What is Kubo?

Kubo was the first IPFS implementation and is the most widely used one today. Implementing the Interplanetary Filesystem - the Web3 standard and contender to replace https. Thus powered by IPLD's data models and the libp2p for network communication. Kubo is written in Go.

Featureset

• Runs an IPFS-Node as a network service
• Command Line Interface to IPFS-Nodes
• Local Web2-to-Web3 HTTP Gateway functionality
• HTTP RPC API (/api/v0) to access and control the daemon
• IPFS's internal Webgui can be used to manage the Kubo nodes

Other implementations

See List

What is IPFS?

IPFS is a global, versioned, peer-to-peer filesystem. It combines good ideas from previous systems such as Git, BitTorrent, Kademlia, SFS, and the Web. It is like a single BitTorrent swarm, exchanging git objects. IPFS provides an interface as simple as the HTTP web, but with permanence built-in. You can also mount the world at /ipfs.

For more info see: https://docs.ipfs.tech/concepts/what-is-ipfs/

Before opening an issue, consider using one of the following locations to ensure you are opening your thread in the right place:

• kubo (previously named go-ipfs) implementation bugs in this repo.
• Documentation issues in ipfs/docs issues.
• IPFS design in ipfs/specs issues.
• Exploration of new ideas in ipfs/notes issues.
• Ask questions and meet the rest of the community at the IPFS Forum.
• Or chat with us.

Next milestones

Milestones on GitHub

Table of Contents

• What is Kubo?
• What is IPFS?
• Next milestones
• Table of Contents
• Security Issues
• Install
  • System Requirements
  • Docker
  • Official prebuilt binaries
    • Updating
      • Using ipfs-update
      • Downloading builds using IPFS
  • Unofficial Linux packages
    • ArchLinux
    • Nix
    • Solus
    • openSUSE
    • Guix
    • Snap
  • Unofficial MacOS packages
    • MacPorts
    • Nix
    • Homebrew
  • Unofficial Windows packages
    • Chocolatey
    • Scoop
  • Build from Source
    • Install Go
    • Download and Compile IPFS
      • Cross Compiling
      • OpenSSL
    • Troubleshooting
• Getting Started
  • Usage
  • Some things to try
  • Troubleshooting
• Packages
• Development
  • Map of Implemented Subsystems
  • CLI, HTTP-API, Architecture Diagram
  • Testing
  • Development Dependencies
  • Developer Notes
• Maintainer Info
• Contributing
• License

Security Issues

Please follow SECURITY.md.

Install

The canonical download instructions for IPFS are over at: https://docs.ipfs.tech/install/. It is highly recommended you follow those instructions if you are not interested in working on IPFS development.

System Requirements

IPFS can run on most Linux, macOS, and Windows systems. We recommend running it on a machine with at least 2 GB of RAM and 2 CPU cores (kubo is highly parallel). On systems with less memory, it may not be completely stable.

If your system is resource-constrained, we recommend:

1. Installing OpenSSL and rebuilding kubo manually with make build GOTAGS=openssl. See the download and compile section for more information on compiling kubo.
2. Initializing your daemon with ipfs init --profile=lowpower

Docker

Official images are published at https://hub.docker.com/r/ipfs/kubo/:

More info on how to run Kubo (go-ipfs) inside Docker can be found here.

Official prebuilt binaries

The official binaries are published at https://dist.ipfs.tech#kubo:

From there:

• Click the blue "Download Kubo" on the right side of the page.
• Open/extract the archive.
• Move kubo (ipfs) to your path (install.sh can do it for you).

If you are unable to access dist.ipfs.tech, you can also download kubo (go-ipfs) from:

• this project's GitHub releases page
• /ipns/dist.ipfs.tech at dweb.link gateway

Updating

Using ipfs-update

IPFS has an updating tool that can be accessed through ipfs update. The tool is not installed alongside IPFS in order to keep that logic independent of the main codebase. To install ipfs-update tool, download it here.

