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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;
  };
};

For each service that connects to bitcoind and has option services.<service>.tor.enforce enabled (either explicitly or by importing secure-node.nix or enable-tor.nix), you need to allow the remote bitcoind connection:

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

The above configuration is only required 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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