1 How to run your own Electrum server
2 ===================================
7 This document is an easy to follow guide to installing and running your own
8 Electrum server on Linux. It is structured as a series of steps you need to
9 follow, ordered in the most logical way. The next two sections describe some
10 conventions we use in this document and hardware, software and expertise
13 The most up-to date version of this document is available at:
15 https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum-server/blob/master/HOWTO.md
20 In this document, lines starting with a hash sign (#) or a dollar sign ($)
21 contain commands. Commands starting with a hash should be run as root,
22 commands starting with a dollar should be run as a normal user (in this
23 document, we assume that user is called 'bitcoin'). We also assume the
24 bitcoin user has sudo rights, so we use '$ sudo command' when we need to.
26 Strings that are surrounded by "lower than" and "greater than" ( < and > )
27 should be replaced by the user with something appropriate. For example,
28 <password> should be replaced by a user chosen password. Do not confuse this
29 notation with shell redirection ('command < file' or 'command > file')!
31 Lines that lack hash or dollar signs are pastes from config files. They
32 should be copied verbatim or adapted, without the indentation tab.
34 apt-get install commands are suggestions for required dependencies.
35 They conform to an Ubuntu 13.10 system but may well work with Debian
36 or earlier and later versions of Ubuntu.
41 **Expertise.** You should be familiar with Linux command line and
42 standard Linux commands. You should have basic understanding of git,
43 Python packages. You should have knowledge about how to install and
44 configure software on your Linux distribution. You should be able to
45 add commands to your distribution's startup scripts. If one of the
46 commands included in this document is not available or does not
47 perform the operation described here, you are expected to fix the
48 issue so you can continue following this howto.
50 **Software.** A recent Linux 64-bit distribution with the following software
51 installed: `python`, `easy_install`, `git`, standard C/C++
52 build chain. You will need root access in order to install other software or
55 **Hardware.** The lightest setup is a pruning server with diskspace
56 requirements of about 10 GB for the electrum database. However note that
57 you also need to run bitcoind and keep a copy of the full blockchain,
58 which is roughly 20 GB in April 2014. If you have less than 2 GB of RAM
59 make sure you limit bitcoind to 8 concurrent connections. If you have more
60 ressources to spare you can run the server with a higher limit of historic
61 transactions per address. CPU speed is important, mostly for the initial block
62 chain import, but also if you plan to run a public Electrum server, which
63 could serve tens of concurrent requests. Any multi-core x86 CPU ~2009 or
64 newer other than Atom should do for good performance. An ideal setup
65 has enough RAM to hold and procss the leveldb database in tmpfs (e.g. /dev/shm).
70 ### Step 1. Create a user for running bitcoind and Electrum server
72 This step is optional, but for better security and resource separation I
73 suggest you create a separate user just for running `bitcoind` and Electrum.
74 We will also use the `~/bin` directory to keep locally installed files
75 (others might want to use `/usr/local/bin` instead). We will download source
76 code files to the `~/src` directory.
78 $ sudo adduser bitcoin --disabled-password
79 $ sudo apt-get install git
84 If you don't see `/home/bitcoin/bin` in the output, you should add this line
85 to your `.bashrc`, `.profile` or `.bash_profile`, then logout and relogin:
87 PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
89 ### Step 2. Download and install Electrum
91 We will download the latest git snapshot for Electrum and 'install' it in
94 $ mkdir -p ~/electrum-server
95 $ git clone https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum-server.git
