Based on the requirement, witness node can be installed using any of the below procedure.

This document assumes that you are running Ubuntu 18.04 or 20.04. Other Debian based releases may also work with the provided script.

The following steps outline the Docker installation of a Witness Node:

1. Preparing the Environment

2. Installing Docker

3. Installing the Peerplays image

4. Starting the Container

5. Update the config.ini File

6. Create a Peerplays Account

7. Update config.ini with Witness Account Info

8. Start the Container and Vote for Yourself

1. Preparing the Environment

1.1 Hardware requirements

Please see the Witness node hardware requirements.

For the docker install on Peerplays Mainnet, the requirements that we'll need for this guide would be as follows (as per the hardware requirements doc):

1.2 Installing the required dependencies

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install git curl

Then we'll clone the Peerplays Docker repository.

git clone -b release https://gitlab.com/PBSA/tools-libs/peerplays-docker.git

2. Installing Docker

Docker can be installed using the run.sh script inside the Peerplays Docker repository:

cd peerplays-docker
sudo ./run.sh install_docker

The run.sh script contains many commands to make managing the node easy. A list of all its commands are listed in section 9 of this document.

Since the script has added the currently logged in user to the Docker group, you'll need to re-login (or close and reconnect SSH) for Docker to function correctly.

2.1. Setting up the .env file

Copy the example.env to .env located in the root of the repository (ie peerplays-docker folder)

cp example.env .env

We're going to have to make some changes to the .env file so we'll open that now using a text editor.

nano .env

Here are the important parts of the .env file. These will be the parts that need to be edited or optionally edited. The rest of the file should be unchanged.

# Comma separated port numbers to expose to the internet (binds to 0.0.0.0)
# Expose 9777 to the internet, but only expose RPC ports 8090 and 8091 onto 127.0.0.1 (localhost)
# allowing the host machine access to the container's RPC ports via 127.0.0.1:8090 and 127.0.0.1:8091
# We'll need ports 8090 and 8091 open to our localhost to interact with the Peerplays CLI Wallet.
PORTS=9777,127.0.0.1:8090:8090,127.0.0.1:8091:8091

# Websocket RPC node to use by default for ./run.sh remote_wallet
REMOTE_WS="wss://ca.peerplays.info/"

3. Installing the Peerplays image

Use run.sh to pull the node image:

cd ~/peerplays-docker
sudo ./run.sh install

4. Start the Container

With at least 8GB of disk space available in your home folder, we'll start the node. This will create and/or start the Peerplays docker container.

sudo ./run.sh replay

Then we'll check the status of the container to see if all is well.

sudo ./run.sh logs

Last we'll stop the container so we can make updates to the config.ini file.

sudo ./run.sh stop

5. Update the config.ini File

We need to set the endpoint and seed-node addresses so we can access the cli_wallet and download all the initial blocks from the chain. Within the config.ini file, locate the p2p-endpoint, rpc-endpoint, and seed-node settings and enter the following addresses.

nano ~/peerplays-docker/data/witness_node_data_dir/config.ini

p2p-endpoint = 0.0.0.0:9777
rpc-endpoint = 127.0.0.1:8090
seed-node = ca.peerplays.info:9777
seed-node = de.peerplays.xyz:9777
seed-node = pl.peerplays.org:9777
seed-nodes = []

Save the changes and start the container back up.

sudo ./run.sh replay

We have successfully started the witness node and it is now ready for configuration.

7. Edit config.ini to include your Witness ID and your private key pair

Exit the cli_wallet with the quit command. We'll stop the container and edit the config.ini file once again.

sudo ./run.sh stop
nano ~/peerplays-docker/data/witness_node_data_dir/config.ini

witness-id = "your_witness_id"
private-key = ["block_signing_key", "private_key_for_your_block_signing_key"]

8. Start the container and vote for yourself

sudo ./run.sh start

Once again, we need to wait for the node to sync the blocks to use the cli_wallet. After the sync, you can vote for yourself.

sudo ./run.sh wallet
unlock your-password-here
vote_for_witness created-username created-username true true

Now you can check your votes to verify it worked.

get_witness your_witness_account

9. Node Configuration

Next step is to configure the witness node based on the requirement. There are different ways in which the nodes can be configured such as block producer, SON node, API node, and delayed node.

1. Becoming a block producer is one of the important steps as it is mandatory to use the node for transactions across the wallet. Follow the steps from the below document to become a block producer,

2. There are other ways it which the node can be configured. The below document showcase the other ways available for node configuration.

