ipld-eth-server/documentation/ipfs.md

PG-IPFS configuration

This doc walks through the steps to install IPFS and configure it to use Postgres as its backing datastore.

1. Start by downloading and moving into the IPFS repo:

go get github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs

cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs

2. Add the Postgres-supporting fork and switch over to it:

git remote add vulcanize https://github.com/vulcanize/go-ipfs.git

git fetch vulcanize

git checkout -b postgres_update tags/v0.4.22-alpha

3. Now install this fork of ipfs, first be sure to remove any previous installation:

make install

4. Check that is installed properly by running:

ipfs

You should see the CLI info/help output.

5. Now we initialize with the postgresds profile. If ipfs was previously initialized we will need to remove the old profile first. We also need to provide env variables for the postgres connection:

We can either set these manually, e.g.

export IPFS_PGHOST=
export IPFS_PGUSER=
export IPFS_PGDATABASE=
export IPFS_PGPORT=
export IPFS_PGPASSWORD=

And then run the ipfs command:

ipfs init --profile=postgresds

Or we can use the pre-made script at GOPATH/src/github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/misc/utility/ipfs_postgres.sh which has usage:

./ipfs_postgres.sh <IPFS_PGHOST> <IPFS_PGPORT> <IPFS_PGUSER> <IPFS_PGDATABASE>"

and will ask us to enter the password, avoiding storing it to an ENV variable.

Once we have initialized ipfs, that is all we need to do with it- we do not need to run a daemon during the subsequent processes.