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The Kubo config file

The Kubo (go-ipfs) config file is a JSON document located at $IPFS_PATH/config. It is read once at node instantiation, either for an offline command, or when starting the daemon. Commands that execute on a running daemon do not read the config file at runtime.

Table of Contents

Addresses

Contains information about various listener addresses to be used by this node.

Addresses.API

Multiaddr or array of multiaddrs describing the addresses to serve the local Kubo RPC API (/api/v0).

Supported Transports:

  • tcp/ip{4,6} - /ipN/.../tcp/...
  • unix - /unix/path/to/socket

Default: /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/5001

Type: strings (multiaddrs)

Addresses.Gateway

Multiaddr or array of multiaddrs describing the address to serve the local HTTP gateway (/ipfs, /ipns) on.

Supported Transports:

  • tcp/ip{4,6} - /ipN/.../tcp/...
  • unix - /unix/path/to/socket

Default: /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/8080

Type: strings (multiaddrs)

Addresses.Swarm

An array of multiaddrs describing which addresses to listen on for p2p swarm connections.

Supported Transports:

  • tcp/ip{4,6} - /ipN/.../tcp/...
  • websocket - /ipN/.../tcp/.../ws
  • quicv1 (RFC9000) - /ipN/.../udp/.../quic-v1 - can share the same two tuple with /quic-v1/webtransport
  • webtransport /ipN/.../udp/.../quic-v1/webtransport - can share the same two tuple with /quic-v1

Note that quic (Draft-29) used to be supported with the format /ipN/.../udp/.../quic, but has since been removed.

Default:

[
  "/ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/4001",
  "/ip6/::/tcp/4001",
  "/ip4/0.0.0.0/udp/4001/quic-v1",
  "/ip4/0.0.0.0/udp/4001/quic-v1/webtransport",
  "/ip6/::/udp/4001/quic-v1",
  "/ip6/::/udp/4001/quic-v1/webtransport"
]

Type: array[string] (multiaddrs)

Addresses.Announce

If non-empty, this array specifies the swarm addresses to announce to the network. If empty, the daemon will announce inferred swarm addresses.

Default: []

Type: array[string] (multiaddrs)

Addresses.AppendAnnounce

Similar to Addresses.Announce except this doesn't override inferred swarm addresses if non-empty.

Default: []

Type: array[string] (multiaddrs)

Addresses.NoAnnounce

An array of swarm addresses not to announce to the network. Takes precedence over Addresses.Announce and Addresses.AppendAnnounce.

Tip

The server configuration profile fills up this list with sensible defaults, preventing announcement of non-routable IP addresses (e.g., /ip4/192.168.0.0/ipcidr/16, which is the multiaddress representation of 192.168.0.0/16) but you should always check settings against your own network and/or hosting provider.

Default: []

Type: array[string] (multiaddrs)

API

Contains information used by the Kubo RPC API.

API.HTTPHeaders

Map of HTTP headers to set on responses from the RPC (/api/v0) HTTP server.

Example:

{
  "Foo": ["bar"]
}

Default: null

Type: object[string -> array[string]] (header names -> array of header values)

API.Authorizations

The API.Authorizations field defines user-based access restrictions for the Kubo RPC API, which is located at Addresses.API under /api/v0 paths.

By default, the RPC API is accessible without restrictions as it is only exposed on 127.0.0.1 and safeguarded with Origin check and implicit CORS headers that block random websites from accessing the RPC.

When entries are defined in API.Authorizations, RPC requests will be declined unless a corresponding secret is present in the HTTP Authorization header, and the requested path is included in the AllowedPaths list for that specific secret.

Default: null

Type: object[string -> object] (user name -> authorization object, see below)

For example, to limit RPC access to Alice (access id and MFS files commands with HTTP Basic Auth) and Bob (full access with Bearer token):

{
  "API": {
    "Authorizations": {
      "Alice": {
        "AuthSecret": "basic:alice:password123",
        "AllowedPaths": ["/api/v0/id", "/api/v0/files"]
      },
      "Bob": {
        "AuthSecret": "bearer:secret-token123",
        "AllowedPaths": ["/api/v0"]
      }
    }
  }
}

API.Authorizations: AuthSecret

The AuthSecret field denotes the secret used by a user to authenticate, usually via HTTP Authorization header.

Field format is type:value, and the following types are supported:

  • bearer: For secret Bearer tokens, set as bearer:token.
    • If no known type: prefix is present, bearer: is assumed.
  • basic: For HTTP Basic Auth introduced in RFC7617. Value can be:
    • basic:user:pass
    • basic:base64EncodedBasicAuth

One can use the config value for authentication via the command line:

ipfs id --api-auth basic:user:pass

Type: string

API.Authorizations: AllowedPaths

The AllowedPaths field is an array of strings containing allowed RPC path prefixes. Users authorized with the related AuthSecret will only be able to access paths prefixed by the specified prefixes.

For instance:

  • If set to ["/api/v0"], the user will have access to the complete RPC API.
  • If set to ["/api/v0/id", "/api/v0/files"], the user will only have access to the id command and all MFS commands under files.

Note that /api/v0/version is always permitted access to allow version check to ensure compatibility.

Default: []

Type: array[string]

AutoNAT

Contains the configuration options for the libp2p's AutoNAT service. The AutoNAT service helps other nodes on the network determine if they're publicly reachable from the rest of the internet.

AutoNAT.ServiceMode

When unset (default), the AutoNAT service defaults to enabled. Otherwise, this field can take one of two values:

  • enabled - Enable the V1+V2 service (unless the node determines that it, itself, isn't reachable by the public internet).
  • legacy-v1 - Same as enabled but only V1 service is enabled. Used for testing during as few releases as we transition to V2, will be removed in the future.
  • disabled - Disable the service.

Additional modes may be added in the future.

Important

We are in the progress of rolling out AutoNAT V2. Right now, by default, a publicly dialable Kubo provides both V1 and V2 service to other peers, but only V1 is used by Kubo as a client. In a future release we will remove V1 and switch client to use V2.

Default: enabled

Type: optionalString

AutoNAT.Throttle

When set, this option configures the AutoNAT services throttling behavior. By default, Kubo will rate-limit the number of NAT checks performed for other nodes to 30 per minute, and 3 per peer.

AutoNAT.Throttle.GlobalLimit

Configures how many AutoNAT requests to service per AutoNAT.Throttle.Interval.

Default: 30

Type: integer (non-negative, 0 means unlimited)

AutoNAT.Throttle.PeerLimit

Configures how many AutoNAT requests per-peer to service per AutoNAT.Throttle.Interval.

Default: 3

Type: integer (non-negative, 0 means unlimited)

AutoNAT.Throttle.Interval

Configures the interval for the above limits.

Default: 1 Minute

Type: duration (when 0/unset, the default value is used)

AutoTLS

Caution

This is an EXPERIMENTAL opt-in feature and should not be used in production yet. Feel free to enable it and report issues if you want to help with testing. Track progress in kubo#10560.

AutoTLS feature enables publicly reachable Kubo nodes (those dialable from the public internet) to automatically obtain a wildcard TLS certificate for a DNS name unique to their PeerID at *.[PeerID].libp2p.direct. This enables direct libp2p connections and retrieval of IPFS content from browsers Secure Context using transports such as Secure WebSockets, without requiring user to do any manual domain registration and certificate configuration.

Under the hood, p2p-forge client uses public utility service at libp2p.direct as an ACME DNS-01 Challenge broker enabling peer to obtain a wildcard TLS certificate tied to public key of their PeerID.

By default, the certificates are requested from Let's Encrypt. Origin and rationale for this project can be found in community.letsencrypt.org discussion.

Note

Public good DNS and p2p-forge infrastructure at libp2p.direct is run by the team at Interplanetary Shipyard.

Default: {}

Type: object

AutoTLS.Enabled

Caution

This is an EXPERIMENTAL opt-in feature and should not be used in production yet. Feel free to enable it and report issues if you want to help with testing. Track progress in kubo#10560.

Enables AutoTLS feature to get DNS+TLS for libp2p Secure WebSocket listeners defined in Addresses.Swarm, such as /ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/4002/tls/sni/*.libp2p.direct/ws and /ip6/::/tcp/4002/tls/sni/*.libp2p.direct/ws.

If .../tls/sni/*.libp2p.direct/ws multiaddr is present in Addresses.Swarm with SNI segment ending with AutoTLS.DomainSuffix, Kubo will obtain and set up a trusted PKI TLS certificate for it, making it dialable from web browser's Secure Contexts.

