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Running an Observer Node

This document describes in details how to run a observer node, and add it to the existing network.

The existing network can be either a custom one, or one of the persistent networks (such as a Test Net). Configuration of all persistent networks can be found in Persistent Chains where each subfolder represents a <chain-id>.

If a new network needs to be initialized, please follow the Running Genesis Node instructions first. After this more validator nodes can be added by following the instructions from this doc.

Hardware requirements

Minimal:

  • 1GB RAM
  • 25GB of disk space
  • 1.4 GHz CPU

Recommended (for highload applications):

  • 2GB RAM
  • 100GB SSD
  • x64 2.0 GHz 2v CPU

Operating System

Current delivery is compiled and tested under Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS and MacOS so we recommend using this distribution for now. In future, it will be possible to compile the application for a wide range of operating systems thanks to Go language.

Components

The latest release can be found at DCL Releases.

The following components will be needed:

  • dcld (part of the release): The binary used for running a node and CLI.
  • The service configuration file dcld.service (either part of the release or deployment folder).
  • Genesis transactions file: genesis.json
  • The list of alive peers: persistent_peers.txt. It has the following format: <node id>@<node ip>,<node2 id>@<node2 ip>,....

If you want to join an existing persistent network (such as Test Net), then look at the Persistent Chains folder for a list of available networks. Each subfolder there represents a <chain-id> and contains the genesis and persistent_peers files.

Deployment steps

  1. Put dcld binary to /usr/bin/ and configure permissions.

  2. Configure CLI:

    • dcld config chain-id testnet
    • dcld config output json - Output format (text/json).

  3. Initialize the observer node and create the necessary config files:

    • Init Node: dcld init <node name> --chain-id testnet.
    • Put genesis.json into dcld's config directory (usually $HOME/.dcl/config/).
      • Use deployment/persistent_chains/testnet/genesis.json if you want to connect to the persistent Test Net
    • Open $HOME/.dcl/config/config.toml file in your favorite text editor:
      • Tell node how to connect to the network:
        • Set the value for the persistent_peers field as the content of persistent_peers.txt file.
        • Use deployment/persistent_chains/testnet/persistent_peers.txt if you want to connect to the persistent Test Net.
      • Make your node public (this step is only needed for Ubuntu):
        • Open $HOME/.dcl/config/config.toml
        • Find the line under # TCP or UNIX socket address for the RPC server to listen on
        • Change it to: laddr = "tcp://0.0.0.0:26657"
      • Optionally change other setting.
    • Open 26656 (p2p) and 26657 (RPC) ports (Only needed for Ubuntu).
      • sudo ufw allow 26656/tcp
      • sudo ufw allow 26657/tcp
    • Edit dcld.service (Only needed for Ubuntu).
      • Replace ubuntu with a user name you want to start service on behalf
    • Copy service configuration. (Only needed for Ubuntu).
      • cp dcld.service /etc/systemd/system/

  4. Start the local observer node

    • Enable the service: sudo systemctl enable dcld
    • Start node: sudo systemctl start dcld
    • For testing purpose the node can be started in CLI mode: dcld start (instead of two previous systemctl commands). Service mode is recommended for demo and production environment.

    You should see it trying to get all the blocks from the testnet. (p.s. It can take upto 12+ hrs for all the transactions to be downloaded depending on network speed)

  5. Check the observer node is running and getting all the transactions:

    • Get the node status: dcld status --node tcp://localhost:26657.
    • Make sure that result.sync_info.latest_block_height is increasing over the time (once in about 5 sec). When you see the catching_up as true that signifies that the node is still downloading all the transactions. Once it has fully synced this will value will turn to false Expected output format: 
                  {
      "node_info": {
        "protocol_version": {
          "p2p": "7",
          "block": "10",
          "app": "0"
        },
        "id": "15f99a46e3e5b109c02a86586484aa14e28d25b0",
        "listen_addr": "tcp://0.0.0.0:26656",
        "network": "testnet",
        "version": "0.32.8",
        "channels": "4020212223303800",
        "moniker": "myon",
        "other": {
          "tx_index": "on",
          "rpc_address": "tcp://127.0.0.1:26657"
        }
      },
      "sync_info": {
        "latest_block_hash": "D24C7DE69BB4E38068B5B94F30AA5EAFC4BE8EDE3064BE34FE34DBD8634DB8B5",
        "latest_app_hash": "F6FB39F80629F87E189F64E79B0574D87CEDFAEF80FD34AF4D3250604B471F90",
        "latest_block_height": "6390",
        "latest_block_time": "2020-10-19T19:42:12.923219099Z",
        "catching_up": true
      },
      "validator_info": {
        "address": "74EDDFE44B1AFD520C8799FFE0E1C2FCC165F9EE",
        "pub_key": {
          "type": "tendermint/PubKeyEd25519",
          "value": "8Sp4VGVjQTaMvz5CTre/kVf2wEOUHg9L4AW6sPevlss="
        },
        "voting_power": "0"
      }
    }

  6. Congrats! You are now running an observer node.