bigchaindb/docs/source/nodes/setup-run-node.md

Set Up and Run a Node

This section goes through the steps to set up a BigchainDB node (running RethinkDB Server, BigchainDB Server, etc.). There are instructions for two cases:

1. Stand-Alone Node (useful for local testing and development)
2. Cluster Node

Get a Server

The first step is to get a server (or equivalent) which meets the requirements for a BigchainDB node.

Secure Your Server

The steps that you must take to secure your server depend on your server OS and where your server is physically located. There are many articles and books about how to secure a server. Ask a search engine.

Here we just cover special considerations when securing a BigchainDB node.

TODO: Special security considerations for BigchainDB nodes.

TODO: Notes about firewall setup. What ports should be open, for what kinds of traffic, accepting connections from what IP addresses, etc. For example, NTP uses port 123. Can firewall setup be done now or does it have to happen later?

Sync Your System Clock

If you're just setting up a stand-alone node, then you can skip this step.

A BigchainDB node uses its system clock to generate timestamps for blocks and votes, so that clock should be kept in sync with some standard clock(s). The standard way to do that is to run an NTP daemon (Network Time Protocol daemon) on the node. (You could also use tlsdate, which uses TLS timestamps rather than NTP, but don't: it's not very accurate and it will break with TLS 1.3, which removes the timestamp.)

NTP is a standard protocol. There are many NTP daemons implementing it. We don't recommend a particular one. On the contrary, we recommend that different nodes in a federation run different NTP daemons, so that a problem with one daemon won't affect all nodes. Some options are:

• The reference NTP daemon from ntp.org; see their support website
• OpenNTPD
• chrony
• Maybe NTPsec, once it's production-ready
• Maybe Ntimed, once it's production-ready
• More

It's tricky to make an NTP daemon setup secure. Always install the latest version and read the documentation about how to configure and run it securely.

The appendix has some notes on NTP daemon setup.

Set Up the File System for RethinkDB

If you're just setting up a stand-alone node, then you can probably skip this step.

Ideally, use a file system that supports direct I/O (Input/Output), a feature whereby file reads and writes go directly from RethinkDB to the storage device, bypassing the operating system read and write caches.

TODO: What file systems support direct I/O? How can you check? How do you enable it, if necessary?

See def install_rethinkdb() in deploy-cluster-aws/fabfile.py for an example of configuring a file system on an AWS instance running Ubuntu.

Mount the partition for RethinkDB on /data: we will tell RethinkDB to store its data there.

TODO: This section needs more elaboration

Install RethinkDB Server

If you don't already have RethinkDB Server installed, you must install it. The RethinkDB documentation has instructions for how to install RethinkDB Server on a variety of operating systems.

Configure RethinkDB Server

Stand-Alone Node

If you're setting up a stand-alone node (i.e. not intending for it to join a cluster), then the default RethinkDB configuration will work.

Cluster Node

Create a RethinkDB configuration file (text file) named instance1.conf with the following contents (explained below):

directory=/data
bind=all
direct-io
# Replace node?_hostname with actual node hostnames below, e.g. rdb.examples.com
join=node0_hostname:29015
join=node1_hostname:29015
join=node2_hostname:29015
# continue until there's a join= line for each node in the federation

• directory=/data tells the RethinkDB node to store its share of the database data in /data.
• bind=all binds RethinkDB to all local network interfaces (e.g. loopback, Ethernet, wireless, whatever is available), so it can communicate with the outside world. (The default is to bind only to local interfaces.)
• direct-io tells RethinkDB to use direct I/O (explained earlier).
• join=hostname:29015 lines: A cluster node needs to find out the hostnames of all the other nodes somehow. You could designate one node to be the one that every other node asks, and put that node's hostname in the config file, but that wouldn't be very decentralized. Instead, we include every node in the list of nodes-to-ask.

If you're curious about the RethinkDB config file, there's a RethinkDB documentation page about it. The explanations of the RethinkDB command-line options are another useful reference.

TODO: Explain how to configure the RethinkDB cluster to be more secure.

Install Python 3.4+

If you don't already have it, then you should install Python 3.4+.

If you're testing or developing BigchainDB on a stand-alone node, then you should probably create a Python 3.4+ virtual environment and activate it (e.g. using virtualenv or conda). Later we will install several Python packages and you probably only want those installed in the virtual environment.