Important

Caveats:

  • Requires your Kubo node to be publicly dialable.
    • If you want to test this with a node that is behind a NAT and uses manual port forwarding or UPnP (Swarm.DisableNatPortMap=false), add catch-all /ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/4002/tls/sni/*.libp2p.direct/ws and /ip6/::/tcp/4002/tls/sni/*.libp2p.direct/ws to Addresses.Swarm and wait 5-15 minutes for libp2p node to set up and learn about own public addresses via AutoNAT.
    • If your node is fresh and just started, the p2p-forge client may produce and log ERRORs during this time, but once a publicly dialable addresses are set up, a subsequent retry should be successful.
  • Listeners defined in Addresses.Swarm with /tls/sni must use a separate port from other TCP listeners, e.g. 4002 instead of the default 4001.
    • A separate port (/tcp/4002) has to be used instead of /tcp/4001 because we wait for TCP port sharing (go-libp2p#2984) to be implemented.
    • If you use manual port forwarding, make sure incoming connections to this additional port are allowed the same way 4001 ones already are.
  • The TLS certificate is used only for libp2p WebSocket connections.
    • Right now, this is NOT used for hosting a Gateway over HTTPS (that use case still requires manual TLS setup on reverse proxy, and your own domain).

Tip

  • Debugging can be enabled by setting environment variable GOLOG_LOG_LEVEL="error,autotls=debug,p2p-forge/client=debug"
  • Certificates are stored in $IPFS_PATH/p2p-forge-certs. Removing directory and restarting daemon will trigger certificate rotation.

Default: false

Type: flag

AutoTLS.DomainSuffix

Optional override of the parent domain suffix that will be used in DNS+TLS+WebSockets multiaddrs generated by p2p-forge client. Do not change this unless you self-host p2p-forge.

Default: libp2p.direct (public good run by Interplanetary Shipyard)

Type: optionalString

AutoTLS.RegistrationEndpoint

Optional override of p2p-forge HTTP registration API. Do not change this unless you self-host p2p-forge under own domain.

Important

The default endpoint performs libp2p Peer ID Authentication over HTTP (proving ownership of PeerID), probes if your Kubo node can correctly answer to a libp2p Identify query. This ensures only a correctly configured, publicly dialable Kubo can initiate ACME DNS-01 challenge for peerid.libp2p.direct.

Default: https://registration.libp2p.direct (public good run by Interplanetary Shipyard)

Type: optionalString

AutoTLS.RegistrationToken

Optional value for Forge-Authorization token sent with request to RegistrationEndpoint (useful for private/self-hosted/test instances of p2p-forge, unset by default).

Default: ""

Type: optionalString

AutoTLS.CAEndpoint

Optional override of CA ACME API used by p2p-forge system. Do not change this unless you self-host p2p-forge under own domain.

Important

CAA DNS record at libp2p.direct limits CA choice to Let's Encrypt. If you want to use a different CA, use your own domain.

Default: certmagic.LetsEncryptProductionCA (see community.letsencrypt.org discussion)

Type: optionalString

Bootstrap

Bootstrap is an array of multiaddrs of trusted nodes that your node connects to, to fetch other nodes of the network on startup.

Default: config.DefaultBootstrapAddresses

Type: array[string] (multiaddrs)

Datastore

Contains information related to the construction and operation of the on-disk storage system.

Datastore.StorageMax

A soft upper limit for the size of the ipfs repository's datastore. With StorageGCWatermark, is used to calculate whether to trigger a gc run (only if --enable-gc flag is set).

Default: "10GB"

Type: string (size)

Datastore.StorageGCWatermark

The percentage of the StorageMax value at which a garbage collection will be triggered automatically if the daemon was run with automatic gc enabled (that option defaults to false currently).

Default: 90

Type: integer (0-100%)

Datastore.GCPeriod

A time duration specifying how frequently to run a garbage collection. Only used if automatic gc is enabled.

Default: 1h

Type: duration (an empty string means the default value)

Datastore.HashOnRead

A boolean value. If set to true, all block reads from the disk will be hashed and verified. This will cause increased CPU utilization.

Default: false

Type: bool

Datastore.BloomFilterSize

A number representing the size in bytes of the blockstore's bloom filter. A value of zero represents the feature is disabled.

This site generates useful graphs for various bloom filter values: https://hur.st/bloomfilter/?n=1e6&p=0.01&m=&k=7 You may use it to find a preferred optimal value, where m is BloomFilterSize in bits. Remember to convert the value m from bits, into bytes for use as BloomFilterSize in the config file. For example, for 1,000,000 blocks, expecting a 1% false-positive rate, you'd end up with a filter size of 9592955 bits, so for BloomFilterSize we'd want to use 1199120 bytes. As of writing, 7 hash functions are used, so the constant k is 7 in the formula.

Default: 0 (disabled)

Type: integer (non-negative, bytes)

Datastore.Spec

Spec defines the structure of the ipfs datastore. It is a composable structure, where each datastore is represented by a json object. Datastores can wrap other datastores to provide extra functionality (eg metrics, logging, or caching).

Note

For more information on possible values for this configuration option, see kubo/docs/datastores.md

Default:

{
  "mounts": [
  {
    "child": {
    "path": "blocks",
    "shardFunc": "/repo/flatfs/shard/v1/next-to-last/2",
    "sync": true,
    "type": "flatfs"
    },
    "mountpoint": "/blocks",
    "prefix": "flatfs.datastore",
    "type": "measure"
  },
  {
    "child": {
    "compression": "none",
    "path": "datastore",
    "type": "levelds"
    },
    "mountpoint": "/",
    "prefix": "leveldb.datastore",
    "type": "measure"
  }
  ],
  "type": "mount"
}

Type: object

Discovery

Contains options for configuring IPFS node discovery mechanisms.

Discovery.MDNS

Options for ZeroConf Multicast DNS-SD peer discovery.

Discovery.MDNS.Enabled

A boolean value for whether or not Multicast DNS-SD should be active.

Default: true

Type: bool

Discovery.MDNS.Interval

REMOVED: this is not configurable anymore in the new mDNS implementation.

Experimental

Toggle and configure experimental features of Kubo. Experimental features are listed here.

Gateway

Options for the HTTP gateway.

NOTE: support for /api/v0 under the gateway path is now deprecated. It will be removed in future versions: #10312.

Gateway.NoFetch

When set to true, the gateway will only serve content already in the local repo and will not fetch files from the network.

Default: false

Type: bool

Gateway.NoDNSLink

A boolean to configure whether DNSLink lookup for value in Host HTTP header should be performed. If DNSLink is present, the content path stored in the DNS TXT record becomes the / and the respective payload is returned to the client.

Default: false

Type: bool

Gateway.DeserializedResponses

An optional flag to explicitly configure whether this gateway responds to deserialized requests, or not. By default, it is enabled. When disabling this option, the gateway operates as a Trustless Gateway only: https://specs.ipfs.tech/http-gateways/trustless-gateway/.

Default: true

Type: flag

Gateway.DisableHTMLErrors

An optional flag to disable the pretty HTML error pages of the gateway. Instead, a text/plain page will be returned with the raw error message from Kubo.

It is useful for whitelabel or middleware deployments that wish to avoid text/html responses with IPFS branding and links on error pages in browsers.

Default: false

Type: flag

Gateway.ExposeRoutingAPI

An optional flag to expose Kubo Routing system on the gateway port as an HTTP /routing/v1 endpoint on 127.0.0.1. Use reverse proxy to expose it on a different hostname.

This endpoint can be used by other Kubo instances, as illustrated in delegated_routing_v1_http_proxy_test.go. Kubo will filter out routing results which are not actionable, for example, all graphsync providers will be skipped. If you need a generic pass-through, see standalone router implementation named someguy.

Default: false

Type: flag

Gateway.HTTPHeaders

Headers to set on gateway responses.

Default: {} + implicit CORS headers from boxo/gateway#AddAccessControlHeaders and ipfs/specs#423

Type: object[string -> array[string]]

Gateway.RootRedirect

A url to redirect requests for / to.

Default: ""

Type: string (url)

Gateway.FastDirIndexThreshold

REMOVED: this option is no longer necessary. Ignored since Kubo 0.18.

Gateway.Writable

REMOVED: this option no longer available as of Kubo 0.20.

We are working on developing a modern replacement. To support our efforts, please leave a comment describing your use case in ipfs/specs#375.

Gateway.PathPrefixes

REMOVED: see go-ipfs#7702

Gateway.PublicGateways

Important

This configuration is NOT for HTTP Client, it is for HTTP Server – use this ONLY if you want to run your own IPFS gateway.

PublicGateways is a configuration map used for dictionary for customizing gateway behavior on specified hostnames that point at your Kubo instance.

It is useful when you want to run Path gateway on example.com/ipfs/cid, and Subdomain gateway on cid.ipfs.example.org, or limit verifiable.example.net to response types defined in Trustless Gateway specification.

Caution

Keys (Hostnames) MUST be unique. Do not use the same parent domain for multiple gateway types, it will break origin isolation.

Hostnames can optionally be defined with one or more wildcards.

Examples:

  • *.example.com will match requests to http://foo.example.com/ipfs/* or http://{cid}.ipfs.bar.example.com/*.
  • foo-*.example.com will match requests to http://foo-bar.example.com/ipfs/* or http://{cid}.ipfs.foo-xyz.example.com/*.

Gateway.PublicGateways: Paths

An array of paths that should be exposed on the hostname.

