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* Run a server HOWTO.

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Ovidiu Constantin 13 years ago
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How to run your own Electrum server
Abstract
This document is an easy to follow guide to installing and running your own Electrum server on Linux. It is structured as a series of steps you need to follow, ordered in the most logical way. The next two sections describe some conventions we use in this document and hardware, software and expertise requirements.
The most up-to date version of this document is available at: https://gitorious.org/electrum/electrum/blobs/master/server/HOWTO
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.
Strings that are surrounded by "lower than" and "greater than" ( < and > ) should be replaced by the user with something appropriate. For example, <password> should be replaced by a user chosen password. Do not confuse this notation with shell redirection ('command < file' or 'command > file')!
Lines that are indented with a tab are pastes from config files. They should be copied verbatim or adapted, without the indentation tab.
Prerequisites
Expertise. You should be familiar with Linux command line and standard Linux commands. You should have basic understanding of git, Python packages, compiling and applying patches to source code. You should have knowledge about how to install and configure software on your Linux distribution. You should be able to add commands to your distribution's startup scripts. If one of the commands included in this document is not available or does not 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++ 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. Running a Bitcoin node and Electrum server is resource intensive. At the time of this writing, the Bitcoin blockchain is 1.2 GB large. The corresponding SQL database is about 4 time larger, so you should have a minimum of 6.5 GB free space. You should expect the total size to grow with time. CPU speed is also important, mostly for the initial blockchain 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.
Step 0. Create a user for running bitcoind 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. 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
$ mkdir ~/bin ~/src
$ echo $PATH
If you don't see /home/bitcoin/bin in the output, you should add this line to your .bashrc, .profile or .bash_profile, then logout and relogin:
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
Step 1. Download and install Electrum
We will download the latest git snapshot for Electrum and 'install' it in our ~/bin directory:
$ cd ~/src
$ git clone git://gitorious.org/electrum/electrum.git
$ chmod +x ~/src/electrum/server/server.py
$ ln -s ~/src/electrum/server/server.py ~/bin/electrum-server
Step 2. Install a patched version of bitcoind
Electrum server requires some small modifications to the bitcoind daemon. The patch is included in the Electrum sources we just downloaded, now we will download the Bitcoin sources, patch, compile and install the binary to our ~/bin directory.
$ cd ~/src
$ wget https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/tarball/v0.5.1 -O bitcoin-0.5.1.tgz
$ tar xvzf bitcoin-0.5.1.tgz
$ mv bitcoin-bitcoin-5623ee7 bitcoin-0.5.1
$ cd bitcoin-0.5.1/src
$ patch -p 2 < ~/src/electrum/server/patches/bitcoin-0.5.1.diff
$ make -f makefile.unix
$ strip bitcoind
$ mv bitcoind ~/bin
Step 3. 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 wait for it to complete downloading the blockchain.
$ mkdir ~/.bitcoin
$ $EDITOR ~/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf
rpcuser=<rpc-username>
rpcpassword=<rpc-password>
$ bitcoind &
Allow some time to pass, so bitcoind connects to the network and starts downloading blocks. You can check its progress by running:
$ bitcoind 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 find out the best way to do this.
Step 4. 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 will need to install "by hand": Abe and JSONRPClib.
$ sudo easy_install jsonrpclib
$ cd ~/src
$ git clone git://github.com/jtobey/bitcoin-abe.git
$ cd bitcoin-abe
$ sudo python setup.py install
$ 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
Step 5. Configure the database
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.
For MySQL:
$ mysql -u root -p
mysql> create user 'electrum'@'localhost' identified by '<database-password>';
mysql> create database electrum;
mysql> grant all on electrum.* to 'electrum'@'localhost';
mysql> exit
For PostgreSQL:
TDB!
Step 6. Configure Abe and import blockchain into the database
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 blockchaind via Abe is much faster (about 20-30 times faster) than allowing Electrum to do it.
$ cp ~/src/bitcoin-abe/abe.conf ~/abe.conf
$ $EDITOR ~/abe.conf
For MySQL, you need these lines:
dbtype MySQLdb
connect-args = { "db" : "electrum", "user" : "electrum" , "passwd" : "<database-password>" }
For PostgreSQL, you need these lines:
TBD!
Start Abe:
$ abe --config ~/abe.conf
Abe will now start to import blocks. You will see a lot of lines like this: 'block_tx <block-number> <tx-number>'. You should wait until you see this message on the screen:
Listening on http://localhost:2750
It means the blockchain is imported and you can exit Abe by pressing CTRL-C.
Important notice: This is a *very* long process. Even on fast machines you can expect it to take hours. Here are some benchmarks for importing ~159.400 blocks (size of the Bitcoin blockchain at the time of this writing):
System 1: ~8 hours.
* CPU: Intel Core i7 Q740 @ 1.73GHz
* HDD: very fast SSD
System 2: ~48 hours.
* CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 @ 2.40GHz
* HDD: 2 x SATA in a RAID1.
Step 7. 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 options.
$ sudo cp ~/src/electrum/server/electrum.conf.sample /etc/electrum.conf
$ sudo $EDITOR /etc/electrum.conf
# sample server config for a public Electrum server
[server]
host = host-fqdn
port = 50000
password = <electrum-server-password>
banner = Welcome to Electrum server!
irc = yes
ircname = public Electrum server
cache = yes
# sample server config for a private (does not advertise on IRC) Electrum server
[server]
host = localhost
port = 50000
password = <electrum-server-password>
banner = Welcome to Electrum server!
irc = no
ircname = foo
cache = yes
# database setup - MySQL
[database]
type = MySQLdb
database = electrum
username = electrum
password = <database-password>
# database setup - PostgreSQL
TBD!
# bitcoind RPC setup
[bitcoind]
host = localhost
port = 8332
user = <rpc-username>
password = <rpc-password>
Step 8. (Finally!) Run Electrum server
The magic moment has come: you can now start your Electrum server:
$ electrum-server
You should see this on the screen:
starting Electrum server
cache: yes
If you want to stop Electrum server, open another shell and run:
$ 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.
9. 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 check mark (last button on the right of the status bar) to open the Server selection window. If your server is public, you should see it in the list and you can select it. If you server is private, you need to enter its IP or hostname and the port. Press Ok, the client will disconnect from the 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.
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