Home Server 3: Bitcoin Core
2022-10-06 00:36The time has come! We will finally be able to install Bitcoin Core, and when we are finised, we can send a totally original and unique “running Bitcoin” tweet.
Start by SSH’ing into your server, then on your main machine, go to the bitcoincore.org downloads page. Right click Linux (tgz) link and copy the URL.
On your server, run sudo apt install wget to install wget, a terminal application that can download files over the web. After it installs, run wget https://bitcoincore.org/bin/bitcoin-core-23.0/bitcoin-23.0-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz, except use the URL you copied from the Bitcoin Core website, which may different.
That will download Bitcoin Core from the website, and leave the file in your local folder:
user@server:~/$ ls
bitcoin-23.0-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
Unzip the file:
user@server:~/$ tar xvf bitcoin-23.0-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
bitcoin-23.0/
bitcoin-23.0/README.md
bitcoin-23.0/bin/
bitcoin-23.0/bin/bitcoin-cli
bitcoin-23.0/bin/bitcoin-qt
bitcoin-23.0/bin/bitcoin-tx
bitcoin-23.0/bin/bitcoin-util
bitcoin-23.0/bin/bitcoin-wallet
bitcoin-23.0/bin/bitcoind
bitcoin-23.0/bin/test_bitcoin
bitcoin-23.0/include/
bitcoin-23.0/include/bitcoinconsensus.h
bitcoin-23.0/lib/
bitcoin-23.0/lib/libbitcoinconsensus.so
bitcoin-23.0/lib/libbitcoinconsensus.so.0
bitcoin-23.0/lib/libbitcoinconsensus.so.0.0.0
bitcoin-23.0/share/
bitcoin-23.0/share/man/
bitcoin-23.0/share/man/man1/
bitcoin-23.0/share/man/man1/bitcoin-cli.1
bitcoin-23.0/share/man/man1/bitcoin-qt.1
bitcoin-23.0/share/man/man1/bitcoin-tx.1
bitcoin-23.0/share/man/man1/bitcoin-util.1
bitcoin-23.0/share/man/man1/bitcoin-wallet.1
bitcoin-23.0/share/man/man1/bitcoind.1
We can adapt the official installation instruction for our use.
Install the software directly into your /usr/local/bin folder.
user@server:~/$ sudo install -m 0755 -o root -g root -t /usr/local/bin bitcoin-23.0/bin/*
You can now run bitcoind, but don’t start it yet! We’re going to create a systemd service to start the bitcoin node at system boot.
user@server:~/$ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/bitcoind.service
Paste the following into the file:
[Unit]
Description=Bitcoin daemon
Documentation=https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/doc/init.md
# https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/NetworkTarget/
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target
[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/bitcoind -daemon \
-pid=/run/bitcoind/bitcoind.pid \
-conf=/home/USERNAME/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf \
-datadir=/home/USERNAME/.bitcoin
# Make sure the config directory is readable by the service user
PermissionsStartOnly=true
#ExecStartPre=/bin/chgrp bitcoin /etc/bitcoin
# Process management
####################
Type=forking
PIDFile=/run/bitcoind/bitcoind.pid
Restart=on-failure
TimeoutStartSec=infinity
TimeoutStopSec=600
# Directory creation and permissions
####################################
# Run as bitcoin:bitcoin
User=USERNAME
Group=USERNAME
# /run/bitcoind
RuntimeDirectory=bitcoind
RuntimeDirectoryMode=0710
# /etc/bitcoin
ConfigurationDirectory=bitcoin
ConfigurationDirectoryMode=0710
# /var/lib/bitcoind
StateDirectory=bitcoind
StateDirectoryMode=0710
# Hardening measures
####################
# Provide a private /tmp and /var/tmp.
PrivateTmp=true
# Mount /usr, /boot/ and /etc read-only for the process.
ProtectSystem=full
# Deny access to /home, /root and /run/user
#ProtectHome=true
# Disallow the process and all of its children to gain
# new privileges through execve().
NoNewPrivileges=true
# Use a new /dev namespace only populated with API pseudo devices
# such as /dev/null, /dev/zero and /dev/random.
PrivateDevices=true
# Deny the creation of writable and executable memory mappings.
MemoryDenyWriteExecute=true
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Search for every instance of USERNAME in the config file and replace it with your username. If you’re not unsure what this file is for, it’s a just description that tells systemd (Ubuntu’s service manager) how, why and when to start and stop the Bitcoin daemon.
