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.
37 **Expertise.** You should be familiar with Linux command line and
38 standard Linux commands. You should have basic understanding of git,
39 Python packages. You should have knowledge about how to install and
40 configure software on your Linux distribution. You should be able to
41 add commands to your distribution's startup scripts. If one of the
42 commands included in this document is not available or does not
43 perform the operation described here, you are expected to fix the
44 issue so you can continue following this howto.
46 **Software.** A recent Linux distribution with the following software
47 installed: `python`, `easy_install`, `git`, a SQL server, standard C/C++
48 build chain. You will need root access in order to install other software or
49 Python libraries. You will need access to the SQL server to create users and
52 **Hardware.** It's recommended to run a pruning server with leveldb.
53 It is a light setup with diskspace requirements well under 1 GB growing
54 very moderately and less taxing on I/O and CPU once it's up and running.
55 Full (archival) servers on the other hand use SQL. At the time of this writing,
56 the Bitcoin blockchain is 5.5 GB large. The corresponding SQL database is
57 about 4 times larger, so you should have a minimum of 22 GB free space just
58 for SQL, growing continuously.
59 CPU speed is also important, mostly for the initial block chain import, but
60 also if you plan to run a public Electrum server, which could serve tens
61 of concurrent requests. See step 6 below for some initial import benchmarks
67 ### Step 0. Create a user for running bitcoind and Electrum server
69 This step is optional, but for better security and resource separation I
70 suggest you create a separate user just for running `bitcoind` and Electrum.
71 We will also use the `~/bin` directory to keep locally installed files
72 (others might want to use `/usr/local/bin` instead). We will download source
73 code files to the `~/src` directory.
75 # sudo adduser bitcoin
80 If you don't see `/home/bitcoin/bin` in the output, you should add this line
81 to your `.bashrc`, `.profile` or `.bash_profile`, then logout and relogin:
83 PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
85 ### Step 1. Download and install Electrum
87 We will download the latest git snapshot for Electrum and 'install' it in
90 $ mkdir -p ~/src/electrum
92 $ git clone https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum-server.git server
93 $ chmod +x ~/src/electrum/server/server.py
94 $ ln -s ~/src/electrum/server/server.py ~/bin/electrum
96 ### Step 2. Download Bitcoind from git & patch it
98 In order for the latest versions of Electrum to work properly we will need to use the latest
99 build from Git and also patch it with an electrum specific patch.
100 Please make sure you run a version of bitcoind from git from at least December 2012 or newer:
102 $ cd src && git clone git://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.git
104 $ patch -p1 < ~/src/electrum/server/patch/patch
105 $ cd src && make -f makefile.unix
107 ### Step 3. Configure and start bitcoind
109 In order to allow Electrum to "talk" to `bitcoind`, we need to set up a RPC
110 username and password for `bitcoind`. We will then start `bitcoind` and
111 wait for it to complete downloading the blockchain.
114 $ $EDITOR ~/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf
116 Write this in `bitcoin.conf`:
118 rpcuser=<rpc-username>
119 rpcpassword=<rpc-password>
126 Allow some time to pass, so `bitcoind` connects to the network and starts
127 downloading blocks. You can check its progress by running:
131 You should also set up your system to automatically start bitcoind at boot
132 time, running as the 'bitcoin' user. Check your system documentation to
133 find out the best way to do this.
136 ### Step 4. Select your backend - pruning leveldb or full abe server
138 Electrum server can currently be operated in two modes - as a pruning server
139 or as a full server. The pruning server uses leveldb and keeps a smaller and
140 faster database by pruning spent transactions. It's a lot quicker to get up
141 and running and requires less maintenance and diskspace than the full abe
144 The full version uses abe as a backend. While the blockchain in bitcoind
145 is at roughly 5.5 GB in January 2013, the abe mysql for a full server requires
146 ~25 GB diskspace for innodb and can take a week or two (!) to freshly index
147 on most but the fastest of hardware.
149 Full servers are useful for recovering all past transactions when restoring
150 from seed. Those are then stored in electrum.dat and won't need to be recovered
151 until electrum.dat is removed. Pruning servers summarize spent transactions
152 when restoring from seed which can be feature. Once seed recovery is done
153 switching between pruning and full servers can be done at any time without effect
154 to the transaction history stored in electrum.dat.
156 While it's useful for Electrum to have a number of full servers it is
157 expected that the vast majority of servers available publicly will be
160 If you decide to setup a pruning server with leveldb take a break from this
161 document, read and work through README.leveldb then come back
162 install jsonrcp (but not abe) from step 5 and then skip to step 8
164 ### Step 5. Install Electrum dependencies
166 Electrum server depends on various standard Python libraries. These will be
167 already installed on your distribution, or can be installed with your
168 package manager. Electrum also depends on two Python libraries which we wil
169 l need to install "by hand": `Abe` and `JSONRPClib`.