Example:

{
  "Gateway": {
    "PublicGateways": {
      "example.com": {
        "Paths": ["/ipfs"],
      }
    }
  }
}

Above enables http://example.com/ipfs/* but not http://example.com/ipns/*

Default: []

Type: array[string]

Gateway.PublicGateways: UseSubdomains

A boolean to configure whether the gateway at the hostname should be a Subdomain Gateway and provide Origin isolation between content roots.

  • true - enables subdomain gateway at http://*.{hostname}/

    • Requires whitelist: make sure respective Paths are set. For example, Paths: ["/ipfs", "/ipns"] are required for http://{cid}.ipfs.{hostname} and http://{foo}.ipns.{hostname} to work: 
      "Gateway": {
    "PublicGateways": {
        "dweb.link": {
            "UseSubdomains": true,
            "Paths": ["/ipfs", "/ipns"]
        }
    }
}
    • Backward-compatible: requests for content paths such as http://{hostname}/ipfs/{cid} produce redirect to http://{cid}.ipfs.{hostname}

  • false - enables path gateway at http://{hostname}/*

    • Example: 
      "Gateway": {
    "PublicGateways": {
        "ipfs.io": {
            "UseSubdomains": false,
            "Paths": ["/ipfs", "/ipns"]
        }
    }
}

Default: false

Type: bool

Gateway.PublicGateways: NoDNSLink

A boolean to configure whether DNSLink for hostname present in Host HTTP header should be resolved. Overrides global setting. If Paths are defined, they take priority over DNSLink.

Default: false (DNSLink lookup enabled by default for every defined hostname)

Type: bool

Gateway.PublicGateways: InlineDNSLink

An optional flag to explicitly configure whether subdomain gateway's redirects (enabled by UseSubdomains: true) should always inline a DNSLink name (FQDN) into a single DNS label (specification):

//example.com/ipns/example.net → HTTP 301 → //example-net.ipns.example.com

DNSLink name inlining allows for HTTPS on public subdomain gateways with single label wildcard TLS certs (also enabled when passing X-Forwarded-Proto: https), and provides disjoint Origin per root CID when special rules like https://publicsuffix.org, or a custom localhost logic in browsers like Brave has to be applied.

Default: false

Type: flag

Gateway.PublicGateways: DeserializedResponses

An optional flag to explicitly configure whether this gateway responds to deserialized requests, or not. By default, it is enabled.

When disabled, the gateway operates strictly as a Trustless Gateway.

Tip

Disabling deserialized responses will protect you from acting as a free web hosting, while still allowing trustless clients like @helia/verified-fetch to utilize it for trustless, verifiable data retrieval.

Default: same as global Gateway.DeserializedResponses

Type: flag

Implicit defaults of Gateway.PublicGateways

Default entries for localhost hostname and loopback IPs are always present. If additional config is provided for those hostnames, it will be merged on top of implicit values:

{
  "Gateway": {
    "PublicGateways": {
      "localhost": {
        "Paths": ["/ipfs", "/ipns"],
        "UseSubdomains": true
      }
    }
  }
}

It is also possible to remove a default by setting it to null.

For example, to disable subdomain gateway on localhost and make that hostname act the same as 127.0.0.1:

$ ipfs config --json Gateway.PublicGateways '{"localhost": null }'

Gateway recipes

Below is a list of the most common public gateway setups.

  • Public subdomain gateway at http://{cid}.ipfs.dweb.link (each content root gets its own Origin)

    $ ipfs config --json Gateway.PublicGateways '{
    "dweb.link": {
      "UseSubdomains": true,
      "Paths": ["/ipfs", "/ipns"]
    }
  }'

    • Backward-compatible: this feature enables automatic redirects from content paths to subdomains:

      http://dweb.link/ipfs/{cid} → http://{cid}.ipfs.dweb.link

    • X-Forwarded-Proto: if you run Kubo behind a reverse proxy that provides TLS, make it add a X-Forwarded-Proto: https HTTP header to ensure users are redirected to https://, not http://. It will also ensure DNSLink names are inlined to fit in a single DNS label, so they work fine with a wildcart TLS cert (details). The NGINX directive is proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto "https";.:

      http://dweb.link/ipfs/{cid} → https://{cid}.ipfs.dweb.link

      http://dweb.link/ipns/your-dnslink.site.example.com → https://your--dnslink-site-example-com.ipfs.dweb.link

    • X-Forwarded-Host: we also support X-Forwarded-Host: example.com if you want to override subdomain gateway host from the original request:

      http://dweb.link/ipfs/{cid} → http://{cid}.ipfs.example.com

  • Public path gateway at http://ipfs.io/ipfs/{cid} (no Origin separation)

    $ ipfs config --json Gateway.PublicGateways '{
    "ipfs.io": {
      "UseSubdomains": false,
      "Paths": ["/ipfs", "/ipns"]
    }
  }'

  • Public DNSLink gateway resolving every hostname passed in Host header.

    $ ipfs config --json Gateway.NoDNSLink false
    • Note that NoDNSLink: false is the default (it works out of the box unless set to true manually)

  • Hardened, site-specific DNSLink gateway.

    Disable fetching of remote data (NoFetch: true) and resolving DNSLink at unknown hostnames (NoDNSLink: true). Then, enable DNSLink gateway only for the specific hostname (for which data is already present on the node), without exposing any content-addressing Paths:

    $ ipfs config --json Gateway.NoFetch true
$ ipfs config --json Gateway.NoDNSLink true
$ ipfs config --json Gateway.PublicGateways '{
    "en.wikipedia-on-ipfs.org": {
      "NoDNSLink": false,
      "Paths": []
    }
  }'

Identity

Identity.PeerID

The unique PKI identity label for this configs peer. Set on init and never read, it's merely here for convenience. Ipfs will always generate the peerID from its keypair at runtime.

Type: string (peer ID)

Identity.PrivKey

The base64 encoded protobuf describing (and containing) the node's private key.

Type: string (base64 encoded)

Internal

This section includes internal knobs for various subsystems to allow advanced users with big or private infrastructures to fine-tune some behaviors without the need to recompile Kubo.

Be aware that making informed change here requires in-depth knowledge and most users should leave these untouched. All knobs listed here are subject to breaking changes between versions.

Internal.Bitswap

Internal.Bitswap contains knobs for tuning bitswap resource utilization. The knobs (below) document how their value should related to each other. Whether their values should be raised or lowered should be determined based on the metrics ipfs_bitswap_active_tasks, ipfs_bitswap_pending_tasks, ipfs_bitswap_pending_block_tasks and ipfs_bitswap_active_block_tasks reported by bitswap.

These metrics can be accessed as the Prometheus endpoint at {Addresses.API}/debug/metrics/prometheus (default: http://127.0.0.1:5001/debug/metrics/prometheus)

The value of ipfs_bitswap_active_tasks is capped by EngineTaskWorkerCount.

The value of ipfs_bitswap_pending_tasks is generally capped by the knobs below, however its exact maximum value is hard to predict as it depends on task sizes as well as number of requesting peers. However, as a rule of thumb, during healthy operation this value should oscillate around a "typical" low value (without hitting a plateau continuously).

If ipfs_bitswap_pending_tasks is growing while ipfs_bitswap_active_tasks is at its maximum then the node has reached its resource limits and new requests are unable to be processed as quickly as they are coming in. Raising resource limits (using the knobs below) could help, assuming the hardware can support the new limits.

The value of ipfs_bitswap_active_block_tasks is capped by EngineBlockstoreWorkerCount.

The value of ipfs_bitswap_pending_block_tasks is indirectly capped by ipfs_bitswap_active_tasks, but can be hard to predict as it depends on the number of blocks involved in a peer task which can vary.

If the value of ipfs_bitswap_pending_block_tasks is observed to grow, while ipfs_bitswap_active_block_tasks is at its maximum, there is indication that the number of available block tasks is creating a bottleneck (either due to high-latency block operations, or due to high number of block operations per bitswap peer task). In such cases, try increasing the EngineBlockstoreWorkerCount. If this adjustment still does not increase the throughput of the node, there might be hardware limitations like I/O or CPU.

Internal.Bitswap.TaskWorkerCount

Number of threads (goroutines) sending outgoing messages. Throttles the number of concurrent send operations.

Type: optionalInteger (thread count, null means default which is 8)

Internal.Bitswap.EngineBlockstoreWorkerCount

Number of threads for blockstore operations. Used to throttle the number of concurrent requests to the block store. The optimal value can be informed by the metrics ipfs_bitswap_pending_block_tasks and ipfs_bitswap_active_block_tasks. This would be a number that depends on your hardware (I/O and CPU).

Type: optionalInteger (thread count, null means default which is 128)

Internal.Bitswap.EngineTaskWorkerCount

Number of worker threads used for preparing and packaging responses before they are sent out. This number should generally be equal to TaskWorkerCount.