97 ### Step 3. Download bitcoind
99 Older versions of Electrum used to require a patched version of bitcoind.
100 This is not the case anymore since bitcoind supports the 'txindex' option.
101 We currently recommend bitcoind 0.9.2 stable.
103 If your package manager does not supply a recent bitcoind and prefer to compile
104 here are some pointers for Ubuntu:
106 # apt-get install make g++ python-leveldb libboost-all-dev libssl-dev libdb++-dev pkg-config
108 $ cd ~/src && wget https://bitcoin.org/bin/0.9.2/bitcoin-0.9.2-linux.tar.gz
109 $ sha256sum bitcoin-0.9.2-linux.tar.gz | grep 58a77aeb4c81b54d3903d85abce4f0fb580694a3611a415c5fe69a27dea5935b
110 $ tar xfz bitcoin-0.9.2-linux.tar.gz
111 $ cd bitcoin-0.9.2-linux/src
112 $ tar xfz bitcoin-0.9.2.tar.gz
114 $ ./configure --disable-wallet --without-miniupnpc
116 $ strip ~/src/bitcoin-0.9.2-linux/src/bitcoin-0.9.2/src/bitcoind
117 $ cp -a ~/src/bitcoin-0.9.2-linux/src/bitcoin-0.9.2/src/bitcoind ~/bin/bitcoind
119 ### Step 4. Configure and start bitcoind
121 In order to allow Electrum to "talk" to `bitcoind`, we need to set up a RPC
122 username and password for `bitcoind`. We will then start `bitcoind` and
123 wait for it to complete downloading the blockchain.
126 $ $EDITOR ~/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf
128 Write this in `bitcoin.conf`:
130 rpcuser=<rpc-username>
131 rpcpassword=<rpc-password>
136 If you have an existing installation of bitcoind and have not previously
137 set txindex=1 you need to reindex the blockchain by running
141 If you have a fresh copy of bitcoind start `bitcoind`:
145 Allow some time to pass, so `bitcoind` connects to the network and starts
146 downloading blocks. You can check its progress by running:
150 Before starting electrum server your bitcoind should have processed all
151 blockes and caught up to the current height of the network.
152 You should also set up your system to automatically start bitcoind at boot
153 time, running as the 'bitcoin' user. Check your system documentation to
154 find out the best way to do this.
156 ### Step 5. Install Electrum dependencies
158 Electrum server depends on various standard Python libraries. These will be
159 already installed on your distribution, or can be installed with your
160 package manager. Electrum also depends on two Python libraries which we will
161 need to install "by hand": `JSONRPClib`.
163 $ sudo apt-get install python-setuptools python-openssl
164 $ sudo easy_install jsonrpclib
166 ### Step 6. Install leveldb and plyvel
168 $ sudo apt-get install python-leveldb libleveldb-dev
169 $ sudo easy_install plyvel
171 See the steps in README.leveldb for further details, especially if your system
172 doesn't have the python-leveldb package or if plyvel installation fails.
174 leveldb should be at least version 1.1.9. Earlier version are believed to be buggy.
176 ### Step 7. Select your limit
178 Electrum server uses leveldb to store transactions. You can choose
179 how many spent transactions per address you want to store on the server.
180 The default is 100, but there are also servers with 1000 or even 10000.
181 Few addresses have more than 10000 transactions. A limit this high
182 can be considered to be equivalent to a "full" server. Full servers previously
183 used abe to store the blockchain. The use of abe for electrum servers is now
186 The pruning server uses leveldb and keeps a smaller and
187 faster database by pruning spent transactions. It's a lot quicker to get up
188 and running and requires less maintenance and diskspace than abe.
190 The section in the electrum server configuration file (see step 10) looks like this:
193 path_fulltree = /path/to/your/database
194 # for each address, history will be pruned if it is longer than this limit
197 ### Step 8. Import blockchain into the database or download it
199 It's recommended to fetch a pre-processed leveldb from the net
201 You can fetch recent copies of electrum leveldb databases and further instructions
202 from the Electrum full archival server foundry at:
203 http://foundry.electrum.org/
205 Alternatively if you have the time and nerve you can import the blockchain yourself.
207 As of April 2014 it takes between two days and over a week to import 300k of blocks, depending
208 on CPU speed, I/O speed and selected pruning limit.
210 It's considerably faster and strongly recommended to index in memory. You can use /dev/shm or
211 or create a tmpfs which will also use swap if you run out of memory:
213 $ sudo mount -t tmpfs -o rw,nodev,nosuid,noatime,size=15000M,mode=0777 none /tmpfs
215 If you use tmpfs make sure you have enough RAM and swap to cover the size. If you only have 4 gigs of
216 RAM but add 15 gigs of swap from a file that's fine too. tmpfs is rather smart to swap out the least
217 used parts. It's fine to use a file on a SSD for swap in thise case.
219 It's not recommended to do initial indexing of the database on a SSD because the indexing process
220 does at least 20 TB (!) of disk writes and puts considerable wear-and-tear on a SSD. It's a lot better
221 to use tmpfs and just swap out to disk when necessary.
