Setup a Witness Node using a pre-configured Docker container
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:
Preparing the Environment
Installing Docker
Installing the Peerplays image
Starting the Container
Update the config.ini
File
Create a Peerplays Account
Update config.ini
with Witness Account Info
Start the Container and Vote for Yourself
Before we begin, to set up a Witness node requires about 15 PPY. This is to pay for an upgraded account (5 PPY) and to create a new witness (8 PPY). The remaining funds are to pay for various transaction fees while setting up the node (like voting for yourself!). Please see Obtaining Your First Tokens for more info.
Note that these fees will likely change over time as recommended by the Committee of Advisors.
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):
Then we'll clone the Peerplays Docker repository.
It is required to have Docker installed on the system that will be performing the steps in this document.
Docker can be installed using the run.sh
script inside the Peerplays Docker repository:
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.
You can look at https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ to learn more on how to install Docker. Or if you are having permission issues trying to run Docker, use sudo
or look at https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/linux-postinstall/.
Copy the example.env
to .env
located in the root of the repository (ie peerplays-docker folder)
We're going to have to make some changes to the .env
file so we'll open that now using a text editor.
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.
Use run.sh
to pull the node image:
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.
Then we'll check the status of the container to see if all is well.
Last we'll stop the container so we can make updates to 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 container back up.
We have successfully started the witness node and it is now ready for configuration.
Exit the cli_wallet with the quit
command. We'll stop the container and edit the config.ini
file once again.
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.
Now you can check your votes to verify it worked.
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.
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,
There are other ways it which the node can be configured. The below document showcase the other ways available for node configuration.
run.sh
commands liststart
- 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
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.
Complete! You've installed your Witness node and you're up and running.
After configuring the node with desired configuration, click below to learn the NEXT steps
Node Type?
CPU
Memory
Storage
Bandwidth
OS
Witness
4 Cores
16GB
100GB SSD
1Gbps
Ubuntu 18.04