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
+**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.
**Hardware.** The lightest setup is a pruning server with diskspace
requirements well under 1 GB growing very moderately and less taxing
-on I/O and CPU once it's up and running. If you have more ressources to spare
-you can run the server with a higher limit of historic transactions per address.
-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.
+on I/O and CPU once it's up and running. However note that you also need
+to run bitcoind and keep a copy of the full blockchain, which is roughly
+9 GB in April 2013. If you have less than 2 GB of RAM make sure you limit
+bitcoind to 8 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 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. Any multi-core x86 CPU ~2009 or
+newer other than Atom should do for good performance.
Instructions
------------
$ 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
+ $ ln -s ~/src/electrum/server/server.py ~/bin/electrum-server
-### Step 2. Download Bitcoind from git & patch it
+### Step 3. Download Bitcoind stable from git & patch it
-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.
-Please make sure you run a version of bitcoind from git from at least December 2012 or newer:
+In order for the latest versions of Electrum to work properly we currently recommend bitcoind 0.8.4 stable.
+0.8.4 can be downloaded from github or sourceforge and it needs to be patched with an electrum specific patch.
+bitcoin@master i.e. git head may not currently work with electrum-server even if the patch applies cleanly.
- $ cd src && git clone git://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.git
- $ cd bitcoin
+ $ cd ~/src && wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.8.4/bitcoin-0.8.4-linux.tar.gz
+ $ tar xfz bitcoin-0.8.4-linux.tar.gz
+ $ cd bitcoin-0.8.4-linux/src
$ patch -p1 < ~/src/electrum/server/patch/patch
- $ cd src && make -f makefile.unix
+ $ cd src
+ $ make USE_UPNP= -f makefile.unix
+ $ strip ~/src/bitcoin-0.8.4-linux/src/src/bitcoind
+ $ ln -s ~/src/bitcoin-0.8.4-linux/src/src/bitcoind ~/bin/bitcoind
-### Step 3. Configure and start bitcoind
+### Step 4. Configure and start bitcoind
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
time, running as the 'bitcoin' user. Check your system documentation to
find out the best way to do this.
-### Step 5. Install Electrum dependencies and leveldb
+### 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
need to install "by hand": `JSONRPClib`.
$ sudo easy_install jsonrpclib
+ $ sudo apt-get install python-openssl
+### Step 6. Install leveldb
-Then carry out the steps in README.leveldb to get your system ready for
-leveldb setups.
+ $ sudo apt-get install python-leveldb
+
+See the steps in README.leveldb for further details, especially if your system
+doesn't have the python-leveldb package.
-### Step 6. Select your limit
+### Step 7. Select your limit
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.
-Very few addresses have more than 10000 transactions. A limit this high
+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.
# for each address, history will be pruned if it is longer than this limit
pruning_limit = 100
-### Step 7. Import blockchain into the database or download it
+### Step 8. Import blockchain into the database or download it
-As of April 2013 it takes between 12-24 to import 230k of blocks, depending
+As of April 2013 it takes between 6-24 hours to import 230k of blocks, depending
on CPU speed, I/O speed and selected pruning limit.
It's considerably faster to index in memory. You can use /dev/shm or indexing in RAM
$ sudo mount -t tmpfs -o rw,nodev,nosuid,noatime,size=6000M,mode=0777 none /tmpfs
-At limit 10000 the database comes to 3,5 GB with 230k blocks.
+At limit 100 the database comes to 2,6 GB with 230k blocks and takes roughly 6h to import in /dev/shm.
+At limit 1000 the database comes to 3,0 GB with 230k blocks and takes roughly 10h to import in /dev/shm.
+At limit 10000 the database comes to 3,5 GB with 230k blocks and takes roughly 24h to import in /dev/shm.
Alternatively you can fetch a pre-processed leveldb from the net
from the Electrum full archival server foundry at:
http://electrum-foundry.no-ip.org/
-### Step 8. Configure Electrum server
+### Step 9. 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
using openssl. Otherwise you can just comment out the SSL / HTTPS ports and run
without.
-### Step 9. (Finally!) Run Electrum server
+### Step 10. 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
+
+We're aware the leveldb part in electrum server may leak some memory and it's good practice to
+to either restart the server once in a while from cron (preferred) or to at least monitor
+it for crashes and then restart the server. Weekly restarts should be fine for most setups.
+If your server gets a lot of traffic and you have a limited amount of RAM you may need to restart
+more often.
+
+### Step 11. (Finally!) Run Electrum server
The magic moment has come: you can now start your Electrum server:
- $ server
+ $ electrum-server
You should see this on the screen:
`~/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 12. 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
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, subscribe to the server thread
+### Step 13. Join us on IRC, subscribe to the server thread
Say hi to the dev crew, other server operators and fans on
irc.freenode.net #electrum and we'll try to congratulate you
git://git.novaco.in / electrum-server.git / blobdiff