Run a reader node on VPS

The following steps are the same as you went through setting up a reader node on your local machine. You should use the non-root user you created in the previous step. You need to install the recommended software before you start.

Creating the folders

In this guide we will be running the node from the folder /opt/pbc-mainnet with user:group 1500:1500. First we need to create the conf and storage folders for the application:

sudo mkdir -p /opt/pbc-mainnet/conf

sudo mkdir -p /opt/pbc-mainnet/storage

Creating the node config.json

Start by opening the file in nano:

sudo nano /opt/pbc-mainnet/conf/config.json

{
  "restPort": 8080,
  "floodingPort": 9888,
  "knownPeers": [
    "188.180.83.49:9090",
    "188.180.83.49:9190",
    "188.180.83.49:9290",
    "188.180.83.49:9390",
    "174.138.2.217:9888",
    "172.93.110.125:9888",
    "107.189.1.171:9888",
    "176.78.42.5:9888"
  ]
}

To save the file press CTRL+O and then ENTER and then CTRL+X.

You can verify the contents of the files are what you expect by opening them with cat:

sudo cat /opt/pbc-mainnet/conf/config.json
# The config file should be printed here

Setting file permissions

Now we need to make sure the user with uid 1500 has the needed access to the files:

sudo chown -R "1500:1500" /opt/pbc-mainnet

sudo chmod 500 /opt/pbc-mainnet/conf

sudo chmod 700 /opt/pbc-mainnet/storage

sudo chmod 400 /opt/pbc-mainnet/conf/config.json

The above commands set conservative permissions on the folders the node is using. chmod 500 makes the config folder readable by the PBC node and root. chmod 700 makes the storage folder readable and writable for the PBC node and root.

Pull docker image

You can run the node using the docker-compose.

Start by creating a directory pbc and add a file named docker-compose.yml.

mkdir -p pbc

cd pbc

nano docker-compose.yml

The contents of the file should be the following:

version: "2.0"
services:
  pbc:
    image: registry.gitlab.com/partisiablockchain/mainnet:latest
    container_name: pbc-mainnet
    user: "1500:1500"
    restart: always
    expose:
      - "8080"
    ports:
      - "9888-9897:9888-9897"
    command: [ "/conf/config.json", "/storage/" ]
    volumes:
      - /opt/pbc-mainnet/conf:/conf
      - /opt/pbc-mainnet/storage:/storage
    environment:
      - JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS="-Xmx8G"

You don't yet have access to the Partisia container repository, so you first need to log in.

You can now start the node:

docker-compose up -d

This should pull the latest image and start the reader node in the background. If the command was executed successfully it won't print anything. To verify that the node is running, run:

docker logs -f pbc-mainnet

This should print a bunch of log statements. All the timestamps are in UTC and can therefore be offset several hours from your local time.

Logs and storage

The logs of the node are written to the standard output of the container and are therefore managed using the tools provided by Docker. You can read about configuring Docker logs here.

The storage of the node is based on RocksDB. It is write-heavy and will increase in size for the foreseeable future. The number and size of reads and writes is entirely dependent on the traffic on the network.

Updating

Updating the PBC node is a simple 3-step process:

cd ~/pbc

docker-compose pull

docker-compose up -d

First you change the directory to where you put your docker-compose.yml file. You then stop the currently running container, pull the newest image and start it again. You should now be running the newest version of the software.