Introduction

I have been running IPFS from a terminal window by manually typing the following commandipfs daemon. Now, I am setting up a systemd service to manage this automatically.

After this there is one more thing to decide to do and that is who do you want to run the ipfs daemon as, yourself , an ipfs user or someone else. For this article we are updating to run as an ipfs user as best practice to help isolate the ipfs user, process and files from your personal home directory. This is how ipfs cluster documentation suggest running as the ipfs user too. If you like the idea of moving to running as an ipfs user see how to migrate from your current user to an ipfs user.

If you would like to continue running as yourself just update the file below replacing ipfs with your preferred username to run ipfs as:

User=ipfs
Group=ipfs

Steps to run IPFS daemon as a systemd service on Linux Mint 21.x:

1. Create a systemd script file /etc/systemd/system/ipfs.service with the following content:

[Unit]
Description=IPFS daemon
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=notify
User=ipfs
Group=ipfs
StateDirectory=ipfs
TimeoutStartSec=10800
MemorySwapMax=0
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/ipfs daemon

Restart=on-failure
KillSignal=SIGINT

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

2. Start the IPFS daemon:

   sudo systemctl start ipfs
   

3. Check the status of the IPFS daemon:

   systemctl status ipfs
   

   You should see something like this:

   $ systemctl status ipfs
   ● ipfs.service - IPFS daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/ipfs.service; enabled; vendor preset: >)
   Active: active (running) since Wed 2023-08-16 07:24:35 PDT; 38min ago
   Main PID: 49516 (ipfs)
   Tasks: 25 (limit: 14171)
   Memory: 522.3M
   CPU: 19min 14.954s
   CGroup: /system.slice/ipfs.service
   └─49516 /usr/local/bin/ipfs daemon
   
   Aug 16 07:24:37 daniel-mp-dq ipfs[49516]: Swarm announcing /ip4/65.38.54.233/ud>
   Aug 16 07:24:37 daniel-mp-dq ipfs[49516]: Swarm announcing /ip4/65.38.54.233/ud>
   Aug 16 07:24:37 daniel-mp-dq ipfs[49516]: Swarm announcing /ip6/::1/tcp/4001
   Aug 16 07:24:37 daniel-mp-dq ipfs[49516]: Swarm announcing /ip6/::1/udp/4001/qu>
   Aug 16 07:24:37 daniel-mp-dq ipfs[49516]: Swarm announcing /ip6/::1/udp/4001/qu>
   Aug 16 07:24:37 daniel-mp-dq ipfs[49516]: Swarm announcing /ip6/::1/udp/4001/qu>
   Aug 16 07:24:37 daniel-mp-dq ipfs[49516]: RPC API server listening on /ip4/127.>
   Aug 16 07:24:37 daniel-mp-dq ipfs[49516]: WebUI: http://127.0.0.1:5001/webui
   Aug 16 07:24:37 daniel-mp-dq ipfs[49516]: Gateway server listening on /ip4/127.>
   Aug 16 07:24:37 daniel-mp-dq ipfs[49516]: Daemon is ready
   

4. Enable the daemon to start on boot:

   sudo systemctl enable ipfs
   

After running the above command, the IPFS daemon will start automatically on boot, ensuring your IPFS content remains available even after a restart.

References

IPFS Cluster Production Deployment Setup Documentation

ipfs service template Github - hsanjuan

Run IPFS on Boot (Ubuntu/Debian)

A SystemD Unit for IPFS