Downloading builds using IPFS

List the available versions of Kubo (go-ipfs) implementation:

$ ipfs cat /ipns/dist.ipfs.tech/kubo/versions

Then, to view available builds for a version from the previous command ($VERSION):

$ ipfs ls /ipns/dist.ipfs.tech/kubo/$VERSION

To download a given build of a version:

$ ipfs get /ipns/dist.ipfs.tech/kubo/$VERSION/kubo_$VERSION_darwin-386.tar.gz    # darwin 32-bit build
$ ipfs get /ipns/dist.ipfs.tech/kubo/$VERSION/kubo_$VERSION_darwin-amd64.tar.gz  # darwin 64-bit build
$ ipfs get /ipns/dist.ipfs.tech/kubo/$VERSION/kubo_$VERSION_freebsd-amd64.tar.gz # freebsd 64-bit build
$ ipfs get /ipns/dist.ipfs.tech/kubo/$VERSION/kubo_$VERSION_linux-386.tar.gz     # linux 32-bit build
$ ipfs get /ipns/dist.ipfs.tech/kubo/$VERSION/kubo_$VERSION_linux-amd64.tar.gz   # linux 64-bit build
$ ipfs get /ipns/dist.ipfs.tech/kubo/$VERSION/kubo_$VERSION_linux-arm.tar.gz     # linux arm build
$ ipfs get /ipns/dist.ipfs.tech/kubo/$VERSION/kubo_$VERSION_windows-amd64.zip    # windows 64-bit build

Unofficial Linux packages

• Arch Linux
• Nix
• Solus
• openSUSE

Arch Linux

# pacman -S kubo

Nix

With the purely functional package manager Nix you can install kubo (go-ipfs) like this:

$ nix-env -i ipfs

You can also install the Package by using its attribute name, which is also ipfs.

Solus

In solus, kubo (go-ipfs) is available in the main repository as go-ipfs.

$ sudo eopkg install go-ipfs

You can also install it through the Solus software center.

openSUSE

Community Package for go-ipfs

Guix

GNU's functional package manager, Guix, also provides a go-ipfs package:

$ guix package -i go-ipfs

Snap

⚠️ SNAP USE IS DISCOURAGED

If you want something more sophisticated to escape the Snap confinement, we recommend using a different method to install Kubo so that it is not subject to snap confinement.

With snap, in any of the supported Linux distributions:

$ sudo snap install ipfs

The snap sets IPFS_PATH to SNAP_USER_COMMON, which is usually ~/snap/ipfs/common. If you want to use ~/.ipfs instead, you can bind-mount it to ~/snap/ipfs/common like this:

$ sudo mount --bind ~/.ipfs ~/snap/ipfs/common

MacPorts

The package ipfs currently points to kubo (go-ipfs) and is being maintained.

$ sudo port install ipfs

Nix

In macOS you can use the purely functional package manager Nix:

$ nix-env -i ipfs

You can also install the Package by using its attribute name, which is also ipfs.

Homebrew

A Homebrew formula ipfs is maintained too.

$ brew install --formula ipfs

Unofficial Windows packages

• Chocolatey
• Scoop

Chocolatey

PS> choco install go-ipfs

Scoop

Scoop provides kubo as kubo in its 'extras' bucket.

PS> scoop bucket add extras
PS> scoop install kubo

Unofficial macOS packages

• MacPorts
• Nix
• Homebrew

Build from Source

kubo's build system requires Go and some standard POSIX build tools:

• GNU make
• Git
• GCC (or some other go compatible C Compiler) (optional)

To build without GCC, build with CGO_ENABLED=0 (e.g., make build CGO_ENABLED=0).

Install Go

If you need to update: Download latest version of Go.

You'll need to add Go's bin directories to your $PATH environment variable e.g., by adding these lines to your /etc/profile (for a system-wide installation) or $HOME/.profile:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin
export PATH=$PATH:$GOPATH/bin

(If you run into trouble, see the Go install instructions).

