The most up-to date version of this document is available at:
- https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum-server/blob/master/HOWTO.md
+ https://github.com/CryptoManiac/electrum-server/blob/master/HOWTO.md
Conventions
-----------
In this document, lines starting with a hash sign (#) or a dollar sign ($)
contain commands. Commands starting with a hash should be run as root,
commands starting with a dollar should be run as a normal user (in this
-document, we assume that user is called 'bitcoin'). We also assume the
-bitcoin user has sudo rights, so we use '$ sudo command' when we need to.
+document, we assume that user is called 'novacoin'). We also assume the
+novacoin user has sudo rights, so we use '$ sudo command' when we need to.
Strings that are surrounded by "lower than" and "greater than" ( < and > )
should be replaced by the user with something appropriate. For example,
Lines that lack hash or dollar signs are pastes from config files. They
should be copied verbatim or adapted, without the indentation tab.
+apt-get install commands are suggestions for required dependencies.
+They conform to an Ubuntu 13.10 system but may well work with Debian
+or earlier and later versions of Ubuntu.
+
Prerequisites
-------------
perform the operation described here, you are expected to fix the
issue so you can continue following this howto.
-**Software.** A recent Linux distribution with the following software
-installed: `python`, `easy_install`, `git`, a SQL server, standard C/C++
+**Software.** A recent Linux 64-bit distribution with the following software
+installed: `python`, `easy_install`, `git`, standard C/C++
build chain. You will need root access in order to install other software or
-Python libraries. You will need access to the SQL server to create users and
-databases.
-
-**Hardware.** It's recommended to run a pruning server with leveldb.
-It is a light setup with diskspace requirements well under 1 GB growing
-very moderately and less taxing on I/O and CPU once it's up and running.
-Full (archival) servers on the other hand use SQL. At the time of this writing,
-the Bitcoin blockchain is 5.5 GB large. The corresponding SQL database is
-about 4 times larger, so you should have a minimum of 22 GB free space just
-for SQL, growing continuously.
-CPU speed is also important, mostly for the initial block chain import, but
-also if you plan to run a public Electrum server, which could serve tens
-of concurrent requests. See step 6 below for some initial import benchmarks
-on SQL.
+Python libraries.
+
+**Hardware.** The lightest setup is a pruning server with diskspace
+requirements of about 200 MB for the electrum database. However note that
+you also need to run novacoind and keep a copy of the full blockchain,
+which is roughly 100 MB in 20 July 2014. If you have less than 2 GB of RAM
+make sure you limit novacoind to 16 concurrent connections. If you have more
+ressources to spare you can run the server with a higher limit of historic
+transactions per address. CPU speed is important, mostly for the initial block
+chain import, but also if you plan to run a public Electrum server, which
+could serve tens of concurrent requests. Any multi-core x86 CPU ~2009 or
+newer other than Atom should do for good performance. An ideal setup
+has enough RAM to hold and procss the leveldb database in tmpfs (e.g. /dev/shm).
Instructions
------------
-### Step 0. Create a user for running bitcoind and Electrum server
+### Step 1. Create a user for running novacoind and Electrum server
This step is optional, but for better security and resource separation I
-suggest you create a separate user just for running `bitcoind` and Electrum.
+suggest you create a separate user just for running `novacoind` and Electrum.
We will also use the `~/bin` directory to keep locally installed files
(others might want to use `/usr/local/bin` instead). We will download source
code files to the `~/src` directory.
- # sudo adduser bitcoin
- # su - bitcoin
+ $ sudo adduser novacoin --disabled-password
+ $ sudo apt-get install git
+ # su - novacoin
$ mkdir ~/bin ~/src
$ echo $PATH
-If you don't see `/home/bitcoin/bin` in the output, you should add this line
+If you don't see `/home/novacoin/bin` in the output, you should add this line
to your `.bashrc`, `.profile` or `.bash_profile`, then logout and relogin:
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
-### Step 1. Download and install Electrum
+### Step 2. Download and install Electrum
We will download the latest git snapshot for Electrum and 'install' it in
our ~/bin directory:
- $ mkdir -p ~/src/electrum
- $ cd ~/src/electrum
- $ git clone https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum-server.git server
- $ chmod +x ~/src/electrum/server/server.py
- $ ln -s ~/src/electrum/server/server.py ~/bin/electrum
-
-### Step 2. Download Bitcoind from git & patch it
+ $ mkdir -p ~/electrum-server
+ $ git clone https://github.com/CryptoManiac/electrum-server.git
+ $ cd electrum-server/ltc-scrypt
+ $ sudo python setup.py install
-In order for the latest versions of Electrum to work properly we will need to use the latest
-build from Git and also patch it with an electrum specific patch.