10. What's Next?

11. Docker run.sh commands list

• start - starts seed container

• start_son - starts son seed container

• start_son_regtest - starts son seed container and bitcoind container under the docker network

• clean - Remove blockchain, p2p, and/or shared mem folder contents, seed, bitcoind, and son docker network (warns beforehand)

• dlblocks - download and decompress the blockchain to speed up your first start

• replay - starts seed container (in replay mode)

• replay_son - starts son seed container (in replay mode)

• memory_replay - starts seed container (in replay mode, with --memory-replay)

• shm_size - resizes /dev/shm to size given, e.g. ./run.sh shm_size 10G

• stop - stops seed container

• status - show status of seed container

• restart - restarts seed container

• install_docker - install docker

• install - pulls latest docker image from server (no compiling)

• install_full - pulls latest (FULL NODE FOR RPC) docker image from server (no compiling)

• rebuild - builds seed container (from docker file), and then restarts it

• build - only builds seed container (from docker file)

• logs - show all logs inc. docker logs, and seed logs

• wallet - open cli_wallet in the container

• remote_wallet - open cli_wallet in the container connecting to a remote seed

• enter - enter a bash session in the currently running container

• shell - launch the seed container with appropriate mounts, then open bash for inspection

10. Glossary

Witness: An independent server operator which validates network transactions.

Witness node: Nodes with a closed RPC port. They don't allow external connections. Instead these nodes focus on processing transactions into blocks.

This document assumes that you are running Ubuntu 20.04.

The following steps outline the artifact installation of a Witness Node:

1. Prepare the environment

2. Download and extract the artifacts

3. Copy the artifacts to the proper locations

4. Update the config.ini File

5. Start the node

1. Prepare the environment

1.1. Hardware requirements

For the GitLab artifact install, the requirements that we'll need for this guide would be as follows:

1.2. Install the required dependencies

The following dependencies are necessary for a clean install of Ubuntu 20.04:

1.3 cmake setup

Cmake is an open-source, cross platform tool that uses independent configuration files to generate native build tool files specific to the compiler and platform. It consists of precompiled binaries and the cmake tools makes configuration, building, and debugging much easier.

Install the cmake using the below commands:

1.4 Install Boost libraries

Boost libraries provide free peer-reviewed portable C++ source libraries and it can be used across broad spectrum of application.

Install Boost libraries using the below commands:

1.5 Install libzmq

The components libzmp and cppzmp are used for relaying messages between nodes.

First, install libzmq using the below commands:

1.6 Install cppzmq

Next, install cppzmp using the below commands:

1.7 Install gsl

GSL is the GNU scientific library for numerical computing. It is a collection of routines for numerical computing in e.g. linear algebra, probability, random number generation, statistics, differentiation, etc.,

Install the gsl using the below commands:

1.8 Install libbitcoin

The libbitcoin toolkit is a set of cross platform C++ libraries for building bitcoin applications. The toolkit consists of several libraries, most of which depend on the base libbitcoin-system library.

Install the libbitcoin using the below commands:

1.9 Install Doxygen

Doxygen is a software utility that recognizes comments within C++ code that have a certain form, and uses them to produce a collection of HTML files containing the information in those comments.

Install the Doxygen using the below commands:

2.0 Install Perl

Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language originally developed for text manipulation.

Install the Perl using the below commands:

2. Download and extract the artifacts

3. Copy the artifacts to the proper locations

Putting the witness_node and cli_wallet programs in the /usr/local/bin directory will allow us to call the program from any directory.

Now we can run start the node with:

Launching the witness creates the required directories which contain the config.ini file we'll need to edit. We'll stop the witness now with Ctrl + C so we can edit the config file.

4. Edit the config.ini file

We need to set the endpoint and seed-node addresses so we can access the cli_wallet and download all the initial blocks from the chain. Within the config.ini file, locate the p2p-endpoint, rpc-endpoint, and seed-node settings and enter the following addresses.

Save the changes and start the Witness back up.

We have successfully started the witness node and it is now ready for configuration.

5. Node Configuration

Next step is to configure the witness node based on the requirement. There are different ways in which the nodes can be configured such as block producer, SON node, API node, and delayed node.

1. Becoming a block producer is one of the important steps as it is mandatory to use the node for transactions across the wallet. Follow the steps from the below document to become a block producer,

2. There are other ways it which the node can be configured. The below document showcase the other ways available for node configuration.

6. What's Next?

7. Glossary

Witness: An independent server operator which validates network transactions.

Witness Node: Nodes with a closed RPC port. They don't allow external connections. Instead these nodes focus on processing transactions into blocks.