Type: optionalInteger (thread count, null means default which is 8)

Internal.Bitswap.MaxOutstandingBytesPerPeer

Maximum number of bytes (across all tasks) pending to be processed and sent to any individual peer. This number controls fairness and can vary from 250Kb (very fair) to 10Mb (less fair, with more work dedicated to peers who ask for more). Values below 250Kb could cause thrashing. Values above 10Mb open the potential for aggressively-wanting peers to consume all resources and deteriorate the quality provided to less aggressively-wanting peers.

Type: optionalInteger (byte count, null means default which is 1MB)

Internal.Bitswap.ProviderSearchDelay

This parameter determines how long to wait before looking for providers outside of bitswap. Other routing systems like the Amino DHT are able to provide results in less than a second, so lowering this number will allow faster peers lookups in some cases.

Type: optionalDuration (null means default which is 1s)

Internal.UnixFSShardingSizeThreshold

The sharding threshold used internally to decide whether a UnixFS directory should be sharded or not. This value is not strictly related to the size of the UnixFS directory block and any increases in the threshold should come with being careful that block sizes stay under 2MiB in order for them to be reliably transferable through the networking stack (IPFS peers on the public swarm tend to ignore requests for blocks bigger than 2MiB).

Decreasing this value to 1B is functionally equivalent to the previous experimental sharding option to shard all directories.

Type: optionalBytes (null means default which is 256KiB)

Ipns

Ipns.RepublishPeriod

A time duration specifying how frequently to republish ipns records to ensure they stay fresh on the network.

Default: 4 hours.

Type: interval or an empty string for the default.

Ipns.RecordLifetime

A time duration specifying the value to set on ipns records for their validity lifetime.

Default: 48 hours.

Type: interval or an empty string for the default.

Ipns.ResolveCacheSize

The number of entries to store in an LRU cache of resolved ipns entries. Entries will be kept cached until their lifetime is expired.

Default: 128

Type: integer (non-negative, 0 means the default)

Ipns.MaxCacheTTL

Maximum duration for which entries are valid in the name system cache. Applied to everything under /ipns/ namespace, allows you to cap the Time-To-Live (TTL) of IPNS Records AND also DNSLink TXT records (when DoH-specific DNS.MaxCacheTTL is not set to a lower value).

When Ipns.MaxCacheTTL is set, it defines the upper bound limit of how long a IPNS Name lookup result will be cached and read from cache before checking for updates.

Examples:

  • "1m" IPNS results are cached 1m or less (good compromise for system where faster updates are desired).
  • "0s" IPNS caching is effectively turned off (useful for testing, bad for production use)
    • Note: setting this to 0 will turn off TTL-based caching entirely. This is discouraged in production environments. It will make IPNS websites artificially slow because IPNS resolution results will expire as soon as they are retrieved, forcing expensive IPNS lookup to happen on every request. If you want near-real-time IPNS, set it to a low, but still sensible value, such as 1m.

Default: No upper bound, TTL from IPNS Record (see ipns name publish --help) is always respected.

Type: optionalDuration

Ipns.UsePubsub

Enables IPFS over pubsub experiment for publishing IPNS records in real time.

EXPERIMENTAL: read about current limitations at experimental-features.md#ipns-pubsub.

Default: disabled

Type: flag

Migration

Migration configures how migrations are downloaded and if the downloads are added to IPFS locally.

Migration.DownloadSources

Sources in order of preference, where "IPFS" means use IPFS and "HTTPS" means use default gateways. Any other values are interpreted as hostnames for custom gateways. An empty list means "use default sources".

Default: ["HTTPS", "IPFS"]

Migration.Keep

Specifies whether or not to keep the migration after downloading it. Options are "discard", "cache", "pin". Empty string for default.

Default: cache

Mounts

EXPERIMENTAL: read about current limitations at fuse.md.

FUSE mount point configuration options.

Mounts.IPFS

Mountpoint for /ipfs/.

Default: /ipfs

Type: string (filesystem path)

Mounts.IPNS

Mountpoint for /ipns/.

Default: /ipns

Type: string (filesystem path)

Mounts.FuseAllowOther

Sets the 'FUSE allow other'-option on the mount point.

Pinning

Pinning configures the options available for pinning content (i.e. keeping content longer-term instead of as temporarily cached storage).

Pinning.RemoteServices

RemoteServices maps a name for a remote pinning service to its configuration.

A remote pinning service is a remote service that exposes an API for managing that service's interest in long-term data storage.

The exposed API conforms to the specification defined at https://ipfs.github.io/pinning-services-api-spec/

Pinning.RemoteServices: API

Contains information relevant to utilizing the remote pinning service

Example:

{
  "Pinning": {
    "RemoteServices": {
      "myPinningService": {
        "API" : {
          "Endpoint" : "https://pinningservice.tld:1234/my/api/path",
          "Key" : "someOpaqueKey"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}
Pinning.RemoteServices: API.Endpoint

The HTTP(S) endpoint through which to access the pinning service

Example: "https://pinningservice.tld:1234/my/api/path"

Type: string

Pinning.RemoteServices: API.Key

The key through which access to the pinning service is granted

Type: string

Pinning.RemoteServices: Policies

Contains additional opt-in policies for the remote pinning service.

Pinning.RemoteServices: Policies.MFS

When this policy is enabled, it follows changes to MFS and updates the pin for MFS root on the configured remote service.

A pin request to the remote service is sent only when MFS root CID has changed and enough time has passed since the previous request (determined by RepinInterval).

One can observe MFS pinning details by enabling debug via ipfs log level remotepinning/mfs debug and switching back to error when done.

Pinning.RemoteServices: Policies.MFS.Enabled

Controls if this policy is active.

Default: false

Type: bool

Pinning.RemoteServices: Policies.MFS.PinName

Optional name to use for a remote pin that represents the MFS root CID. When left empty, a default name will be generated.

Default: "policy/{PeerID}/mfs", e.g. "policy/12.../mfs"

Type: string

Pinning.RemoteServices: Policies.MFS.RepinInterval

Defines how often (at most) the pin request should be sent to the remote service. If left empty, the default interval will be used. Values lower than 1m will be ignored.

Default: "5m"

Type: duration

Pubsub

DEPRECATED: See #9717

Pubsub configures the ipfs pubsub subsystem. To use, it must be enabled by passing the --enable-pubsub-experiment flag to the daemon or via the Pubsub.Enabled flag below.

Pubsub.Enabled

DEPRECATED: See #9717

Enables the pubsub system.

Default: false

Type: flag

Pubsub.Router

DEPRECATED: See #9717

Sets the default router used by pubsub to route messages to peers. This can be one of:

  • "floodsub" - floodsub is a basic router that simply floods messages to all connected peers. This router is extremely inefficient but very reliable.
  • "gossipsub" - gossipsub is a more advanced routing algorithm that will build an overlay mesh from a subset of the links in the network.

Default: "gossipsub"

Type: string (one of "floodsub", "gossipsub", or "" (apply default))

Pubsub.DisableSigning

DEPRECATED: See #9717

Disables message signing and signature verification. Enable this option if you're operating in a completely trusted network.

It is not safe to disable signing even if you don't care who sent the message because spoofed messages can be used to silence real messages by intentionally re-using the real message's message ID.

Default: false

Type: bool

Pubsub.SeenMessagesTTL

DEPRECATED: See #9717

Controls the time window within which duplicate messages, identified by Message ID, will be identified and won't be emitted again.

A smaller value for this parameter means that Pubsub messages in the cache will be garbage collected sooner, which can result in a smaller cache. At the same time, if there are slower nodes in the network that forward older messages, this can cause more duplicates to be propagated through the network.

Conversely, a larger value for this parameter means that Pubsub messages in the cache will be garbage collected later, which can result in a larger cache for the same traffic pattern. However, it is less likely that duplicates will be propagated through the network.

Default: see TimeCacheDuration from go-libp2p-pubsub

Type: optionalDuration

Pubsub.SeenMessagesStrategy

DEPRECATED: See #9717

Determines how the time-to-live (TTL) countdown for deduplicating Pubsub messages is calculated.

The Pubsub seen messages cache is a LRU cache that keeps messages for up to a specified time duration. After this duration has elapsed, expired messages will be purged from the cache.

The last-seen cache is a sliding-window cache. Every time a message is seen again with the SeenMessagesTTL duration, its timestamp slides forward. This keeps frequently occurring messages cached and prevents them from being continually propagated, especially because of issues that might increase the number of duplicate messages in the network.

The first-seen cache will store new messages and purge them after the SeenMessagesTTL duration, even if they are seen multiple times within this duration.

Default: last-seen (see go-libp2p-pubsub)

Type: optionalString

Peering

Configures the peering subsystem. The peering subsystem configures Kubo to connect to, remain connected to, and reconnect to a set of nodes. Nodes should use this subsystem to create "sticky" links between frequently useful peers to improve reliability.

Use-cases:

  • An IPFS gateway connected to an IPFS cluster should peer to ensure that the gateway can always fetch content from the cluster.
  • A dapp may peer embedded Kubo nodes with a set of pinning services or textile cafes/hubs.
  • A set of friends may peer to ensure that they can always fetch each other's content.