+### Step 3. Download novacoind
- $ cd src && git clone git://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.git
- $ cd bitcoin
- $ patch -p1 < ~/src/electrum/server/patch/patch
- $ cd src && make -f makefile.unix
+ # apt-get install make g++ python-leveldb libboost-all-dev libssl-dev libdb++-dev pkg-config libminiupnpc-dev git
+ # su - novacoin
+ $ cd ~/src && git clone https://github.com/novacoin-project/novacoin.git
+ $ cd novacoin/src
+ $ make -f makefile.unix
+ $ strip novacoind
+ $ cp -a ~/src/litecoin/src/litecoind ~/bin/litecoind
-### Step 3. Configure and start bitcoind
+### Step 4. Configure and start novacoind
-In order to allow Electrum to "talk" to `bitcoind`, we need to set up a RPC
-username and password for `bitcoind`. We will then start `bitcoind` and
+In order to allow Electrum to "talk" to `novacoind`, we need to set up a RPC
+username and password for `novacoind`. We will then start `novacoind` and
wait for it to complete downloading the blockchain.
- $ mkdir ~/.bitcoin
- $ $EDITOR ~/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf
+ $ mkdir ~/.novacoin
+ $ $EDITOR ~/.novacoin/novacoin.conf
-Write this in `bitcoin.conf`:
+Write this in `novacoin.conf`:
rpcuser=<rpc-username>
rpcpassword=<rpc-password>
daemon=1
-Restart `bitcoind`:
+If you have a fresh copy of novacoind start `novacoind`:
- $ bitcoind
+ $ novacoind
-Allow some time to pass, so `bitcoind` connects to the network and starts
+Allow some time to pass, so `novacoind` connects to the network and starts
downloading blocks. You can check its progress by running:
- $ bitcoind getinfo
+ $ novacoind getinfo
-You should also set up your system to automatically start bitcoind at boot
-time, running as the 'bitcoin' user. Check your system documentation to
+Before starting electrum server your novacoind should have processed all
+blockes and caught up to the current height of the network.
+You should also set up your system to automatically start novacoind at boot
+time, running as the 'novacoin' user. Check your system documentation to
find out the best way to do this.
-
-### Step 4. Select your backend - pruning leveldb or full abe server
-
-Electrum server can currently be operated in two modes - as a pruning server
-or as a full server. The pruning server uses leveldb and keeps a smaller and
-faster database by pruning spent transactions. It's a lot quicker to get up
-and running and requires less maintenance and diskspace than the full abe
-server.
-
-The full version uses abe as a backend. While the blockchain in bitcoind
-is at roughly 5.5 GB in January 2013, the abe mysql for a full server requires
-~25 GB diskspace for innodb and can take a week or two (!) to freshly index
-on most but the fastest of hardware.
-
-Full servers are useful for recovering all past transactions when restoring
-from seed. Those are then stored in electrum.dat and won't need to be recovered
-until electrum.dat is removed. Pruning servers summarize spent transactions
-when restoring from seed which can be feature. Once seed recovery is done
-switching between pruning and full servers can be done at any time without effect
-to the transaction history stored in electrum.dat.
-
-While it's useful for Electrum to have a number of full servers it is
-expected that the vast majority of servers available publicly will be
-pruning servers.
-
-If you decide to setup a pruning server with leveldb take a break from this
-document, read and work through README.leveldb then come back
-install jsonrcp (but not abe) from step 5 and then skip to step 8
-
### Step 5. Install Electrum dependencies
Electrum server depends on various standard Python libraries. These will be
already installed on your distribution, or can be installed with your
-package manager. Electrum also depends on two Python libraries which we wil
-l need to install "by hand": `Abe` and `JSONRPClib`.
+package manager. Electrum also depends on two Python libraries which we will
+need to install "by hand": `JSONRPClib`.
+ $ sudo apt-get install python-setuptools python-openssl
$ sudo easy_install jsonrpclib
- $ cd ~/src
- $ git clone https://github.com/jtobey/bitcoin-abe
- $ cd bitcoin-abe
- $ git checkout c2a9969e20305faa41c40ae47533f2138f222ffc
- $ sudo python setup.py install
-Electrum server does not currently support abe 0.7.2+ so please stick
-with a specific commit between 0.7.1 and 0.7.2 for the time being.
+### Step 6. Install leveldb and plyvel
-Please note that the path below might be slightly different on your system,
-for example python2.6 or 2.8.