Install BigchainDB Server

BigchainDB Server has some OS-level dependencies that must be installed.

On Ubuntu 14.04, we found that the following was enough:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install g++ python3-dev

On Fedora 23, we found that the following was enough (tested in February 2015):

sudo dnf update
sudo dnf install gcc-c++ redhat-rpm-config python3-devel

(If you're using a version of Fedora before version 22, you may have to use yum instead of dnf.)

With OS-level dependencies installed, you can install BigchainDB Server with pip or from source.

How to Install BigchainDB with pip

BigchainDB (i.e. both the Server and the officially-supported drivers) is distributed as a Python package on PyPI so you can install it using pip. First, make sure you have a version of pip installed for Python 3.4+:

pip -V

If it says that pip isn't installed, or it says pip is associated with a Python version less than 3.4, then you must install a pip version associated with Python 3.4+. See the pip installation instructions. On Ubuntu 14.04, we found that this works:

sudo apt-get install python3-setuptools
sudo easy_install3 pip
pip3 install --upgrade pip wheel setuptools

(Note: Using sudo apt-get python3-pip also installs a Python 3 version of pip (named pip3) but we found it installed a very old version and there were issues with updating it.)

Once you have a version of pip associated with Python 3.4+, then you can install BigchainDB Server (and officially-supported BigchainDB drivers) using:

sudo pip install bigchaindb

(or maybe sudo pip3 install bigchaindb or sudo pip3.4 install bigchaindb. The sudo may not be necessary.)

Note: You can use pip to upgrade the bigchaindb package to the latest version using sudo pip install --upgrade bigchaindb

How to Install BigchainDB from Source

If you want to install BitchainDB from source because you want to contribute code (i.e. as a BigchainDB developer), then please see the instructions in the CONTRIBUTING.md file.

Otherwise, clone the public repository:

git clone git@github.com:bigchaindb/bigchaindb.git

and then install from source:

python setup.py install

Configure BigchainDB Server

Start by creating a default BigchainDB configuration file (named .bigchaindb) in your $HOME directory using:

bigchaindb -y configure

There's documentation for the bigchaindb command is in the section on the BigchainDB Command Line Interface (CLI).

Stand-Alone Node

The default BigchainDB configuration file will work.

Cluster Node

Open $HOME/.bigchaindb in your text editor and:

• Change "server": {"bind": "localhost:9984", ... } to "server": {"bind": "0.0.0.0:9984", ... }. This makes it so traffic can come from any IP address to port 9984 (the HTTP Client-Server API port).
• Change "api_endpoint": "http://localhost:9984/api/v1" to "api_endpoint": "http://your_api_hostname:9984/api/v1"
• Change "keyring": [] to "keyring": ["public_key_of_other_node_A", "public_key_of_other_node_B", "..."] i.e. a list of the public keys of all the other nodes in the federation. The keyring should not include your node's public key.

For more information about the BigchainDB config file, see Configuring a BigchainDB Node.

Run RethinkDB Server

If you didn't create a RethinkDB config file (e.g. because you're running a stand-alone node), then you can start RethinkDB using:

rethinkdb

If you did create a RethinkDB config file, then you should start RethinkDB using:

rethinkdb --config-file path/to/instance1.conf

except replace the path with the actual path to instance1.conf.

Note: It's possible to make RethinkDB start at system startup.

You can verify that RethinkDB is running by opening the RethinkDB web interface in your web browser. It should be at http://rethinkdb-hostname:8080/. If you're running RethinkDB on localhost, that would be http://localhost:8080/.

Run BigchainDB Server

Stand-Alone Node

It should be enough to do:

bigchaindb start

Cluster Node

After all the cluster nodes have started RethinkDB, but before they start BigchainDB, a designated cluster node has to do some RethinkDB cluster configuration by running the following two commands:

bigchaindb init
bigchaindb set-shards numshards

where numshards should be set equal to the number of nodes expected to be in the cluster (i.e. once all currently-expected nodes have joined).

(The bigchain init command creates the database within RethinkDB, the tables, the indexes, and the genesis block.)

Once the designated node has run the above two commands, every node can start BigchainDB using:

bigchaindb start