Download and Compile IPFS

$ git clone https://github.com/ipfs/kubo.git

$ cd kubo
$ make install

Alternatively, you can run make build to build the go-ipfs binary (storing it in cmd/ipfs/ipfs) without installing it.

NOTE: If you get an error along the lines of "fatal error: stdlib.h: No such file or directory", you're missing a C compiler. Either re-run make with CGO_ENABLED=0 or install GCC.

Cross Compiling

Compiling for a different platform is as simple as running:

make build GOOS=myTargetOS GOARCH=myTargetArchitecture

OpenSSL

To build go-ipfs with OpenSSL support, append GOTAGS=openssl to your make invocation. Building with OpenSSL should significantly reduce the background CPU usage on nodes that frequently make or receive new connections.

Note: OpenSSL requires CGO support and, by default, CGO is disabled when cross-compiling. To cross-compile with OpenSSL support, you must:

1. Install a compiler toolchain for the target platform.
2. Set the CGO_ENABLED=1 environment variable.

Troubleshooting

• Separate instructions are available for building on Windows.
• git is required in order for go get to fetch all dependencies.
• Package managers often contain out-of-date golang packages. Ensure that go version reports at least 1.10. See above for how to install go.
• If you are interested in development, please install the development dependencies as well.
• Shell command completions can be generated with one of the ipfs commands completion subcommands. Read docs/command-completion.md to learn more.
• See the misc folder for how to connect IPFS to systemd or whatever init system your distro uses.

Getting Started

Usage

To start using IPFS, you must first initialize IPFS's config files on your system, this is done with ipfs init. See ipfs init --help for information on the optional arguments it takes. After initialization is complete, you can use ipfs mount, ipfs add and any of the other commands to explore!

Some things to try

Basic proof of 'ipfs working' locally:

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

Troubleshooting

If you have previously installed IPFS before and you are running into problems getting a newer version to work, try deleting (or backing up somewhere else) your IPFS config directory (~/.ipfs by default) and rerunning ipfs init. This will reinitialize the config file to its defaults and clear out the local datastore of any bad entries.

Please direct general questions and help requests to our forums.

If you believe you've found a bug, check the issues list and, if you don't see your problem there, either come talk to us on Matrix chat, or file an issue of your own!

Packages

See IPFS in GO documentation.

Development

Some places to get you started on the codebase:

• Main file: ./cmd/ipfs/main.go
• CLI Commands: ./core/commands/
• Bitswap (the data trading engine): go-bitswap
• libp2p
  • libp2p: https://github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p
  • DHT: https://github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p-kad-dht
  • PubSub: https://github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p-pubsub
• IPFS : The Add command demystified

Map of Implemented Subsystems

WIP: This is a high-level architecture diagram of the various sub-systems of this specific implementation. To be updated with how they interact. Anyone who has suggestions is welcome to comment here on how we can improve this!

CLI, HTTP-API, Architecture Diagram

Origin

Description: Dotted means "likely going away". The "Legacy" parts are thin wrappers around some commands to translate between the new system and the old system. The grayed-out parts on the "daemon" diagram are there to show that the code is all the same, it's just that we turn some pieces on and some pieces off depending on whether we're running on the client or the server.

Testing

make test

Development Dependencies

If you make changes to the protocol buffers, you will need to install the protoc compiler.

Developer Notes

Find more documentation for developers on docs

Maintainer Info

• Project Board for active and upcoming work
• Release Process
• Additional PL EngRes Kubo maintainer info

Contributing

We ❤️ all our contributors; this project wouldn’t be what it is without you! If you want to help out, please see CONTRIBUTING.md.

This repository falls under the IPFS Code of Conduct.

Please reach out to us in one chat rooms.

License

This project is dual-licensed under Apache 2.0 and MIT terms:

• Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)