when starting the daemon.

> ipfs daemon --mount
Initializing daemon...
Successfully raised file descriptor limit to 2048.
Swarm listening on /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/4001
Swarm listening on /ip4/192.168.52.134/tcp/4001
Swarm listening on /ip6/::1/tcp/4001
Swarm listening on /p2p-circuit/ipfs/QmRoTtgs4CUxKmfDBuRyZLt3YQDMhJiwfLS4RY5HG8WzoL
Swarm announcing /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/4001
Swarm announcing /ip4/192.168.52.134/tcp/4001
Swarm announcing /ip6/::1/tcp/4001
API server listening on /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/5001
13:30:06.118 ERROR       node: error mounting: mount_osxfusefs: exit status 64 mount_unix.go:89
13:30:06.118 ERROR       node: error mounting: mount_osxfusefs: exit status 71 mount_unix.go:93
Error: mount_osxfusefs: exit status 64
Received interrupt signal, shutting down...
(Hit ctrl-c again to force-shutdown the daemon.)

13:30:06.118 ERROR node: error mounting: mount_osxfusefs: exit status 64 mount_unix.go:89
13:30:06.118 ERROR node: error mounting: mount_osxfusefs: exit status 71 mount_unix.go:93
Error: mount_osxfusefs: exit status 64

Your error seems to be with OSXFUSE. Try starting the deamon without --mount. Do the mounting afterwards and look into General Issues. E.g. on my machine, mounting worked after manually creating mount folders elsewhere and then supplying the paths via the flags -f& -n.

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.