Installation Procedure Of IPFS on Windows Platform

Step 1: Download the Prebuilt IPFS Package

• Install IPFS from a prebuilt Package from this link: https://ipfs.io/docs/install/#installing-from-a-prebuilt-package
• Click on the Download IPFS for your platform as shown below

Step 2: Unzip the Prebuilt Package

• The binaries for Windows are in a zip file. Use the appropriate tool to unzip the file. This will create a directory called go-ipfs. Where in it contains following files.

The file named ipfs is your executable ipfs binary.

Step 3: Initialize the Repository

• Use the ipfs initcommand to initialize the repository. This will generate a local ipfs repository for the current user account on your machine. It also generates a cryptographic key pair that allows your ipfs node to cryptographically sign the content and messages that you create.
• Go to the downloaded file, open go-ipfs folder and drag the ipfs file and drop in the command prompt as shown below

• Once the ipfs.exe file is dropped into the command prompt the following path is updated in command prompt.
  C:\Users\user\Downloads\go-ipfs_v0.4.15_windows-amd64\go-ipfs\ipfs.exe
• Now append the path with init command
  C:\Users\user\Downloads\go-ipfs_v0.4.15_windows-amd64\go-ipfs\ipfs.exe init

• Initializing the IPFS node which gives unique RSA keypair, peer identity for each local machine.

Step 4: Use IPFS to explore the post-install documentation

• When you run ipfs init, it provided a hint for how you can get started. refer image 3.4 (to get started enter:
  ipfs cat /ipfs/Qms4ustL54uo8FzR9455qaxZwuMiUhyvMcX9Ba8Nuh4UvV/readme)
• The ipfs catcommand tells ipfs to read the content matching the path you provided. If the content isn’t available locally, ipfs will attempt to find it on the peer-to-peer network.

Run the ipfs cat command with the path you got from the init message:
Example:
“C:\Users\user\Downloads\go-ipfs_v0.4.15_windows-amd64\go-ipfs\ipfs.exe cat /ipfs/Qms4ustL54uo8FzR9455qaxZwuMiUhyvMcX9Ba8Nuh4UvV/readme”

You should see something like this: