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Quick Setup

  1. (Skip this step if you run the Chainweb node in data center.) Log into your router and configure port forwarding for port 1789 to your computer.

  2. Make sure that your firewall allows incoming connection on port 1789.

  3. Initialize database (optional but saves several hours of db synchronization on node startup.):

    First you need a database snapshot URL. See below, how to obtain a database snapshot.

    docker run -ti --rm -e DBURL=YOUR_DB_SNAPSHOT_URL -v chainweb-data:/data kadena/chainweb-node /chainweb/initialize-db.sh

  4. Start Chainweb node:

    docker run -d -p 1789:1789 -p 1848:1848 -v chainweb-data:/data kadena/chainweb-node

For explanations and additional configuration options (like, for instance, using an alternate port) keep reading.

Minimal System Requirements

  • CPU: 2 cores
  • RAM: 4 GB
  • Storage: 150 GB of free space (it is recommend to use SSD disks)
  • Network: public IP address or port forwarding

For instance AWS EC2 t3a.medium VMs with 150GB SSD root storage are known to work. Fast HDD disks are fine to, but should provide good IOPS values.

Running a Chainweb Node as Docker Container

A Chainweb node serves two separate APIs:

  1. The P2P API includes all endpoints that are used for node-to-node communication. It is served via HTTPS and must be reachable from the public internet.

  2. The Service API includes all routes that off Kadena Chainweb services to users and applications. It is served as plain (unencrypted) HTTP and can kept private. It is also possible to use this API with a reverse proxy.

More details about these APIs can be found further down in this document.

A Chainweb node must be reachable from the public internet. It needs a public IP address and port. If you run the node from a data center, usually, you only have to ensure that it can be reached on the default P2P port 1789. You can use the following shell command to start the node.

docker run -d -p 1848:1848 -p 1789:1789 kadena/chainweb-node

This exposes the P2P network on HTTPS port 1789 and the API services of Chainweb node on HTTP port 1848.

If you are running the node from a local network with NAT (network address translation), which is the case for most home networks, you'll have to configure port forwarding for the P2P port (1789) in your router.

Using different ports is possible, too. For the P2P API the internal and external port of the docker container must match and the internal P2P port can be changed using the CHAINWEB_P2P_PORT environment variable. For instance, the following command exposes the P2P network on port 443.

docker run -d -p 1848:80 -p 443:443 -e "CHAINWEB_P2P_PORT=443" kadena/chainweb-node

More options to configure the node are described at the bottom of this document.

Above command starts the node with an empty Chainweb database. It will take about 2-3 days until the node has "caught up" with the network, joined consensus, and can be used for mining and processing transactions.

The startup time can be shortened to a few minutes by initializing the node with a pre-computed database. This is strongly encouraged and described further down in this document.

Initialize Chainweb Database

When the container is started for the first time it has to synchronize and rebuild the Chainweb database from the P2P network. This can take a long time. Currently, as of 2021-02-17, this takes about 2-3 days for a node in a well connected data center.

The container includes a script for synchronizing a pre-build database, which currently, as of 2021-02-17, involves downloading about 15GB of data.

A database snapshot is just a gzipped tar archive of the Chainweb database, which contains the subdirectories rocksDb and sqlite. The URL can point to remote location or a local file. Any URL that curl understands is fine.

Database snapshots are available from different sources. Kadena offers an up-to-date snapshot at https://kadena-node-db.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/db-chainweb-node-ubuntu.18.04-latest.tar.gz. This file is stored in a request-pays S3 bucket. In order to access it you need an AWS account and you must create and signed URL for authenticating with S3. Details about how to do this can be found here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/ObjectsinRequesterPaysBuckets.html

With node.js you can create a signed URL for above snapshot URL as follows:

// get-chainweb-image-url.js
AWS = require("aws-sdk");
const s3 = new AWS.S3({
  accessKeyId: AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, // Add your Access Key ID from IAM
  secretAccessKey: AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, // Add your Secret Access Key from IAM
  region: "us-east-2"
})
const params = {
  Bucket: 'kadena-node-db',
  Expires: 3600,
  Key: 'db-chainweb-node-ubuntu.18.04-latest.tar.gz',
  RequestPayer: 'requester'
}
// When ran, the script will output exclusively the signed url
s3.getSignedUrl("getObject", params, (_err, res) => console.log(res))

With Python one can use the following code:

import boto3
client = boto3.client('s3')
url  = client.generate_presigned_url(
    "get_object",
    Params = {
        "Bucket":"kadena-node-db",
        "Key":"db-chainweb-node-ubuntu.18.04-latest.tar.gz",
        "RequestPayer":'requester'
    }
)

Database within Chainweb node container

The following shell commands initializes a docker container with a database and creates a new image from it.

npm install aws-sdk
YOUR_DB_SNAPSHOT_URL=$(node get-chainweb-image-url.js) # assuming you use get-chainweb-image-url.js form above
docker run -ti --name initialize-chainweb-db -e DBURL=$YOUR_DB_SNAPSHOT_URL kadena/chainweb-node /chainweb/initialize-db.sh
docker commit `docker ps -a -f 'name=initialize-chainweb-db' -q` chainweb-node-with-db
docker rm initialize-chainweb-db

Once the database is initialized the image can be used to run a Chainweb node as follows:

docker run \
    --detach \
    --publish 1848:1848 \
    --publish 1789:1789 \
    --name chainweb-node \
    chainweb-node-with-db \
    /chainweb/run-chainweb-node.sh

Persistent the Chainweb database (outside of container)

When the Chainweb database is stored in the container it is lost when the container is deleted. This could, for instance, happen when a new version of Chainweb is released and the node is upgraded to the new version.

It is therefore recommended to store the Chainweb database outside the container on a docker volume (preferred method) or in the file system of the host system.

# 1. Get signed database snapshot URL (assuming you use get-chainweb-image-url.js form above)
npm install aws-sdk
YOUR_DB_SNAPSHOT_URL=$(node get-chainweb-image-url.js)

# 2. Initialize a database that is persisted on a docker volume
docker run -ti --rm \
    --mount type=volume,source=chainweb-data,target=/data \
    --env DBURL=$YOUR_DB_SNAPSHOT_URL \
    kadena/chainweb-node \
    /chainweb/initialize-db.sh

# 3. Use the database volume with a Chainweb node
docker run \
    --detach \
    --publish 1848:1848 \
    --publish 1789:1789 \
    --name chainweb-node \
    --mount type=volume,source=chainweb-data,target=/data \
    kadena/chainweb-node

Alternatively a bind mount can be used to persist the database in the file system of the host.

Enable Mining API

The private mining API is enabled by providing the public key of a miner as environment variable in the container using the -e option of Docker's run command. Optionally, the miner account name can be given, too. If the account name is omitted the public key is used as account name.

Only a single miner with a single is supported. The key predicate is keys-all.

The following example provides a public miner key and an account name:

docker run \
    --detach \
    --publish 1848:1848 \
    --publish 1789:1789 \
    --env "MINER_KEY=26a9285cd8db34702cfef27a5339179b5a26373f03dd94e2096b0b3ba6c417da" \
    --env "MINER_ACCOUNT=merle" \
    --name chainweb-node \
    --mount type=volume,source=chainweb-data,target=/data \
    kadena/chainweb-node

Please refer to the official chainweb-mining-client for a further information of how to use the mining API to mine on Chainweb. The official reference implementation does not support mining devices that are powerful enough to competitively mine on the Kadena Mainnet. Links to alternate mining software can be found here.

Enable Rosetta API

The chainweb node has optional support for the rosetta API, which can be enabled by setting the ROSETTA environment variable to any non-empty value.

docker run \
    --detach \
    --publish 1848:1848 \
    --publish 1789:1789 \
    --env "ROSETTA=1" \
    --name chainweb-node \
    --mount type=volume,source=chainweb-data,target=/data \
    kadena/chainweb-node

API Overview

TODO

Verifying database consistency

TODO

Running the test suite

TODO

Technical Details

This Docker image runs a chainweb-node using the public IP address of the host with self-signed certificates. It supports a single mining key. For many use cases this is sufficient.