+ $ sudo apt-get install python-leveldb libleveldb-dev
+ $ sudo easy_install plyvel
+
+See the steps in README.leveldb for further details, especially if your system
+doesn't have the python-leveldb package or if plyvel installation fails.
- $ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Abe/abe.py
- $ ln -s /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Abe/abe.py ~/bin/abe
+leveldb should be at least version 1.1.9. Earlier version are believed to be buggy.
+### Step 7. Select your limit
-### Step 6. Configure the database
+Electrum server uses leveldb to store transactions. You can choose
+how many spent transactions per address you want to store on the server.
+The default is 100, but there are also servers with 1000 or even 10000.
+Few addresses have more than 10000 transactions. A limit this high
+can be considered to be equivalent to a "full" server. Full servers previously
+used abe to store the blockchain. The use of abe for electrum servers is now
+deprecated.
-Electrum server uses a SQL database to store the blockchain data. In theory,
-it supports all databases supported by Abe. At the time of this writing,
-MySQL and PostgreSQL are tested and work ok, SQLite was tested and *does not
-work* with Electrum server.
+The pruning server uses leveldb and keeps a smaller and
+faster database by pruning spent transactions. It's a lot quicker to get up
+and running and requires less maintenance and diskspace than abe.
+
+The section in the electrum server configuration file (see step 10) looks like this:
+
+ [leveldb]
+ path_fulltree = /path/to/your/database
+ # for each address, history will be pruned if it is longer than this limit
+ pruning_limit = 100
-For MySQL:
+### Step 8. Import blockchain into the database or download it
- $ mysql -u root -p
- mysql> create user 'electrum'@'localhost' identified by '<db-password>';
- mysql> create database electrum;
- mysql> grant all on electrum.* to 'electrum'@'localhost';
- mysql> exit
+It's recommended to fetch a pre-processed leveldb from the net.
-For PostgreSQL:
+You can fetch recent copies of electrum leveldb databases from novacoin sourceforge page at:
- TBW!
+http://sourceforge.net/projects/novacoin/files/electrum-foundry/
-### Step 7. Configure Abe and import blockchain into the database
+Alternatively if you have the time and nerve you can import the blockchain yourself.
-When you run Electrum server for the first time, it will automatically
-import the blockchain into the database, so it is safe to skip this step.
-However, our tests showed that, at the time of this writing, importing the
-blockchain via Abe is much faster (about 20-30 times faster) than
-allowing Electrum to do it.
+As of July 2014 it takes about one hour to import 110k of blocks, depending on CPU speed,
+I/O speed and selected pruning limit.
- $ cp ~/src/bitcoin-abe/abe.conf ~/abe.conf
- $ $EDITOR ~/abe.conf
+It's considerably faster and strongly recommended to index in memory. You can use /dev/shm or
+or create a tmpfs which will also use swap if you run out of memory:
-For MySQL, you need these lines:
+ $ sudo mount -t tmpfs -o rw,nodev,nosuid,noatime,size=15000M,mode=0777 none /tmpfs
- dbtype MySQLdb
- connect-args = { "db" : "electrum", "user" : "electrum" , "passwd" : "<database-password>" }
+If you use tmpfs make sure you have enough RAM and swap to cover the size. If you only have 4 gigs of
+RAM but add 15 gigs of swap from a file that's fine too. tmpfs is rather smart to swap out the least
+used parts. It's fine to use a file on a SSD for swap in thise case.
-For PostgreSQL, you need these lines:
+It's not recommended to do initial indexing of the database on a SSD because the indexing process
+puts considerable wear-and-tear on a SSD. It's a lot better to use tmpfs and just swap out to disk
+ when necessary.
- TBD!
+Databases have grown to roughly 8 GB in April 2014, give or take a gigabyte between pruning limits
+100 and 10000. Leveldb prunes the database from time to time, so it's not uncommon to see databases
+~50% larger at times when it's writing a lot especially when indexing from the beginning.
-Start Abe:
- $ abe --config ~/abe.conf
+### Step 9. Create a self-signed SSL cert
-Abe will now start to import blocks. You will see a lot of lines like this:
+To run SSL / HTTPS you need to generate a self-signed certificate
+using openssl. You could just comment out the SSL / HTTPS ports in the config and run
+without, but this is not recommended.
- 'block_tx <block-number> <tx-number>'
+Use the sample code below to create a self-signed cert with a recommended validity
+of 5 years. You may supply any information for your sign request to identify your server.
+They are not currently checked by the client except for the validity date.
+When asked for a challenge password just leave it empty and press enter.
