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Set up a new Capitalisk node

1. Machine/instance requirements​

  • A machine/instance with a publicly exposed IP address (E.g. from a cloud service provider).
  • 100GB of hard drive space is recommended (this should be enough for several years of data).
    • OPTIONAL: To reduce node costs, block storage be mounted to run a cheaper node. The disk space can be increased over time.
  • Port 8001 needs to be open for inbound TCP traffic.
  • All ports should be open for outbound TCP traffic.

2. Install Node.js​

2.1 Installing using nvm​

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.37.2/install.sh | bash

export NVM_DIR="$([ -z "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME-}" ] && printf %s "${HOME}/.nvm" || printf %s "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/nvm")"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm

nvm install 15.14.0

2.2 Installing Node via package manager.​

Follow the guide from Node.js for your distro.

3. Install Git​

sudo apt update
sudo apt install git-all

4. Clone and set up the capitalisk-core node​

  • Clone the Git repo to your host:
git clone https://github.com/Capitalisk/capitalisk-core
  • Change directory to the project root:
cd capitalisk-core
  • Install Node.js dependencies:
npm install
note

If you provided a custom password in step 3 instead of the default one ('password'), you will need to update the database details inside your main capitalisk-core/config.json file to match (so that the node is able to connect to your database).

5. Capitalisk node supports multiple databases​

caution

Postgres is the recommended choice.

  • As of now, following databases are supported
  1. Postgres
  2. SQLite

5.1 Install Postgres​

5.1.1 Installing via PostgreSQL repositories​

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt $(lsb_release -cs)-pgdg main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgdg.list'
wget --quiet -O - https://www.postgresql.org/media/keys/ACCC4CF8.asc | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install postgresql

5.1.2 Set up the Postgres database for the node​

  • Launch the postgres server if it's not already running (you can check with sudo ps -e | grep postgres command):
sudo service postgresql start
  • Log into postgres:
sudo -u postgres psql -U postgres
  • Set the password for the postgres user:
ALTER USER postgres WITH PASSWORD 'password';
  • Create a new database to hold all the blockchain data:
create database capitalisk_main;
  • Exit the Postgres prompt:
\q
  • Restart the Postgres service
sudo service postgresql restart

5.2 Installing SQLite​

Skip this step if you have already installed postgres. Otherwise, while inside the capitalisk-core directory:

  • Install ldpos-sqlite-dal:
npm install ldpos-sqlite-dal --save
  • In the config.json file, add the SQLite components.dal object to the capitalisk_chain module so that it looks like this:
config.js
"capitalisk_chain": {
  "modulePath": "node_modules/ldpos-chain",
  "genesisPath": "genesis/mainnet/genesis.json",
  "keyIndexDirPath": "data",
  "components": {
    "dal": {
      "libPath": "node_modules/ldpos-sqlite-dal",
      "client": "sqlite3",
      "connection": {
        "filename": "db.sqlite3"
      }
    },
    "logger": {
      "consoleLogLevel": "info"
    }
  }
}

6. Setting up and starting the node​

Either with PM2 or systemd.

6.1 PM2​

  • You can start the node in multiple ways but the simplest way is to use pm2.
  • You can install pm2 with:
npm install -g pm2
  • Launch the node with PM2:
pm2 start index.js --name "capitalisk-core" -o "/dev/null" -e "/dev/null"
  • Make sure log size doesn't exceed storage capacity of the machine.
  • PM2 doesn't have a native check for maximum log file size, so it can terminate node due to log size exceeding storage capacity
  • Install PM2 log rotation module, to limit log size and allow log file rotations.
  pm2 install pm2-logrotate
  • Default max log file size limit is 10MB after module is installed, follow official README to change the limit.

6.2 Systemd​

  • You can add an entry to systemd, that way the system easily restarts the process both on failure and reboot.

