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Managing your deployment

This section applies to users of the deployment method described in the installation guide.

Deployment shell

Run command nix-shell in your deployment directory.
You now have access to deployment commands:

deploy
Deploy the current configuration to your node.
eval-config
Locally evaluate the configuration. This is useful to check for configuration errors.
h, help
Show help

Updating nix-bitcoin

Run update-nix-bitcoin from the deployment shell.
This fetches the latest release, verifies its signatures and updates nix-bitcoin-release.nix.

Customizing your configuration

Get started with Nix

See Nix - A One Pager for a short guide to Nix, the language used in configuration.nix.
You can follow along this guide by running command nix repl which allows you to interactively evaluate Nix expressions.

For a general introduction to the Nix and NixOS ecosystem, see nix.dev.

Set options

All features and services are configurable through options. You can find a list of supported options at the top of each nix-bitcoin module (Examples: bitcoind.nix, btcpayserver.nix).

Example: Set some bitcoind options by adding these lines to your configuration.nix:

# Use a custom data dir
services.bitcoind.dataDir = "/my/datadir";

# Enable txindex
services.bitcoind.txindex = true;

You can also use regular NixOS options for configuring your system:

networking.hostName = "myhost";
time.timeZone = "UTC";

Debug your configuration

To print the values of specific options of your config, add the following to your configuration.nix:

system.extraDependencies = let
  debugVal = config.networking.firewall.allowedTCPPorts;
  # More example options:
  # debugVal = config.environment.systemPackages;
  # debugVal = config.services.bitcoind.dataDir;
in lib.traceSeqN 3 debugVal [];

and run command eval-config from the deployment shell.

Allowing external connections to services

Allow peer connections to bitcoind

services.bitcoind = {
  # Accept incoming peer connections
  listen = true;

  # Listen to connections on all interfaces
  address = "0.0.0.0";

  # Set this to also add IPv6 connectivity.
  extraConfig = ''
    bind=::
  '';

  # If you're using the `secure-node.nix` template, set this to allow non-Tor connections
  # to bitcoind
  tor.enforce = false;
  # Also set this if bitcoind should not use Tor for outgoing peer connections
  tor.proxy = false;
};

# Open the p2p port in the firewall
networking.firewall.allowedTCPPorts = [ config.services.bitcoind.port ];

Allow bitcoind RPC connections from LAN

services.bitcoind = {
  # Listen to RPC connections on all interfaces
  rpc.address = "0.0.0.0";

  # Allow RPC connections from external addresses
  rpc.allowip = [
    "10.10.0.0/24" # Allow a subnet
    "10.50.0.3" # Allow a specific address
    "0.0.0.0/0" # Allow all addresses
  ];

  # Set this if you're using the `secure-node.nix` template
  tor.enforce = false;
};

# Open the RPC port in the firewall
networking.firewall.allowedTCPPorts = [ config.services.bitcoind.rpc.port ];

Allow connections to electrs

services.electrs = {
  # Listen to connections on all interfaces
  address = "0.0.0.0";

  # Set this if you're using the `secure-node.nix` template
  tor.enforce = false;
};

# Open the electrs port in the firewall
networking.firewall.allowedTCPPorts = [ config.services.electrs.port ];

You can use the same approach to allow connections to other services.

Migrate existing services to nix-bitcoin

Example: bitcoind

# 1. Stop bitcoind on your nodes
ssh root@nix-bitcoin-node 'systemctl stop bitcoind'
# Also stop bitcoind on the node that you'll be copying data from

# 2. Copy the data to the nix-bitcoin node
# Important: Add a trailing slash to the source path
rsync /path/to/existing/bitcoind-datadir/ root@nix-bitcoin-node:/var/lib/bitcoind

# 3. Fix data dir permissions on the nix-bitcoin node
ssh root@nix-bitcoin-node 'chown -R bitcoin: /var/lib/bitcoind'

# 4. Start bitcoind
ssh root@nix-bitcoin-node 'systemctl start bitcoind'

You can use the same workflow for other services.
The default data dir path is /var/lib/<service> for all services.

Some services require extra steps:

lnd

Copy your wallet password to $secretsDir/lnd-wallet-password (See: Secrets dir).

btcpayserver

Copy the postgresql database:

# Export (on the other node)
sudo -u postgres pg_dump YOUR_BTCPAYSERVER_DB > export.sql
# Restore (on the nix-bitcoin node)
sudo -u postgres psql btcpaydb < export.sql

joinmarket

Copy your wallet to /var/lib/joinmarket/wallets/wallet.jmdat.
Write your wallet password, without a trailing newline, to $secretsDir/jm-wallet-password (See: Secrets dir).

Use bitcoind from another node

Here's how to use a bitcoind instance running on another node within a nix-bitcoin config:

imports = [ <nix-bitcoin/modules/presets/bitcoind-remote.nix> ];

services.bitcoind = {
  enable = true;

  # Address of the other node
  address = "10.10.0.2";
  rpc.address = "10.10.0.2";

  # Some nix-bitcoin services require whitelisted bitcoind p2p connections
  # to work reliably.
  # Search for `whitelistedPort` in this repo to see the affected services.
  # If you're using one of these services, either add a whitelisted p2p port
  # on your remote node via `whitebind` and set it here:
  whitelistedPort = <remote whitebind RPC port>;
  #
  # Or use the default p2p port and add `whitelist=<address of this node>` to
  # your remote bitcoind config:
  whitelistedPort = config.services.bitcoind.port;

  rpc.users = let
    # The fully privileged bitcoind RPC username of the other node
    name = "myrpcuser";
  in {
    privileged.name = name;
    public.name = name;
    ## Set this if you use btcpayserver
    # btcpayserver.name = name;
    ## Set this if you use joinmarket-ob-watcher
    # joinmarket-ob-watcher.name = name;
  };
};

If a secure-node.nix or tor-enable.nix preset is imported in your configuration or a tor.enforce option is explicitly enabled, you also need to allow remote connections for every service which needs to connect to the remote bitcoind:

systemd.services.<service>.serviceConfig = {
  IPAddressAllow = [ ${services.bitcoind.rpc.address} ];
};

Please note that configuration above applies only if the remote bitcoind is not accessed via Tor.

Now save the password of the RPC user to the following files on your nix-bitcoin node:

$secretsDir/bitcoin-rpcpassword-privileged
$secretsDir/bitcoin-rpcpassword-public

## Only needed when set in the above config snippet
# $secretsDir/bitcoin-rpcpassword-btcpayserver
# $secretsDir/bitcoin-rpcpassword-joinmarket-ob-watcher

See: Secrets dir

Afterwards, restart bitcoind: systemctl restart bitcoind.

Temporarily disable a service

Sometimes you might want to disable a service without removing the service user and integration with other services, as it would happen when setting services.<service>.enable = false.

Use the following approach:

systemd.services.<service>.wantedBy = mkForce [];

This way, the systemd service still exists, but is not automatically started.
Note: This only works for services that are not required by other active services.

Appendix

Secrets dir

The secrets dir is set by option nix-bitoin.secretsDir and has the following default values:

If you're using the krops deployment method: /var/src/secrets
Otherwise: /etc/nix-bitcoin-secrets

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