When a node is added to the set of peered nodes, Kubo will:

  1. Protect connections to this node from the connection manager. That is, Kubo will never automatically close the connection to this node and connections to this node will not count towards the connection limit.
  2. Connect to this node on startup.
  3. Repeatedly try to reconnect to this node if the last connection dies or the node goes offline. This repeated re-connect logic is governed by a randomized exponential backoff delay ranging from ~5 seconds to ~10 minutes to avoid repeatedly reconnect to a node that's offline.

Peering can be asymmetric or symmetric:

  • When symmetric, the connection will be protected by both nodes and will likely be very stable.
  • When asymmetric, only one node (the node that configured peering) will protect the connection and attempt to re-connect to the peered node on disconnect. If the peered node is under heavy load and/or has a low connection limit, the connection may flap repeatedly. Be careful when asymmetrically peering to not overload peers.

Peering.Peers

The set of peers with which to peer.

{
  "Peering": {
    "Peers": [
      {
        "ID": "QmPeerID1",
        "Addrs": ["/ip4/18.1.1.1/tcp/4001"]
      },
      {
        "ID": "QmPeerID2",
        "Addrs": ["/ip4/18.1.1.2/tcp/4001", "/ip4/18.1.1.2/udp/4001/quic-v1"]
      }
    ]
  }
  ...
}

Where ID is the peer ID and Addrs is a set of known addresses for the peer. If no addresses are specified, the Amino DHT will be queried.

Additional fields may be added in the future.

Default: empty.

Type: array[peering]

Reprovider

Reprovider.Interval

Sets the time between rounds of reproviding local content to the routing system.

  • If unset, it uses the implicit safe default.
  • If set to the value "0" it will disable content reproviding.

Note: disabling content reproviding will result in other nodes on the network not being able to discover that you have the objects that you have. If you want to have this disabled and keep the network aware of what you have, you must manually announce your content periodically.

Default: 22h (DefaultReproviderInterval)

Type: optionalDuration (unset for the default)

Reprovider.Strategy

Tells reprovider what should be announced. Valid strategies are:

  • "all" - announce all CIDs of stored blocks
    • Order: root blocks of direct and recursive pins are announced first, then the rest of blockstore
  • "pinned" - only announce pinned CIDs recursively (both roots and child blocks)
    • Order: root blocks of direct and recursive pins are announced first, then the child blocks of recursive pins
  • "roots" - only announce the root block of explicitly pinned CIDs
    • ⚠️ BE CAREFUL: node with roots strategy will not announce child blocks. It makes sense only for use cases where the entire DAG is fetched in full, and a graceful resume does not have to be guaranteed: the lack of child announcements means an interrupted retrieval won't be able to find providers for the missing block in the middle of a file, unless the peer happens to already be connected to a provider and ask for child CID over bitswap.
  • "flat" - same as all, announce all CIDs of stored blocks, but without prioritizing anything

Default: "all"

Type: optionalString (unset for the default)

Routing

Contains options for content, peer, and IPNS routing mechanisms.

Routing.Type

There are multiple routing options: "auto", "autoclient", "none", "dht", "dhtclient", and "custom".

  • DEFAULT: If unset, or set to "auto", your node will use the public IPFS DHT (aka "Amino") and parallel HTTP routers listed below for additional speed.

  • If set to "autoclient", your node will behave as in "auto" but without running a DHT server.

  • If set to "none", your node will use no routing system. You'll have to explicitly connect to peers that have the content you're looking for.

  • If set to "dht" (or "dhtclient"/"dhtserver"), your node will ONLY use the Amino DHT (no HTTP routers).

  • If set to "custom", all default routers are disabled, and only ones defined in Routing.Routers will be used.

When the DHT is enabled, it can operate in two modes: client and server.

  • In server mode, your node will query other peers for DHT records, and will respond to requests from other peers (both requests to store records and requests to retrieve records).

  • In client mode, your node will query the DHT as a client but will not respond to requests from other peers. This mode is less resource-intensive than server mode.

When Routing.Type is set to auto or dht, your node will start as a DHT client, and switch to a DHT server when and if it determines that it's reachable from the public internet (e.g., it's not behind a firewall).

To force a specific Amino DHT-only mode, client or server, set Routing.Type to dhtclient or dhtserver respectively. Please do not set this to dhtserver unless you're sure your node is reachable from the public network.

When Routing.Type is set to auto or autoclient your node will accelerate some types of routing by leveraging HTTP endpoints compatible with Delegated Routing V1 HTTP API introduced in IPIP-337 in addition to the Amino DHT. By default, an instance of IPNI at https://cid.contact is used.

Alternative routing rules can be configured in Routing.Routers after setting Routing.Type to custom.

Default: auto (DHT + IPNI)

Type: optionalString (null/missing means the default)

Routing.AcceleratedDHTClient

This alternative Amino DHT client with a Full-Routing-Table strategy will do a complete scan of the DHT every hour and record all nodes found. Then when a lookup is tried instead of having to go through multiple Kad hops it is able to find the 20 final nodes by looking up the in-memory recorded network table.

This means sustained higher memory to store the routing table and extra CPU and network bandwidth for each network scan. However the latency of individual read/write operations should be ~10x faster and provide throughput up to 6 million times faster on larger datasets!

This is not compatible with Routing.Type custom. If you are using composable routers you can configure this individually on each router.

When it is enabled:

  • Client DHT operations (reads and writes) should complete much faster
  • The provider will now use a keyspace sweeping mode allowing to keep alive CID sets that are multiple orders of magnitude larger.
    • The standard Bucket-Routing-Table DHT will still run for the DHT server (if the DHT server is enabled). This means the classical routing table will still be used to answer other nodes. This is critical to maintain to not harm the network.
  • The operations ipfs stats dht will default to showing information about the accelerated DHT client

Caveats:

  1. Running the accelerated client likely will result in more resource consumption (connections, RAM, CPU, bandwidth)
    • Users that are limited in the number of parallel connections their machines/networks can perform will likely suffer
    • The resource usage is not smooth as the client crawls the network in rounds and reproviding is similarly done in rounds
    • Users who previously had a lot of content but were unable to advertise it on the network will see an increase in egress bandwidth as their nodes start to advertise all of their CIDs into the network. If you have lots of data entering your node that you don't want to advertise, then consider using Reprovider Strategies to reduce the number of CIDs that you are reproviding. Similarly, if you are running a node that deals mostly with short-lived temporary data (e.g. you use a separate node for ingesting data then for storing and serving it) then you may benefit from using Strategic Providing to prevent advertising of data that you ultimately will not have.
  2. Currently, the DHT is not usable for queries for the first 5-10 minutes of operation as the routing table is being prepared. This means operations like searching the DHT for particular peers or content will not work initially.
    • You can see if the DHT has been initially populated by running ipfs stats dht
  3. Currently, the accelerated DHT client is not compatible with LAN-based DHTs and will not perform operations against them

Default: false

Type: flag

Routing.LoopbackAddressesOnLanDHT

EXPERIMENTAL: Routing.LoopbackAddressesOnLanDHT configuration may change in future release

Whether loopback addresses (e.g. 127.0.0.1) should not be ignored on the local LAN DHT.

Most users do not need this setting. It can be useful during testing, when multiple Kubo nodes run on the same machine but some of them do not have Discovery.MDNS.Enabled.

Default: false

Type: bool (missing means false)

Routing.Routers

EXPERIMENTAL: Routing.Routers configuration may change in future release

Map of additional Routers.

Allows for extending the default routing (Amino DHT) with alternative Router implementations.

The map key is a name of a Router, and the value is its configuration.

Default: {}

Type: object[string->object]

Routing.Routers: Type

EXPERIMENTAL: Routing.Routers configuration may change in future release

It specifies the routing type that will be created.

Currently supported types:

  • http simple delegated routing based on HTTP protocol from IPIP-337
  • dht provides decentralized routing based on libp2p's kad-dht
  • parallel and sequential: Helpers that can be used to run several routers sequentially or in parallel.

Type: string

Routing.Routers: Parameters

EXPERIMENTAL: Routing.Routers configuration may change in future release

Parameters needed to create the specified router. Supported params per router type:

HTTP:

  • Endpoint (mandatory): URL that will be used to connect to a specified router.
  • MaxProvideBatchSize: This number determines the maximum amount of CIDs sent per batch. Servers might not accept more than 100 elements per batch. 100 elements by default.
  • MaxProvideConcurrency: It determines the number of threads used when providing content. GOMAXPROCS by default.

DHT:

  • "Mode": Mode used by the Amino DHT. Possible values: "server", "client", "auto"
  • "AcceleratedDHTClient": Set to true if you want to use the acceleratedDHT.
  • "PublicIPNetwork": Set to true to create a WAN DHT. Set to false to create a LAN DHT.

