6.9 KiB
nix-bitcoin
Nix packages and nixos modules including profiles to easily install featureful Bitcoin nodes. Work in progress.
Profiles
nix-bitcoin.nix
provides the two profiles "minimal" and "all":
- minimal
- bitcoind (pruned) with outbound connections through Tor and inbound connections through a hidden service
- clightning with outbound connections through Tor, not listening
- includes "nodeinfo" script which prints basic info about the node
- adds non-root user "operator" which has access to bitcoin-cli and lightning-cli
- all
- adds clightning hidden service
- liquid-daemon
- lightning charge
- electrs
- nanopos
- adds an index page using nginx to display node information and link to nanopos
- spark-wallet
- Notes: run
nodeinfo
to get its onion address andsystemctl status spark-wallet
to get the access key. When entering the onion address on the Android app don't forgot to prepend "http://"
- Notes: run
The data directories can be found in /var/lib
.
Installing profiles
The easiest way is to run nix-shell
in the nix-bitcoin directory and then create a NixOps deployment with the provided network.nix.
Fix the FIXMEs in configuration.nix and deploy with nixops in nix-shell.
See below for a detailed tutorial.
The "all" profile requires 15 GB of disk space and 2GB of memory.
Tutorial: install a nix-bitcoin node
Get a machine to deploy nix-bitcoin on. This could be a VirtualBox, a machine that is already running NixOs or a cloud provider. Have a look at the options in the NixOps manual.
The following steps are meant to be run on the machine you deploy from, not the machine you deploy to.
Install Dependencies (Debian 9 stretch)
sudo apt-get install curl git gnupg2 dirmngr
Install Latest Nix with GPG Verification
curl -o install-nix-2.1.3 https://nixos.org/nix/install
curl -o install-nix-2.1.3.sig https://nixos.org/nix/install.sig
gpg2 --recv-keys B541D55301270E0BCF15CA5D8170B4726D7198DE
gpg2 --verify ./install-nix-2.1.3.sig
sh ./install-nix-2.1.3
. /home/user/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/nix.sh
Clone this project
cd
git clone https://github.com/jonasnick/nix-bitcoin
cd ~/nix-bitcoin
Setup environment
nix-shell
Create nixops deployment in nix-shell.
When deploying in a VirtualBox you can use the provided network-vbox.nix
file (ensure that you've created a host adaptor as explained in the appendix).
nixops create network.nix network-vbox.nix -d bitcoin-node
Otherwise replace it with a network file as explained in the NixOps manual.
Adjust configuration by opening configuration.nix and removing FIXMEs.
Deploy Nixops in nix-shell
nixops deploy -d bitcoin-node
This will now create a nix-bitcoin node on the target machine.
Nixops automatically creates an ssh key for use with nixops ssh
. Access bitcoin-node
through ssh in nix-shell with
nixops ssh operator@bitcoin-node
If you change anything in the configuration you can run
nixops deploy -d bitcoin-node
in the nix-shell again to redeploy the configuration to the node.
Updating
Run git pull
in the nix-bitcoin directory, enter the nix shell with nix-shell
and redeploy with nixops deploy -d bitcoin-node
.
FAQ
- Q: When deploying or trying to SSH into the machine I see
bitcoin-node> waiting for SSH... Received disconnect from 10.1.1.200 port 22:2: Too many authentication failures
- A: Somehow ssh-agent and nixops don't play well together (see also https://github.com/NixOS/nixops/issues/256), if you have a few keys already added to your ssh-agent. Killing and restarting the ssh-agent should fix the problem. Also make sure you don't have something like
in your ssh config.Host * PubkeyAuthentication no
- Q: When deploying to virtualbox for the first time I see
bitcoin-node> Mar 19 09:22:27 bitcoin-node systemd[1]: Started Get NixOps SSH Key. bitcoin-node> Mar 19 09:22:27 bitcoin-node get-vbox-nixops-client-key-start[2226]: VBoxControl: error: Failed to connect to the guest property service, error VERR_INTERNAL_ERROR bitcoin-node> Mar 19 09:22:27 bitcoin-node systemd[1]: get-vbox-nixops-client-key.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE bitcoin-node> Mar 19 09:22:27 bitcoin-node systemd[1]: get-vbox-nixops-client-key.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'. bitcoin-node> error: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/nix/store/6zyvpi0q6mvprycadz2dpdqag4742y18-python2.7-nixops-1.6pre0_abcdef/lib/python2.7/site-packages/nixops/deployment.py", line 731, in worker raise Exception("unable to activate new configuration") Exception: unable to activate new configuration
- A: This is issue https://github.com/NixOS/nixops/issues/908. The machine needs to be rebooted. You can do that by running
nixops deploy
with the--force-reboot
flag once.
- A: This is issue https://github.com/NixOS/nixops/issues/908. The machine needs to be rebooted. You can do that by running
- Q: I'm deploying to virtualbox it's not able to connect anymore.
- A: Maybe the IP address of the box changed. Run
nixops deploy --check
to update nixops with the new IP address.
- A: Maybe the IP address of the box changed. Run
- Q: The clightning service is running but when I try to use it (f.e. by running
lightning-cli getinfo
as user operator) all I get islightning-cli: Connecting to 'lightning-rpc': Connection refused
.- A: Check your clightning logs with
journalctl -eu clightning
. Do you see something likebitcoin-cli getblock ... false
failed? Are you using pruned mode? That means that clightning hasn't seen all the blocks it needs to and it can't get that block because your node is pruned. If you're just setting up a new node you cansystemctl stop clightning
and wipe your/var/lib/clightning
directory. Otherwise you need to reindex the Bitcoin node.
- A: Check your clightning logs with
- Q: My disk space is getting low due to nix.
- A: run
nix-collect-garbage -d
- A: run
Appendix
Tutorial: install and configure VirtualBox for nix-bitcoin on Debian 9 Stretch
Add virtualbox.list to /etc/apt/sources.list.d
deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian stretch contrib
Add Oracle VirtualBox public key
wget https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc
gpg2 oracle_vbox_2016.asc
Proceed only if fingerprint reads B9F8 D658 297A F3EF C18D 5CDF A2F6 83C5 2980 AECF
sudo apt-key add oracle_vbox_2016.asc
Install virtualbox-5.2
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-5.2
IMPORTANT: Create Host Adapter in VirtualBox
Open VirtualBox
File -> Host Network Manager -> Create
This should create a hostadapter named vboxnet0