0:00
Hello, everyone.
This is a gentle introduction to IPFS or Inter-Planetary File System.
The purpose of this demo is to get you started with IPFS.
This is not an exploration.
I would say, you can refer to a fantastic video by Juan Benet,
the creator of IPFS.
We have linked that in our optional resources section, optional reading section.
Please do go through that video.
I have already downloaded the tar file, it's here,
and I'm going to untar it.
Then, I'm going to go into IPFS,
and then install it,
I'm installing it, and it's as simple as this.
So we have it here,
and I'm going to initialize it,
and when you initialize it,
you get a lot of details.
1:06
You can see that identity,
which is about 32 bytes,
and you can see it's a base58,
just like in Bitcoin,
so that we can accommodate more information in there.
And then, let's see whether our IPFS system works.
All the IPFS commands start with IPFS,
and I have here IPFS cat,
or just concatenate of the Unix,
and that simply displays the file name and IPFS file system.
This is the reference to the folder web with the current folder web readme for the IPFS.
I'm going to copy that,
and throw it in here,
and you will see the readme file being listed. There you go.
So, we have been successful in installation.
What else can we do?
We can add files to the IPFS file system that you have created,
and we can also,
lets create a file,
and I'm going to copy from the desktop.
2:12
I do have a file created already instead of typing it in.
So, I have it here,
I'm just going to copy it here,
and I can see that, yes,
file is there, and let's get concatenated,
and see whether, what is in there.
I have got two lines and now,
in order to make it into an IPFS file,
of course, we have to start with IPFS.
I'm going to add that file,
so that it is added to the IPFS file system.
When this resource gets added to the file system,
it has got a hash created for it,
instead of the path through the your file system.
It is going to be a one single hash that exposes it universally and you can see,
this 32 bytes is the hash for that particular one.
So, I can reference this particular file now by the hash, and you will see that.
So, that is the identity for that asset and I can do that,
and there you go, did it listed.
Okay. So, I have to say IPFS, obviously,
and it didn't understand the hash,
but when I put the IPFS prefix in front of it,
there you go, it is listed.
Now, what else can we do here?
I'm going to start another term where I'm going to
expose the files that I have on the local IPFS to the external world.
So, to do that I'm going to start another term,
and in that term,
I'm going to start an IPFS daemon.
So, IPFS, and that will expose the file system to the external world to look at.
When I do that,
my IPFS daemon is started,
and it's available at certain port.
I can go now,
4:07
this starts a gateway,
and I'm going to open up a term.
In here, I'm going to look at the file that I have.
Since we have the daemon,
we should be able to look at it from outside,
even though it is like a regular URL,
it is actually accessing the IPFS file system through them.
4:52
Let me move the screen,
so that you can see it, there you go.
So, I have it here,
it simply lists the file.
This file should be available to all the others to see.
Let's now, look at the Web UI.
Web UI, instead of the command line,
can we look at these things through the Web UI,
and that's the next thing that I'm going to show you.
The Web UI, it gives you the Peer ID of the node that you created,
Agent Version, Protocol Version,
Public Key of the node that we created,
and some network addresses.
One of the interesting things is that,
once we've deployed this,
you should be able to see the connection,
you can see all these are a peer node that are available.
You can see that from Houston Texas,
and there's one from Ann Arbor,
and these are working together,
and you'll see these increasing more and more as you go around.
You can see that more peers appear here,
and you can always go into their node,
and see what is available for you to use.
When you go here,
you can drag and drop files into this,
I'm just going to drop this file in here,
and it is available to you,
so for the whole world to look at and use it.
There are many more commands that are available, and also,
I'm going to add that hash here of the same file that we've created,
it's available for the whole world to use it,
it's of no use right now,
but if it is a movie or a photograph,
the whole world can use it.
I'm going to stop the demo at this point.
I am going to hand you over to the link that we are provided by Juan Benet,
which takes you from here and elaborates on more commands that are available.
You can see the config here in Toronto,
but I'm going to stop here.
Bina RamamurthyTeaching Professor