Adding an entry to systemd:

sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/capitalisk-core.service

And paste, substitute <user> with your user:

capitalisk-core.service
[Unit]
Description=capitalisk-core
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=simple
User=<user>
# If using node it should be /bin/node
# This is an example with NVM:
ExecStart=/home/<user>/.nvm/versions/node/v12.18.2/bin/node /home/<user>/capitalisk-core/index.js
Restart=on-failure
StandardOutput=syslog
StandardError=syslog
SyslogIdentifier=capitalisk-core
WorkingDirectory=/home/<user>/capitalisk-core
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
[Unit]
Description=capitalisk-core
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=simple

Let's enable and restart the daemons:

sudo systemctl enable capitalisk-core
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart rsyslog
sude systemctl start capitalisk-core

And now you are all set!

7.1 Restarting the node​

  • To restart the node, the command is:
pm2 restart capitalisk-core

or

sudo systemctl restart capitalisk-core
note

If you make any changes to the config.json file, you will need to restart the node for the changes to take effect.

7.2 Stopping the node​

  • If you want to shut down the code, you can use the command:
pm2 delete capitalisk-core

or

sudo systemctl stop capitalisk-core
note

capitalisk-core via systemd will always restart on reboot until you disable the process sudo systemctl disable capitalisk-core.

7.3 Enabling logging for node​

  • Log level can be changed under the logger section of config.json under the capitalisk_chain module entry - Possible values include: error, debug or info.
  • To easily track the logs you can use tail -f <path>/<to>/<logs>
  • Get specific information about a delegate cat ~/capitalisk-core/logs/mainnet/clsk.log | grep "<address>"
Alternatively all logs can be enabled and truncated via crontab -e:

*/30 * * * * truncate -s 0 ~/capitalisk-core/logs/mainnet/clsk.log
*/30 * * * * truncate -s 0 ~/capitalisk-core/logs/mainnet/default.log
*/30 * * * * truncate -s 0 ~/capitalisk-core/logs/mainnet/lsk.log
*/30 * * * * truncate -s 0 ~/capitalisk-core/logs/mainnet/dex-clsk-lsk.log

This truncates the logs every 30 minutes.

8. Check status of the node​

8.1 Using ldpos-commander (https://github.com/Capitalisk/ldpos-commander)​

  • Install ldpos commander using
npm i -g ldpos-commander
  • Run below command to get node block height, since node is syncing, height should keep changing. i.e. Should keep increasing
ldpos IP_ADDRESS:8001 block get max-height

Substitute IP_ADDRESS with the IP address of your node's host. Port 8001 is the default; make sure that this port is open on your host (I.e. not blocked by firewall). The port may be different depending on your node's config.

8.2 Using logs​

  • By default, CLSK node should work without any issues.
  • Observing errors on the node:
    • PM2: If pm2 ls shows red status for any of the spawned process, it means we need to check logs for exact error.
    • systemd: cat ~/capitalisk-core/logs/mainnet/clsk.log | grep "<statement>"; replace statement with your search query.
  • Edit either config.json (in case of postgres) or config.sqlite.json (in case of SQLite) using nano, and replace error with info for logging, save file.
  • Verifying the node is synching and working:
    • PM2: Run pm2 logs, one of the statements should contain Received valid block ....
    • systemd: Run tail -f ~/capitalisk-core/logs/mainnet/clsk.log | grep "Received valid block ...". If the entries are increasing the node is synching successfully.
If you want to monitor the systemd process you can alternative add an additional entry:

sudo nano /etc/rsyslog.d/capitalisk-core.conf
capitalisk-core.conf
if $programname == 'capitalisk-core' then /var/log/capitalisk-core.log
& stop
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart rsyslog

Then you can track any log via:

tail -f /var/log/capitalisk-core.log
note

You will need to truncate this logs via sudo crontab -e!

9. Adding a forging passphrase​

This step is only necessary if you want to run a delegate node.

In the config.json file:

...
"capitalisk_chain": {
  "modulePath": "node_modules/ldpos-chain",
  "genesisPath": "genesis/mainnet/genesis.json",
  "keyIndexDirPath": "data",
  "forgingCredentials": [
    {
      "walletAddress": "wallet address goes here",
      "forgingPassphrase": "passphrase goes here"
    }
  ]
}
...