Parallel:

  • Routers: A list of routers that will be executed in parallel:
    • Name:string: Name of the router. It should be one of the previously added to Routers list.
    • Timeout:duration: Local timeout. It accepts strings compatible with Go time.ParseDuration(string) (10s, 1m, 2h). Time will start counting when this specific router is called, and it will stop when the router returns, or we reach the specified timeout.
    • ExecuteAfter:duration: Providing this param will delay the execution of that router at the specified time. It accepts strings compatible with Go time.ParseDuration(string) (10s, 1m, 2h).
    • IgnoreErrors:bool: It will specify if that router should be ignored if an error occurred.
  • Timeout:duration: Global timeout. It accepts strings compatible with Go time.ParseDuration(string) (10s, 1m, 2h).

Sequential:

  • Routers: A list of routers that will be executed in order:
    • Name:string: Name of the router. It should be one of the previously added to Routers list.
    • Timeout:duration: Local timeout. It accepts strings compatible with Go time.ParseDuration(string). Time will start counting when this specific router is called, and it will stop when the router returns, or we reach the specified timeout.
    • IgnoreErrors:bool: It will specify if that router should be ignored if an error occurred.
  • Timeout:duration: Global timeout. It accepts strings compatible with Go time.ParseDuration(string).

Default: {} (use the safe implicit defaults)

Type: object[string->string]

Routing: Methods

Methods:map will define which routers will be executed per method. The key will be the name of the method: "provide", "find-providers", "find-peers", "put-ipns", "get-ipns". All methods must be added to the list.

The value will contain:

  • RouterName:string: Name of the router. It should be one of the previously added to Routing.Routers list.

Type: object[string->object]

Examples:

Complete example using 2 Routers, Amino DHT (LAN/WAN) and parallel.

$ ipfs config Routing.Type --json '"custom"'

$ ipfs config Routing.Routers.WanDHT --json '{
  "Type": "dht",
  "Parameters": {
    "Mode": "auto",
    "PublicIPNetwork": true,
    "AcceleratedDHTClient": false
  }
}'

$ ipfs config Routing.Routers.LanDHT --json '{
  "Type": "dht",
  "Parameters": {
    "Mode": "auto",
    "PublicIPNetwork": false,
    "AcceleratedDHTClient": false
  }
}'

$ ipfs config Routing.Routers.ParallelHelper --json '{
  "Type": "parallel",
  "Parameters": {
    "Routers": [
        {
        "RouterName" : "LanDHT",
        "IgnoreErrors" : true,
        "Timeout": "3s"
        },
        {
        "RouterName" : "WanDHT",
        "IgnoreErrors" : false,
        "Timeout": "5m",
        "ExecuteAfter": "2s"
        }
    ]
  }
}'

ipfs config Routing.Methods --json '{
      "find-peers": {
        "RouterName": "ParallelHelper"
      },
      "find-providers": {
        "RouterName": "ParallelHelper"
      },
      "get-ipns": {
        "RouterName": "ParallelHelper"
      },
      "provide": {
        "RouterName": "ParallelHelper"
      },
      "put-ipns": {
        "RouterName": "ParallelHelper"
      }
    }'

Swarm

Options for configuring the swarm.

Swarm.AddrFilters

An array of addresses (multiaddr netmasks) to not dial. By default, IPFS nodes advertise all addresses, even internal ones. This makes it easier for nodes on the same network to reach each other. Unfortunately, this means that an IPFS node will try to connect to one or more private IP addresses whenever dialing another node, even if this other node is on a different network. This may trigger netscan alerts on some hosting providers or cause strain in some setups.

Tip

The server configuration profile fills up this list with sensible defaults, preventing dials to all non-routable IP addresses (e.g., /ip4/192.168.0.0/ipcidr/16, which is the multiaddress representation of 192.168.0.0/16) but you should always check settings against your own network and/or hosting provider.

Default: []

Type: array[string]

Swarm.DisableBandwidthMetrics

A boolean value that when set to true, will cause ipfs to not keep track of bandwidth metrics. Disabling bandwidth metrics can lead to a slight performance improvement, as well as a reduction in memory usage.

Default: false

Type: bool

Swarm.DisableNatPortMap

Disable automatic NAT port forwarding (turn off UPnP).

When not disabled (default), Kubo asks NAT devices (e.g., routers), to open up an external port and forward it to the port Kubo is running on. When this works (i.e., when your router supports NAT port forwarding), it makes the local Kubo node accessible from the public internet.

Default: false

Type: bool

Swarm.EnableHolePunching

Enable hole punching for NAT traversal when port forwarding is not possible.

When enabled, Kubo will coordinate with the counterparty using a relayed connection, to upgrade to a direct connection through a NAT/firewall whenever possible. This feature requires Swarm.RelayClient.Enabled to be set to true.

Default: true

Type: flag

Swarm.EnableAutoRelay

REMOVED

See Swarm.RelayClient instead.

Swarm.RelayClient

Configuration options for the relay client to use relay services.

Default: {}

Type: object

Swarm.RelayClient.Enabled

Enables "automatic relay user" mode for this node.

Your node will automatically use public relays from the network if it detects that it cannot be reached from the public internet (e.g., it's behind a firewall) and get a /p2p-circuit address from a public relay.

Default: true

Type: flag

Swarm.RelayClient.StaticRelays

Your node will use these statically configured relay servers instead of discovering public relays (Circuit Relay v2) from the network.

Default: []

Type: array[string]

Swarm.RelayService

Configuration options for the relay service that can be provided to other peers on the network (Circuit Relay v2).

Default: {}

Type: object

Swarm.RelayService.Enabled

Enables providing /p2p-circuit v2 relay service to other peers on the network.

NOTE: This is the service/server part of the relay system. Disabling this will prevent this node from running as a relay server. Use Swarm.RelayClient.Enabled for turning your node into a relay user.

Default: true

Type: flag

Swarm.RelayService.Limit

Limits are applied to every relayed connection.

Default: {}

Type: object[string -> string]

Swarm.RelayService.ConnectionDurationLimit

Time limit before a relayed connection is reset.

Default: "2m"

Type: duration

Swarm.RelayService.ConnectionDataLimit

Limit of data relayed (in each direction) before a relayed connection is reset.

Default: 131072 (128 kb)

Type: optionalInteger

Swarm.RelayService.ReservationTTL

Duration of a new or refreshed reservation.

Default: "1h"

Type: duration

Swarm.RelayService.MaxReservations

Maximum number of active relay slots.

Default: 128

Type: optionalInteger

Swarm.RelayService.MaxCircuits

Maximum number of open relay connections for each peer.

Default: 16

Type: optionalInteger

Swarm.RelayService.BufferSize

Size of the relayed connection buffers.

Default: 2048

Type: optionalInteger

Swarm.RelayService.MaxReservationsPerPeer

REMOVED in kubo 0.32 due to go-libp2p#2974

Swarm.RelayService.MaxReservationsPerIP

Maximum number of reservations originating from the same IP.

Default: 8

Type: optionalInteger

Swarm.RelayService.MaxReservationsPerASN

Maximum number of reservations originating from the same ASN.

Default: 32

Type: optionalInteger

Swarm.EnableRelayHop

REMOVED

Replaced with Swarm.RelayService.Enabled.

Swarm.DisableRelay

REMOVED

Set Swarm.Transports.Network.Relay to false instead.

Swarm.EnableAutoNATService

REMOVED

Please use AutoNAT.ServiceMode.

Swarm.ConnMgr

The connection manager determines which and how many connections to keep and can be configured to keep. Kubo currently supports two connection managers:

  • none: never close idle connections.
  • basic: the default connection manager.

By default, this section is empty and the implicit defaults defined below are used.

Swarm.ConnMgr.Type

Sets the type of connection manager to use, options are: "none" (no connection management) and "basic".

Default: "basic".

Type: optionalString (default when unset or empty)

Basic Connection Manager

The basic connection manager uses a "high water", a "low water", and internal scoring to periodically close connections to free up resources. When a node using the basic connection manager reaches HighWater idle connections, it will close the least useful ones until it reaches LowWater idle connections.

The connection manager considers a connection idle if:

  • It has not been explicitly protected by some subsystem. For example, Bitswap will protect connections to peers from which it is actively downloading data, the DHT will protect some peers for routing, and the peering subsystem will protect all "peered" nodes.
  • It has existed for longer than the GracePeriod.

Example:

{
  "Swarm": {
    "ConnMgr": {
      "Type": "basic",
      "LowWater": 100,
      "HighWater": 200,
      "GracePeriod": "30s"
    }
  }
}
Swarm.ConnMgr.LowWater

LowWater is the number of connections that the basic connection manager will trim down to.

Default: 32

Type: optionalInteger

Swarm.ConnMgr.HighWater

HighWater is the number of connections that, when exceeded, will trigger a connection GC operation. Note: protected/recently formed connections don't count towards this limit.

Default: 96

Type: optionalInteger

Swarm.ConnMgr.GracePeriod

GracePeriod is a time duration that new connections are immune from being closed by the connection manager.

