Shows 3MB files as hosted on empty / fresh IPFS node

[KrishnaPG]

Describe the bug
Started a fresh ipfs node and browsed to the webui. On the status page it shows "Hosting 3 MB of files" - "Discovered 1392 peers" (ref. screenshot below)

But when clicked on the files section, it is empty. (ref. screenshot below)

To Reproduce
The size usually varies, but start a fresh IPFS node and you would start to see the files count, without having to add any files explicitly

Expected behavior
If this "3MB" includes "on the fly" blocks that are being wanted by other peers and just hosted temporarily on the node (which should be the case, since no files are added on the local node directly), two things are needed:

1. clearly indicate the nature of the hosting data. Something like Hosting y MB of peer data, z MB of local pinned files etc.
2. when clicked on the "Hosting 3MB of files" link, please display the list of blocks that are making up this 3MB (even if they are just "on the fly" peer data).

For beginners, web-ui is a great tool to understand what is going on, and helping them visually explore the peer data that is being hosted on the local node, is very important for debugging and many other things.

Also, the peers section lists the peers nicely - the geography map is very useful. Similarly, is there any way those peers can be "browsed" to explore which blocks and pinned files they are hosting (assuming they allow) ?

Screenshots

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: Windows 10
• Browser [e.g. chrome, safari]: Chrome latest

Smartphone (please complete the following information): None

[olizilla]

Thanks for the feedback @KrishnaPG I strongly agree. We could improve those stats by showing the total number blocks vs the number of pinned blocks, to compare the ephemeral cached content to the content you care about.

Providing a way to see content in the block store that isn't in the MFS is something we really need.

[KrishnaPG]

Thank you @olizilla

Does IPFS offer any API or some other mechanism to list the blocks on the store?

Most of the API is centered around knowing the cid before hand to get a block / file. What is needed for this is more of: enumerate all blocks in the store (without having to know the cids). Wondering if there is a way.

[KrishnaPG]

Also, regarding the swarm peers, how are you keeping the peers list up-to-date? I have been looking into the ipfs swarm API, it only offers a snapshot view with ipfs.swarm.peers(), which means we have to periodically poll the method.

I was looking for more of a reactive variable or atleast connected, disconnected events from the ipfs swarm so that interested parties can keep track of the peers without having to poll. Opened a request on those lines here: ipfs-inactive/interface-js-ipfs-core#475 requesting to enable reactivity or atleast raise events. That should make building the ui more easy

[olizilla]

Work is underway to let users see what else is in their datastore in #1027