For more complex production setups it is recommended to clone the repository, edit the configuration file within the Docker container, and create an custom image.

When a public domain name is used instead of a domain name, we recommend to use docker compose to run certbot in a different container and share the certificates using docker volumes.

Commands:

  • /chainweb/run-chainweb-node.sh
  • /chainweb/initialize-db.sh
  • /chainweb/check-reachability.sh
  • /chainweb/check-health.sh

File System

  • Database directory: /data/chainweb-db
  • Chainweb configuration file: /chainweb/chainweb.mainnet01.yaml

Available Configuration Options

The following environment variables can be used to configured the image using the --env option of docker run.

  • CHAINWEB_P2P_PORT: the network port that is used by the Chainweb P2P network. The port that is used internally in the container must match the port that is used publicly. A appropriate port mapping must be passed to the docker run command, e.g. -p 443:443. (default: 1789)

  • CHAINWEB_SERVICE_PORT: the network port that is used by the Chainweb REST Service API. Usually, there is no need to change the default value, because the internal port can be mapped to some external port by passing a port mapping to the docker run command, e.g. -p 1848:80. (default: 1848)

  • LOGLEVEL: the log-level that is used by the Chainweb node. Possible values are quiet, error, warn, info, and debug. The value debug should be avoid during normal production. (default: warn).

  • CHAINWEB_P2P_HOST: the public IP address of the node. (default: automatically detected)

  • MINER_KEY: the public key of the miner. If this is empty or unset mining is disabled. Only a single key is supported with key predicate keys-all.

  • MINER_ACCOUNT: the mining account for the miner key. If unset or empty the MINER_KEY is also used as account name.

  • ROSETTA: Any non-empty value enables the Rosetta API of the Chainweb node (default: disabled).

  • TODO:

    • running a node with a DNS domain name
    • option for setting the block gas limit
    • option to enable the header stream
    • explain how to overwrite the configuration file

Options for /chainweb/initialize-db.sh

  • DBURL: The URL from where the database snapshot is downloaded. We recommend that users maintain there own database snapshots.

Here is an example for how to use these settings:

docker run \
    --detach \
    --publish 8000:80 \
    --publish 1789:1789 \
    --name chainweb-node \
    --env "CHAINWEB_P2P_PORT=1789" \
    --env "CHAINWEB_SERVICE_PORT=8000" \
    --env "LOGLEVEL=warn" \
    --env "MINER_KEY=774723b442c6ee660a0ac34747374fcd451591a123b35df5f4a69f1e9cb2cc75" \
    --env "MINER_ACCOUNT=merle" \
    --env "ROSETTA=1" \
    --mount type=volume,source=chainweb-data,target=/data \
    kadena/chainweb-node

API Endpoints

P2P API endpoints (HTTPS, inter-node communication):

  • ^/chainweb/0.0/mainnet01/cut
  • ^/chainweb/0.0/mainnet01/chain/[0-9]+/(header|hash|branch|payload)
  • ^/chainweb/0.0/mainnet01/chain/[0-9]+/mempool

Service API endpoints (HTTP):

  • ^/info
  • ^/health-check
  • ^/chainweb/0.0/mainnet01/chain/[0-9]+/pact/
  • ^/chainweb/0.0/mainnet01/rosetta/ (optional, off by default)
  • ^/chainweb/0.0/mainnet01/header/updates (optional, off by default)
  • ^/chainweb/0.0/mainnet01/mining/ (optional, off by default)

Only the endpoints that are required for inter-node communication are included in the P2P API. The port of the P2P must be publicly available.

All endpoints that are not used for inter-node communication are included in to the service API. It is up to the node operator to decide if and how to make the service API available to users.

A detailed documentation of the API is available at https://api.chainweb.com.