IPFS Command Line; <HASH>/readme; Error: merkledag: not found

Help Kubo
1

Is starting the daemon the right answer and I just need to wait for this to complete or do I need to do some other troubleshooting steps?

-----Issue Background-----
Installed IPFS-Desktop; Windows 10
Ran IPFS-Desktop; Worked Normally

Then,
Installed ‘go-ipfs_v0.5.0_windows-386’

Following Along on ‘Command-line quick start’
Command:
ipfs init
Error: ipfs configuration file already exists!
Makes sense as I previously ran IPFS-Desktop

ipfs id

{
“ID”: “Normal Hash”,
“PublicKey”: “Normal Public Key”,
“Addresses”: null,
“AgentVersion”: “go-ipfs/0.5.0/”,
“ProtocolVersion”: “ipfs/0.1.0”
}

ipfs cat /ipfs/<HASH>/readme
Error: merkledag: not found

Google Search, some users reported that this command wouldn’t work on their installation without running daemon.

Starting daemon works normally
ipfs cat /ipfs//readme
Process Hangs and doesn’t complete, killed the process after 2mins

----Another Symptom-----
ipfs cat /ipfs/QmW2WQi7j6c7UgJTarActp7tDNikE4B2qXtFCfLPdsgaTQ/cat.jpg > cat.jpg
GIMP: Opening 'C:\Users\diia8\Installed Tools\cat.jpg' failed: JPEG image plug-in could not open image

Attempted deleting and pulling the file several times.

2

What HASH are you using. The instructions you are following tell you to use the hash suggested in the ipfs init command, which is ipfs cat /ipfs/QmQPeNsJPyVWPFDVHb77w8G42Fvo15z4bG2X8D2GhfbSXc/readme. Yet you say your init did not complete so you did not see that message.

ipfs cat /ipfs/QmW2WQi7j6c7UgJTarActp7tDNikE4B2qXtFCfLPdsgaTQ/cat.jpg > cat.jpg works well for me. Check permissions, whether you can use another program to open it or preview it in your file explorer to figure out what is wrong with cat.jpg.

3

IPFS-Desktop is still working normally,
ipfs cat /ipfs/QmW2WQi7j6c7UgJTarActp7tDNikE4B2qXtFCfLPdsgaTQ/cat.jpg > cat.jpg
Works fine from IPFS-Desktop

Command Prompt is the only issue.

I have a hash, there isn’t any issue there.

Thank you for helping me out with this issue.

I have been toying for the last 2 hours with this being a security issue relating to execution policy and the context that the command is running in.

4

More Searching, I don’t know if it is accurate information but it seems like a common response it doesn’t work for everyone due to many factors regarding versions, platform, software installed, security settings, etc…

I believe I have this issue isolated to something with cat or path related which might have some relation to security settings.

Might just move this to a virtual box or WSL to test with to get around this.

Thanks for your help again.

5

Working now on Ubuntu as advertised.