Default: "20s"

Type: optionalDuration

Swarm.ResourceMgr

Learn more about Kubo's usage of libp2p Network Resource Manager in the dedicated resource management docs.

Swarm.ResourceMgr.Enabled

Enables the libp2p Resource Manager using limits based on the defaults and/or other configuration as discussed in libp2p resource management.

Default: true Type: flag

Swarm.ResourceMgr.MaxMemory

This is the max amount of memory to allow libp2p to use. libp2p's resource manager will prevent additional resource creation while this limit is reached. This value is also used to scale the limit on various resources at various scopes when the default limits (discussed in libp2p resource management) are used. For example, increasing this value will increase the default limit for incoming connections.

It is possible to inspect the runtime limits via ipfs swarm resources --help.

Default: [TOTAL_SYSTEM_MEMORY]/2 Type: optionalBytes

Swarm.ResourceMgr.MaxFileDescriptors

This is the maximum number of file descriptors to allow libp2p to use. libp2p's resource manager will prevent additional file descriptor consumption while this limit is reached.

This param is ignored on Windows.

Default [TOTAL_SYSTEM_FILE_DESCRIPTORS]/2 Type: optionalInteger

Swarm.ResourceMgr.Allowlist

A list of [multiaddrs][libp2p-multiaddrs] that can bypass normal system limits (but are still limited by the allowlist scope). Convenience config around go-libp2p-resource-manager#Allowlist.Add.

Default: []

Type: array[string] (multiaddrs)

Swarm.Transports

Configuration section for libp2p transports. An empty configuration will apply the defaults.

Swarm.Transports.Network

Configuration section for libp2p network transports. Transports enabled in this section will be used for dialing. However, to receive connections on these transports, multiaddrs for these transports must be added to Addresses.Swarm.

Supported transports are: QUIC, TCP, WS, Relay, WebTransport and WebRTCDirect.

Each field in this section is a flag.

Swarm.Transports.Network.TCP

TCP is a simple and widely deployed transport, it should be compatible with most implementations and network configurations. TCP doesn't directly support encryption and/or multiplexing, so libp2p will layer a security & multiplexing transport over it.

Default: Enabled

Type: flag

Listen Addresses:

  • /ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/4001 (default)
  • /ip6/::/tcp/4001 (default)

Swarm.Transports.Network.Websocket

Websocket is a transport usually used to connect to non-browser-based IPFS nodes from browser-based js-ipfs nodes.

While it's enabled by default for dialing, Kubo doesn't listen on this transport by default.

Default: Enabled

Type: flag

Listen Addresses:

  • /ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/4002/ws
  • /ip6/::/tcp/4002/ws

Swarm.Transports.Network.QUIC

QUIC is the most widely used transport by Kubo nodes. It is a UDP-based transport with built-in encryption and multiplexing. The primary benefits over TCP are:

  1. It takes 1 round trip to establish a connection (our TCP transport currently takes 4).
  2. No Head-of-Line blocking.
  3. It doesn't require a file descriptor per connection, easing the load on the OS.

Default: Enabled

Type: flag

Listen Addresses:

  • /ip4/0.0.0.0/udp/4001/quic-v1 (default)
  • /ip6/::/udp/4001/quic-v1 (default)

Swarm.Transports.Network.Relay

Libp2p Relay proxy transport that forms connections by hopping between multiple libp2p nodes. Allows IPFS node to connect to other peers using their /p2p-circuit [multiaddrs][libp2p-multiaddrs]. This transport is primarily useful for bypassing firewalls and NATs.

See also:

Default: Enabled

Type: flag

Listen Addresses:

  • This transport is special. Any node that enables this transport can receive inbound connections on this transport, without specifying a listen address.

Swarm.Transports.Network.WebTransport

A new feature of go-libp2p is the WebTransport transport.

This is a spiritual descendant of WebSocket but over HTTP/3. Since this runs on top of HTTP/3 it uses QUIC under the hood. We expect it to perform worst than QUIC because of the extra overhead, this transport is really meant at agents that cannot do TCP or QUIC (like browsers).

WebTransport is a new transport protocol currently under development by the IETF and the W3C, and already implemented by Chrome. Conceptually, it’s like WebSocket run over QUIC instead of TCP. Most importantly, it allows browsers to establish (secure!) connections to WebTransport servers without the need for CA-signed certificates, thereby enabling any js-libp2p node running in a browser to connect to any kubo node, with zero manual configuration involved.

The previous alternative is websocket secure, which require installing a reverse proxy and TLS certificates manually.

Default: Enabled

Type: flag

Listen Addresses:

  • /ip4/0.0.0.0/udp/4001/quic-v1/webtransport (default)
  • /ip6/::/udp/4001/quic-v1/webtransport (default)

Swarm.Transports.Network.WebRTCDirect

WebRTC Direct is a transport protocol that provides another way for browsers to connect to the rest of the libp2p network. WebRTC Direct allows for browser nodes to connect to other nodes without special configuration, such as TLS certificates. This can be useful for browser nodes that do not yet support WebTransport, which is still relatively new and has known issues.

Enabling this transport allows Kubo node to act on /udp/4001/webrtc-direct listeners defined in Addresses.Swarm, Addresses.Announce or Addresses.AppendAnnounce.

Note

WebRTC Direct is browser-to-node. It cannot be used to connect a browser node to a node that is behind a NAT or firewall (without UPnP port mapping). The browser-to-private requires using normal WebRTC, which is currently being worked on in go-libp2p#2009.

Default: Enabled

Type: flag

Listen Addresses:

  • /ip4/0.0.0.0/udp/4001/webrtc-direct (default)
  • /ip6/::/udp/4001/webrtc-direct (default)

Swarm.Transports.Security

Configuration section for libp2p security transports. Transports enabled in this section will be used to secure unencrypted connections.

This does not concern all the QUIC transports which use QUIC's builtin encryption.

Security transports are configured with the priority type.

When establishing an outbound connection, Kubo will try each security transport in priority order (lower first), until it finds a protocol that the receiver supports. When establishing an inbound connection, Kubo will let the initiator choose the protocol, but will refuse to use any of the disabled transports.

Supported transports are: TLS (priority 100) and Noise (priority 200).

No default priority will ever be less than 100. Lower values have precedence.

Swarm.Transports.Security.TLS

TLS (1.3) is the default security transport as of Kubo 0.5.0. It's also the most scrutinized and trusted security transport.

Default: 100

Type: priority

Swarm.Transports.Security.SECIO

REMOVED: support for SECIO has been removed. Please remove this option from your config.

Swarm.Transports.Security.Noise

Noise is slated to replace TLS as the cross-platform, default libp2p protocol due to ease of implementation. It is currently enabled by default but with low priority as it's not yet widely supported.

Default: 200

Type: priority

Swarm.Transports.Multiplexers

Configuration section for libp2p multiplexer transports. Transports enabled in this section will be used to multiplex duplex connections.

This does not concern all the QUIC transports which use QUIC's builtin muxing.

Multiplexer transports are configured the same way security transports are, with the priority type. Like with security transports, the initiator gets their first choice.

Supported transport is only: Yamux (priority 100)

No default priority will ever be less than 100.

Swarm.Transports.Multiplexers.Yamux

Yamux is the default multiplexer used when communicating between Kubo nodes.

Default: 100

Type: priority

Swarm.Transports.Multiplexers.Mplex

REMOVED: See #9958

Support for Mplex has been removed from Kubo and go-libp2p. Please remove this option from your config.

DNS

Options for configuring DNS resolution for DNSLink and /dns* [Multiaddrs][libp2p-multiaddrs].

DNS.Resolvers

Map of FQDNs to custom resolver URLs.

This allows for overriding the default DNS resolver provided by the operating system, and using different resolvers per domain or TLD (including ones from alternative, non-ICANN naming systems).

Example:

{
  "DNS": {
    "Resolvers": {
      "eth.": "https://dns.eth.limo/dns-query",
      "crypto.": "https://resolver.unstoppable.io/dns-query",
      "libre.": "https://ns1.iriseden.fr/dns-query",
      ".": "https://cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query"
    }
  }
}

Be mindful that:

  • Currently only https:// URLs for DNS over HTTPS (DoH) endpoints are supported as values.
  • The default catch-all resolver is the cleartext one provided by your operating system. It can be overridden by adding a DoH entry for the DNS root indicated by . as illustrated above.
  • Out-of-the-box support for selected decentralized TLDs relies on a centralized service which is provided on best-effort basis. The implicit DoH resolvers are: 
    {
  "eth.": "https://resolver.cloudflare-eth.com/dns-query",
  "crypto.": "https://resolver.cloudflare-eth.com/dns-query"
}
    To get all the benefits of a decentralized naming system we strongly suggest setting DoH endpoint to an empty string and running own decentralized resolver as catch-all one on localhost.

Default: {}

Type: object[string -> string]

DNS.MaxCacheTTL

Maximum duration for which entries are valid in the DoH cache.

This allows you to cap the Time-To-Live suggested by the DNS response (RFC2181). If present, the upper bound is applied to DoH resolvers in DNS.Resolvers.

