How to store files with Boost on Filecoin

This tutorial goes through all the steps required to make a storage deal with Boost on Filecoin.

First, you need to initialise a new Boost client and also set the endpoint for a public Filecoin node. In this example we are using https://glif.io

export FULLNODE_API_INFO=https://api.node.glif.io

boost init

The init command will output your new wallet address, and warn you that the market actor is not initialised.

boost init

boost/init_cmd.go:53    default wallet set      {"wallet": "f3wfbcudimjcqtfztfhoskgls5gmkfx3kb2ubpycgo7a2ru77temduoj2ottwzlxbrbzm4jycrtu45deawbluq"}
boost/init_cmd.go:60    wallet balance  {"value": "0"}
boost/init_cmd.go:65    market actor is not initialised, you must add funds to it in order to send online deals

Then you need to send funds to the wallet, and add funds to the market actor (in the example below we are adding 1 FIL).

You can use the boostx utilities to add funds to the market actor:

boostx market-add 1

You can confirm that the market actor has funds by running boost init again.

After that you need to generate a car file for data you want to store on Filecoin, and note down its payload-cid. We recommend using go-car CLI to generate the car file.

car create -f my-data.car --version 1 <my-data>
car root my-data.car

bafykbzacedzjq6jvlqnclrseq8pp5lypa6ozuqgug3wjie3orh67berkwv7e4

Then you need to calculate the commp and piece size for the generated car file:

boostx commp ./my-data.car

CommP CID:  baga6ea4seaqjaxked6ovoj5f3bdisfeuwtjhrzh3s34mg5cyzevgoebe7tdckdi
Piece size:  2097152
Car file size: 1101978 

Place the generated car file on a public HTTP server, so that a storage provider can later fetch it.

Finally, trigger an online storage deal with a given storage provider:

export FULLNODE_API_INFO=https://api.node.glif.io

boost deal --verified=false \
           --provider=f0026876 \
           --http-url=https://public-http-server.com/my-data.car \
           --commp=baga6ea4seaqjaxked6ovoj5f3bdisfeuwtjhrzh3s34mg5cyzevgoebe7tdckdi \
           --car-size=1101978 \
           --piece-size=2097152 \
           --payload-cid=bafykbzacedzjq6jvlqnclrseq8pp5lypa6ozuqgug3wjie3orh67berkwv7e4