Title: OpenBSD 6.9 packages using IPFS

	Title: OpenBSD 6.9 packages using IPFS
	Author: Solène
	Date: 01 May 2021
	Tags: openbsd ipfs
	Description:

	# Update 15/07/2021

	I disable the IPFS service because it's nearly not used and draw too
	much CPU on my server. It was a nice experiment, thank you very much
	for the support and suggestions.

	# Introduction

	OpenBSD 6.9 has been released and I decided to extend my IPFS
	experiment to latest release. This mean you can fetch packages and
	base sets for 6.9 amd64 now over IPFS.

	If you don't know what IPFS is, I recommend you to read my previous
	articles about IPFS.

	Note that it also works for -current / amd64, the server automatically
	checks for new updates of 6.9 and -current every 8 hours.

	# Benefits

	The benefits is to play with IPFS to understand how it works with a
	real world use case. Instead of using mirrors to distributes packages,
	my server is providing the packages and everyone downloading it can
	also participate into providing data to other IPFS client, this can be
	seen as a dynamic Bittorrent CDN (Content Delivery Network), instead of
	making a torrent per file, it's automatic. You certainly wouldn't
	download each packages as separate torrents files, nor you would
	download all the packages in a single torrent.

	This could reduce the need for mirrors and potentially make faster
	packages access to people who are far from a mirrors if many people
	close to that person use IPFS and downloaded the data. This is a great
	technology that can only be beneficial once it reach a critical mass of
	adopters.

	# Installing IPFS on OpenBSD

	To make it brief, there are instructions in the provided pkg-readme but
	I will give a few advice (that I may add to the pkg-readme later).

	```OpenBSD installation instructions
	pkg_add go-ipfs
	su -l -s /bin/sh _go-ipfs -c "IPFS_PATH=/var/go-ipfs /usr/local/bin/ipfs init"
	rcctl enable go_ipfs

	# recommended settings
	rcctl set go_ipfs flags --routing=dhtclient --enable-namesys-pubsub

	cat <<EOF >> /etc/login.conf
	go_ipfs:\
	:openfiles=2048:\
	:tc=daemon:
	EOF

	rcctl start go_ipfs
	```

	Put this in /etc/installurl:

	```local link to ipfs gateway
	http://k51qzi5uqu5dmebzq75vx3z23lsixir3cxi26ckl409ylblbjigjb1oluj3f2z.ipns.loca…
	```

	# Conclusion

	Now, pkg_add will automatically download the packages from IPFS, if
	more people use it, it will be faster and more resilient than if only
	my server is distributing the packages.

	Have fun and enjoy 6.9 !

	If you are worried about security, packages distributed are the same
	than the one on the mirrors, pkg_add automatically checks the signature
	in the files against the signify keys available in /etc/signify/ so if
	pkg_add works, the packages are legitimates.