-You should wait until you see this message on the screen:
+ $ openssl genrsa -des3 -passout pass:x -out server.pass.key 2048
+ $ openssl rsa -passin pass:x -in server.pass.key -out server.key
+ writing RSA key
+ $ rm server.pass.key
+ $ openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr
+ ...
+ Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:US
+ State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:California
+ Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []: electrum-server.tld
+ ...
+ A challenge password []:
+ ...
- Listening on http://localhost:2750
+ $ openssl x509 -req -days 730 -in server.csr -signkey server.key -out server.crt
-It means the blockchain is imported and you can exit Abe by pressing CTRL-C.
-You will not need to run Abe again after this step, Electrum server will
-update the blockchain by itself. We only used Abe because it is much faster
-for the initial import.
+The server.crt file is your certificate suitable for the ssl_certfile= parameter and
+server.key corresponds to ssl_keyfile= in your electrum server config
-Important notice: This is a *very* long process. Even on fast machines,
-expect it to take hours. Here are some benchmarks for importing
-~196K blocks (size of the Bitcoin blockchain in Septeber 2012):
+Starting with Electrum 1.9 the client will learn and locally cache the SSL certificate
+for your server upon the first request to prevent man-in-the middle attacks for all
+further connections.
- * System 1: ~9 hours.
- * CPU: Intel Core i7 Q740 @ 1.73GHz
- * HDD: very fast SSD
- * System 2: ~55 hours.
- * CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 @ 2.40GHz
- * HDD: 2 x SATA in a RAID1.
+If your certificate is lost or expires on the server side you currently need to run
+your server with a different server name along with a new certificate for this server.
+Therefore it's a good idea to make an offline backup copy of your certificate and key
+in case you need to restore it.
-### Step 8. Configure Electrum server
+### Step 10. Configure Electrum server
Electrum reads a config file (/etc/electrum.conf) when starting up. This
-file includes the database setup, bitcoind RPC setup, and a few other
+file includes the database setup, novacoind RPC setup, and a few other
options.
$ sudo cp ~/src/electrum/server/electrum.conf.sample /etc/electrum.conf
Go through the sample config options and set them to your liking.
If you intend to run the server publicly have a look at README-IRC.md
-If you're looking to run SSL / HTTPS you need to generate a self-signed certificate
-using openssl. Otherwise you can just comment out the SSL / HTTPS ports and run
-without.
+### Step 11. Tweak your system for running electrum
+
+Electrum server currently needs quite a few file handles to use leveldb. It also requires
+file handles for each connection made to the server. It's good practice to increase the
+open files limit to 16k. This is most easily achived by sticking the value in .bashrc of the
+root user who usually passes this value to all unprivileged user sessions too.
+
+ $ sudo sed -i '$a ulimit -n 16384' /root/.bashrc
+
+Also make sure the novacoin user can actually increase the ulimit by allowing it accordingly in
+/etc/security/limits.conf
-### Step 9. (Finally!) Run Electrum server
+While most bugs are fixed in this regard electrum server may leak some memory and it's good practice to
+to restart the server once in a while from cron (preferred) or to at least monitor
+it for crashes and then restart the server. Monthly restarts should be fine for most setups.
+
+Two more things for you to consider:
+
+1. To increase security you may want to close novacoind for incoming connections and connect outbound only
+
+2. Consider restarting novacoind (together with electrum-server) on a weekly basis to clear out unconfirmed
+ transactions from the local the memory pool which did not propagate over the network
+
+### Step 12. (Finally!) Run Electrum server
The magic moment has come: you can now start your Electrum server:
- $ server
+ $ cd ~/electrum-server
+ $ ./start
-You should see this on the screen:
+You should see this in the log file:
starting Electrum server
- cache: yes
-If you want to stop Electrum server, open another shell and run:
+If you want to stop Electrum server, use the 'stop' script:
- $ electrum-server stop
+ $ cd ~/electrum-server
+ $ ./stop
-You should also take a look at the 'start' and 'stop' scripts in
-`~/src/electrum/server`. You can use them as a starting point to create a
-init script for your system.
-### Step 10. Test the Electrum server
+### Step 13. Test the Electrum server
We will assume you have a working Electrum client, a wallet and some
transactions history. You should start the client and click on the green
current server and connect to your new Electrum server. You should see your
addresses and transactions history. You can see the number of blocks and
response time in the Server selection window. You should send/receive some
-bitcoins to confirm that everything is working properly.
-
-### Step 11. Join us on IRC
-
-Say hi to the dev crew, other server operators and fans on
-irc.freenode.net #electrum and we'll try to congratulate you
-on supporting the community by running an Electrum node
+novacoins to confirm that everything is working properly.
git://git.novaco.in / electrum-server.git / blobdiff