Lastly, we are going to configure bitcoin using a configuration file:
user@server:~/$ mkdir -p ~/.bitcoin
user@server:~/$ sudo nano ~/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf
Paste this content into the file:
server=1
txindex=1
daemon=1
rpcport=8332
rpcbind=0.0.0.0
rpcallowip=127.0.0.1
rpcallowip=10.0.0.0/8
rpcallowip=172.0.0.0/8
rpcallowip=192.0.0.0/8
zmqpubrawblock=tcp://0.0.0.0:28332
zmqpubrawtx=tcp://0.0.0.0:28333
zmqpubhashblock=tcp://0.0.0.0:28334
whitelist=127.0.0.1
rpcuser=username
rpcpassword=password
Make sure to replace rpcuser and rpcpassword with an appropriate username and password. Note: As you can see, at this time, we are not setting up Tor. That may come later.
Finally, everything is ready to go. Just run sudo systemctl enable bitcoind and sudo systemctl start bitcoind.
At this point, Bitcoin should be running and beginning to download the blockchain. You can run sudo systemctl status bitcoind to see how the service is running. Alternative, you can check the Bitcoin debug log to see how the download is doing:
user@server:~/$ tail -f ~/.bitcoin/debug.log
2022-10-06T01:13:19Z New outbound peer connected: version: 70016, blocks=757289, peer=1444 (block-relay-only)
2022-10-06T01:20:49Z New outbound peer connected: version: 70016, blocks=757289, peer=1445 (block-relay-only)
2022-10-06T01:21:21Z New outbound peer connected: version: 70016, blocks=757289, peer=1446 (block-relay-only)
2022-10-06T01:27:07Z UpdateTip: new best=000000000000000000005049f1ef7798dbd3ba2c47752d21bee0d91db06f972b height=757290 version=0x220ac000 log2_work=93.768231 tx=769965790 date='2022-10-06T01:26:28Z' progress=1.000000 cache=74.8MiB(516512txo)
2022-10-06T01:27:35Z UpdateTip: new best=000000000000000000002e69ef654077c22f7fe6451c777c1780a033c50d2b85 height=757291 version=0x2e95c004 log2_work=93.768242 tx=769965875 date='2022-10-06T01:27:07Z' progress=1.000000 cache=74.8MiB(516869txo)
2022-10-06T01:29:12Z UpdateTip: new best=00000000000000000002832a316e84e2ff86f71fcfb219c860f8762c5b73b5e5 height=757292 version=0x2c4fc000 log2_work=93.768254 tx=769966199 date='2022-10-06T01:28:55Z' progress=1.000000 cache=74.8MiB(517081txo)
2022-10-06T01:29:14Z New outbound peer connected: version: 70015, blocks=757292, peer=1447 (block-relay-only)
2022-10-06T01:31:40Z UpdateTip: new best=0000000000000000000713bd733ab4a7d42e7a3853e78829ed78b98d60d7ca46 height=757293 version=0x20000000 log2_work=93.768265 tx=769966586 date='2022-10-06T01:31:18Z' progress=1.000000 cache=75.0MiB(518131txo)
2022-10-06T01:33:03Z UpdateTip: new best=00000000000000000006fb159899fe535dfde78f18107ee026edb8b3a50285ab height=757294 version=0x20000004 log2_work=93.768277 tx=769966789 date='2022-10-06T01:32:29Z' progress=1.000000 cache=75.0MiB(518729txo)
2022-10-06T01:41:37Z UpdateTip: new best=000000000000000000039db1fbbe91942ef8453293443514fc444670358425da height=757295 version=0x20002004 log2_work=93.768288 tx=769968052 date='2022-10-06T01:41:34Z' progress=1.000000 cache=75.5MiB(522075txo)
This is what an updated node’s log looks like. Yours may look different because it’s doing a node sync, but you should at least see text indicating that the daemon is doing something. You can stop following the log by typing Ctrl-C.
You can check the status of the block download by typing:
user@server:~/$ bitcoin-cli getblockchaininfo
{
"chain": "main",
"blocks": 757295,
"headers": 757295,
"bestblockhash": "000000000000000000039db1fbbe91942ef8453293443514fc444670358425da",
"difficulty": 31360548173144.85,
"time": 1665020494,
"mediantime": 1665019588,
"verificationprogress": 0.9999979987229801,
"initialblockdownload": false,
"chainwork": "00000000000000000000000000000000000000003681016072e90e118f6b4420",
"size_on_disk": 489570147653,
"pruned": false,
"warnings": ""
}
This is mine. You will see "initalblockdownload" as true, and you can see the size in disk in bytes. The true value indicates that the initial block sync is still in progress. On my fiber connection, it took 4-5 hours.
Conclusion
That’s it, we are all done! We are running Bitcoin Core and a full node. Don’t forget to tweet some version of “running Bitcoin”.
If you want to explore your node a bit, you can use the bitcoin-cli command to execute commands against the node, as above. Take a look at the RPC API reference for a listing of commands you can run with bitcoin-cli.
Next time, we will install an electrum server, which indexes the blockchain for use by wallets.