223 Databases have grown to roughly 8 GB in April 2014, give or take a gigabyte between pruning limits
224 100 and 10000. Leveldb prunes the database from time to time, so it's not uncommon to see databases
225 ~50% larger at times when it's writing a lot especially when indexing from the beginning.
228 ### Step 9. Create a self-signed SSL cert
230 To run SSL / HTTPS you need to generate a self-signed certificate
231 using openssl. You could just comment out the SSL / HTTPS ports in the config and run
232 without, but this is not recommended.
234 Use the sample code below to create a self-signed cert with a recommended validity
235 of 5 years. You may supply any information for your sign request to identify your server.
236 They are not currently checked by the client except for the validity date.
237 When asked for a challenge password just leave it empty and press enter.
239 $ openssl genrsa -des3 -passout pass:x -out server.pass.key 2048
240 $ openssl rsa -passin pass:x -in server.pass.key -out server.key
243 $ openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr
245 Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:US
246 State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:California
247 Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []: electrum-server.tld
249 A challenge password []:
252 $ openssl x509 -req -days 730 -in server.csr -signkey server.key -out server.crt
254 The server.crt file is your certificate suitable for the ssl_certfile= parameter and
255 server.key corresponds to ssl_keyfile= in your electrum server config
257 Starting with Electrum 1.9 the client will learn and locally cache the SSL certificate
258 for your server upon the first request to prevent man-in-the middle attacks for all
261 If your certificate is lost or expires on the server side you currently need to run
262 your server with a different server name along with a new certificate for this server.
263 Therefore it's a good idea to make an offline backup copy of your certificate and key
264 in case you need to restore it.
266 ### Step 10. Configure Electrum server
268 Electrum reads a config file (/etc/electrum.conf) when starting up. This
269 file includes the database setup, bitcoind RPC setup, and a few other
272 $ sudo cp ~/src/electrum/server/electrum.conf.sample /etc/electrum.conf
273 $ sudo $EDITOR /etc/electrum.conf
275 Go through the sample config options and set them to your liking.
276 If you intend to run the server publicly have a look at README-IRC.md
278 ### Step 11. Tweak your system for running electrum
280 Electrum server currently needs quite a few file handles to use leveldb. It also requires
281 file handles for each connection made to the server. It's good practice to increase the
282 open files limit to 16k. This is most easily achived by sticking the value in .bashrc of the
283 root user who usually passes this value to all unprivileged user sessions too.
285 $ sudo sed -i '$a ulimit -n 16384' /root/.bashrc
287 Also make sure the bitcoin user can actually increase the ulimit by allowing it accordingly in
288 /etc/security/limits.conf
290 While most bugs are fixed in this regard electrum server may leak some memory and it's good practice to
291 to restart the server once in a while from cron (preferred) or to at least monitor
292 it for crashes and then restart the server. Monthly restarts should be fine for most setups.
294 Two more things for you to consider:
296 1. To increase security you may want to close bitcoind for incoming connections and connect outbound only
298 2. Consider restarting bitcoind (together with electrum-server) on a weekly basis to clear out unconfirmed
299 transactions from the local the memory pool which did not propagate over the network
301 ### Step 12. (Finally!) Run Electrum server
303 The magic moment has come: you can now start your Electrum server:
305 $ cd ~/electrum-server
308 You should see this in the log file:
310 starting Electrum server
312 If you want to stop Electrum server, use the 'stop' script:
314 $ cd ~/electrum-server
318 ### Step 13. Test the Electrum server
320 We will assume you have a working Electrum client, a wallet and some
321 transactions history. You should start the client and click on the green
322 checkmark (last button on the right of the status bar) to open the Server
323 selection window. If your server is public, you should see it in the list
324 and you can select it. If you server is private, you need to enter its IP
325 or hostname and the port. Press Ok, the client will disconnect from the
326 current server and connect to your new Electrum server. You should see your
327 addresses and transactions history. You can see the number of blocks and
328 response time in the Server selection window. You should send/receive some
329 bitcoins to confirm that everything is working properly.
331 ### Step 14. Join us on IRC, subscribe to the server thread
333 Say hi to the dev crew, other server operators and fans on
334 irc.freenode.net #electrum and we'll try to congratulate you
335 on supporting the community by running an Electrum node
337 If you're operating a public Electrum server please subscribe
338 to or regulary check the following thread:
339 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=85475.0
340 It'll contain announcements about important updates to Electrum
341 server required for a smooth user experience.