171 $ sudo easy_install jsonrpclib
173 $ git clone https://github.com/jtobey/bitcoin-abe
175 $ git checkout c2a9969e20305faa41c40ae47533f2138f222ffc
176 $ sudo python setup.py install
178 Electrum server does not currently support abe 0.7.2+ so please stick
179 with a specific commit between 0.7.1 and 0.7.2 for the time being.
181 Please note that the path below might be slightly different on your system,
182 for example python2.6 or 2.8.
184 $ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Abe/abe.py
185 $ ln -s /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Abe/abe.py ~/bin/abe
188 ### Step 6. Configure the database
190 Electrum server uses a SQL database to store the blockchain data. In theory,
191 it supports all databases supported by Abe. At the time of this writing,
192 MySQL and PostgreSQL are tested and work ok, SQLite was tested and *does not
193 work* with Electrum server.
198 mysql> create user 'electrum'@'localhost' identified by '<db-password>';
199 mysql> create database electrum;
200 mysql> grant all on electrum.* to 'electrum'@'localhost';
207 ### Step 7. Configure Abe and import blockchain into the database
209 When you run Electrum server for the first time, it will automatically
210 import the blockchain into the database, so it is safe to skip this step.
211 However, our tests showed that, at the time of this writing, importing the
212 blockchain via Abe is much faster (about 20-30 times faster) than
213 allowing Electrum to do it.
215 $ cp ~/src/bitcoin-abe/abe.conf ~/abe.conf
218 For MySQL, you need these lines:
221 connect-args = { "db" : "electrum", "user" : "electrum" , "passwd" : "<database-password>" }
223 For PostgreSQL, you need these lines:
229 $ abe --config ~/abe.conf
231 Abe will now start to import blocks. You will see a lot of lines like this:
233 'block_tx <block-number> <tx-number>'
235 You should wait until you see this message on the screen:
237 Listening on http://localhost:2750
239 It means the blockchain is imported and you can exit Abe by pressing CTRL-C.
240 You will not need to run Abe again after this step, Electrum server will
241 update the blockchain by itself. We only used Abe because it is much faster
242 for the initial import.
244 Important notice: This is a *very* long process. Even on fast machines,
245 expect it to take hours. Here are some benchmarks for importing
246 ~196K blocks (size of the Bitcoin blockchain in Septeber 2012):
248 * System 1: ~9 hours.
249 * CPU: Intel Core i7 Q740 @ 1.73GHz
251 * System 2: ~55 hours.
252 * CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 @ 2.40GHz
253 * HDD: 2 x SATA in a RAID1.
255 ### Step 7b. Alternatively: Fetch abe blockchain from the net for import
257 It's much faster to import an existing dataset than to index the blockchain
260 Importing a mysql dump of ~8 GB takes around 18-20 hours on a regular HDD
261 and can be sped up by using SSDs or importing into /dev/shm memory
263 You can fetch recent copies of mysql dumps and further instructions
264 from the Electrum full archival server foundry at:
265 http://electrum-foundry.no-ip.org/
267 ### Step 8. Configure Electrum server
269 Electrum reads a config file (/etc/electrum.conf) when starting up. This
270 file includes the database setup, bitcoind RPC setup, and a few other
273 $ sudo cp ~/src/electrum/server/electrum.conf.sample /etc/electrum.conf
274 $ sudo $EDITOR /etc/electrum.conf
276 Go through the sample config options and set them to your liking.
277 If you intend to run the server publicly have a look at README-IRC.md
279 If you're looking to run SSL / HTTPS you need to generate a self-signed certificate
280 using openssl. Otherwise you can just comment out the SSL / HTTPS ports and run
283 ### Step 9. (Finally!) Run Electrum server
285 The magic moment has come: you can now start your Electrum server:
289 You should see this on the screen:
291 starting Electrum server
294 If you want to stop Electrum server, open another shell and run:
296 $ electrum-server stop
298 You should also take a look at the 'start' and 'stop' scripts in
299 `~/src/electrum/server`. You can use them as a starting point to create a
300 init script for your system.
302 ### Step 10. Test the Electrum server
304 We will assume you have a working Electrum client, a wallet and some
305 transactions history. You should start the client and click on the green
306 checkmark (last button on the right of the status bar) to open the Server
307 selection window. If your server is public, you should see it in the list
308 and you can select it. If you server is private, you need to enter its IP
309 or hostname and the port. Press Ok, the client will disconnect from the
310 current server and connect to your new Electrum server. You should see your
311 addresses and transactions history. You can see the number of blocks and
312 response time in the Server selection window. You should send/receive some
313 bitcoins to confirm that everything is working properly.
315 ### Step 11. Join us on IRC, subscribe to the server thread
317 Say hi to the dev crew, other server operators and fans on
318 irc.freenode.net #electrum and we'll try to congratulate you
319 on supporting the community by running an Electrum node
321 If you're operating a public Electrum server please subscribe
322 to or regulary check the following thread:
323 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=85475.0
324 It'll contain announcements about important updates to Electrum
325 server required for a smooth user experience.