Note: this does NOT work with Go's default DNS resolver. To make this a global setting, add a . entry to DNS.Resolvers first.

Examples:

  • "1m" DNS entries are kept for 1 minute or less.
  • "0s" DNS entries expire as soon as they are retrieved.

Default: Respect DNS Response TTL

Type: optionalDuration

Import

Options to configure the default options used for ingesting data, in commands such as ipfs add or ipfs block put. All affected commands are detailed per option.

Note that using flags will override the options defined here.

Import.CidVersion

The default CID version. Commands affected: ipfs add.

Default: 0

Type: optionalInteger

Import.UnixFSRawLeaves

The default UnixFS raw leaves option. Commands affected: ipfs add, ipfs files write.

Default: false if CidVersion=0; true if CidVersion=1

Type: flag

Import.UnixFSChunker

The default UnixFS chunker. Commands affected: ipfs add.

Default: size-262144

Type: optionalString

Import.HashFunction

The default hash function. Commands affected: ipfs add, ipfs block put, ipfs dag put.

Default: sha2-256

Type: optionalString

Version

Options to configure agent version announced to the swarm, and leveraging other peers version for detecting when there is time to update.

Version.AgentSuffix

Optional suffix to the AgentVersion presented by ipfs id and exposed via libp2p identify protocol.

The value from config takes precedence over value passed via ipfs daemon --agent-version-suffix.

Note

Setting a custom version suffix helps with ecosystem analysis, such as Amino DHT reports published at https://stats.ipfs.network

Default: "" (no suffix, or value from ipfs daemon --agent-version-suffix=)

Type: optionalString

Version.SwarmCheckEnabled

Observe the AgentVersion of swarm peers and log warning when SwarmCheckPercentThreshold of peers runs version higher than this node.

Default: true

Type: flag

Version.SwarmCheckPercentThreshold

Control the percentage of kubo/ peers running new version required to trigger update warning.

Default: 5

Type: optionalInteger (1-100)

Profiles

Configuration profiles allow to tweak configuration quickly. Profiles can be applied with the --profile flag to ipfs init or with the ipfs config profile apply command. When a profile is applied a backup of the configuration file will be created in $IPFS_PATH.

Configuration profiles can be applied additively. For example, both the test-cid-v1 and lowpower profiles can be applied one after the other. The available configuration profiles are listed below. You can also find them documented in ipfs config profile --help.

server profile

Disables local Discovery.MDNS, turns off uPnP NAT port mapping, and blocks connections to IPv4 and IPv6 prefixes that are private, local only, or unrouteable.

Recommended when running IPFS on machines with public IPv4 addresses (no NAT, no uPnP) at providers that interpret local IPFS discovery and traffic as netscan abuse (example).

randomports profile

Use a random port number for the incoming swarm connections. Used for testing.

default-datastore profile

Configures the node to use the default datastore (flatfs).

Read the "flatfs" profile description for more information on this datastore.

This profile may only be applied when first initializing the node.

local-discovery profile

Enables local Discovery.MDNS (enabled by default).

Useful to re-enable local discovery after it's disabled by another profile (e.g., the server profile).

test profile

Reduces external interference of IPFS daemon, this is useful when using the daemon in test environments.

default-networking profile

Restores default network settings. Inverse profile of the test profile.

flatfs profile

Configures the node to use the flatfs datastore. Flatfs is the default, most battle-tested and reliable datastore.

You should use this datastore if:

  • You need a very simple and very reliable datastore, and you trust your filesystem. This datastore stores each block as a separate file in the underlying filesystem so it's unlikely to lose data unless there's an issue with the underlying file system.
  • You need to run garbage collection in a way that reclaims free space as soon as possible.
  • You want to minimize memory usage.
  • You are ok with the default speed of data import, or prefer to use --nocopy.

Warning

This profile may only be applied when first initializing the node via ipfs init --profile flatfs

Note

See caveats and configuration options at datastores.md#flatfs

pebbleds profile

Configures the node to use the pebble high-performance datastore.

Pebble is a LevelDB/RocksDB inspired key-value store focused on performance and internal usage by CockroachDB. You should use this datastore if:

  • You need a datastore that is focused on performance.
  • You need a datastore that is good for multi-terrabyte data sets.
  • You need reliability by default, but may choose to disable WAL for maximum performance when reliability is not critical.
  • You want a datastore that does not need GC cycles and does not use more space than necessary
  • You want a datastore that does not take several minutes to start with large repositories
  • You want a datastore that performs well even with default settings, but can optimized by setting configuration to tune it for your specific needs.

Warning

This profile may only be applied when first initializing the node via ipfs init --profile pebbleds

Note

See other caveats and configuration options at datastores.md#pebbleds

badgerds profile

Configures the node to use the legacy badgerv1 datastore.

Caution

This is based on very old badger 1.x, which has known bugs and is no longer supported by the upstream team. It is provided here only for pre-existing users, allowing them to migrate away to more modern datastore. Do not use it for new deployments, unless you really, really know what you are doing.

Also, be aware that:

  • This datastore will not properly reclaim space when your datastore is smaller than several gigabytes. If you run IPFS with --enable-gc, you plan on storing very little data in your IPFS node, and disk usage is more critical than performance, consider using flatfs.
  • This datastore uses up to several gigabytes of memory.
  • Good for medium-size datastores, but may run into performance issues if your dataset is bigger than a terabyte.
  • The current implementation is based on old badger 1.x which is no longer supported by the upstream team.

Warning

This profile may only be applied when first initializing the node via ipfs init --profile badgerds

Note

See other caveats and configuration options at datastores.md#pebbleds

lowpower profile

Reduces daemon overhead on the system by disabling optional swarm services.

  • Routing.Type set to autoclient (no DHT server, only client).
  • Swarm.ConnMgr set to maintain minimum number of p2p connections at a time.
  • Disables AutoNAT.
  • Disables Swam.RelayService.

Note

This profile is provided for legacy reasons. With modern Kubo setting the above should not be necessary.

announce-off profile

Disables Reprovider system (and announcing to Amino DHT).

Caution

The main use case for this is setups with manual Peering.Peers config. Data from this node will not be announced on the DHT. This will make DHT-based routing an data retrieval impossible if this node is the only one hosting it, and other peers are not already connected to it.

announce-on profile

(Re-)enables Reprovider system (reverts announce-off profile.

legacy-cid-v0 profile

Makes UnixFS import (ipfs add) produce legacy CIDv0 with no raw leaves, sha2-256 and 256 KiB chunks.

Note

This profile is provided for legacy users and should not be used for new projects.

test-cid-v1 profile

Makes UnixFS import (ipfs add) produce modern CIDv1 with raw leaves, sha2-256 and 1 MiB chunks.

Note

This profile will become the new implicit default, provided for testing purposes. Follow kubo#4143 for more details.

Types

This document refers to the standard JSON types (e.g., null, string, number, etc.), as well as a few custom types, described below.

flag

Flags allow enabling and disabling features. However, unlike simple booleans, they can also be null (or omitted) to indicate that the default value should be chosen. This makes it easier for Kubo to change the defaults in the future unless the user explicitly sets the flag to either true (enabled) or false (disabled). Flags have three possible states:

  • null or missing (apply the default value).
  • true (enabled)
  • false (disabled)

priority

Priorities allow specifying the priority of a feature/protocol and disabling the feature/protocol. Priorities can take one of the following values:

  • null/missing (apply the default priority, same as with flags)
  • false (disabled)
  • 1 - 2^63 (priority, lower is preferred)

strings

Strings is a special type for conveniently specifying a single string, an array of strings, or null:

  • null
  • "a single string"
  • ["an", "array", "of", "strings"]

duration

Duration is a type for describing lengths of time, using the same format go does (e.g, "1d2h4m40.01s").

optionalInteger

Optional integers allow specifying some numerical value which has an implicit default when missing from the config file:

  • null/missing will apply the default value defined in Kubo sources (.WithDefault(value))
  • an integer between -2^63 and 2^63-1 (i.e. -9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807)

optionalBytes

Optional Bytes allow specifying some number of bytes which has an implicit default when missing from the config file:

  • null/missing (apply the default value defined in Kubo sources)
  • a string value indicating the number of bytes, including human readable representations:
    • SI sizes (metric units, powers of 1000), e.g. 1B, 2kB, 3MB, 4GB, 5TB, …)
    • IEC sizes (binary units, powers of 1024), e.g. 1B, 2KiB, 3MiB, 4GiB, 5TiB, …)

optionalString

Optional strings allow specifying some string value which has an implicit default when missing from the config file:

  • null/missing will apply the default value defined in Kubo sources (.WithDefault("value"))
  • a string

optionalDuration

Optional durations allow specifying some duration value which has an implicit default when missing from the config file:

  • null/missing will apply the default value defined in Kubo sources (.WithDefault("1h2m3s"))
  • a string with a valid go duration (e.g, "1d2h4m40.01s").