Installation of a waves testnet node

I was asked to provide a video tutorial for the installation of a testnet node

for the waves network. I'm currently running a couple of nodes in different

environments and helped a couple of people installing nodes. Therefore, some

experience in how to set up nodes for the waves network exists. :)

Basically, I'll follow the steps for the installation of a node on the

wavesplatform github page:

https://github.com/wavesplatform/Waves

and the page for the configuration of a node:

https://github.com/wavesplatform/Waves/wiki/How-to-configure-Waves-node

Installation of the Oracle Java8 JDK

First of all, we have to install the Oracle Java8 JDK. The following commands

will take care of this:

echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu precise main" | tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list

echo "deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu precise main" | tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list

apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys EEA14886

apt-get update

apt-get install -y oracle-java8-installer

In contrast to the original steps provided by the waves team, I've added -y to

the last command in order to avoid apt asking if we really want to install

the package. At this step, some users (including me) had some trouble answering

the question and this pitfall could be avoided by just adding the -y. Finally,

these steps ensure that we have the latest JDK version (originally from Oracle)

installed on our server.

Installation of the Waves node software

After the successful installation of the Oracle Java8 JDK, we can start the installation of the nodes software. Therefore, we will download the latest release from:

https://github.com/wavesplatform/Waves/releases

At the current state, the latest version is 0.2.1, so we download the release

via:

wget https://github.com/wavesplatform/Waves/releases/download/v0.2.1/waves-v0.2.1-testnet.zip

Of course, this link will change with upcoming releases...

After downloading it, we will need to unzip it. If you have not yet install

unzip on your server you can do so with the following command:

apt-get install unzip

After unzipping the formerly downloaded waves-v0.2.1-testnet.zip file with:

unzip waves-v0.2.1-testnet.zip

we have two new files in our filesystem:

waves_0.2.1_testnet.deb

waves-testnet.json

Fianlly, we can now install the waves software by:

dpkg -i waves_0.2.1_testnet.deb

Remember, all the steps so far should be done in a root account. If you are not

logged in as root (or with an account that has root privilegous), you should add

"sudo" in front of the commands.

Configuration of the waves node

After the successful installation of the waves node software, we can now start

configuring it according to the steps explained in subsection "Configuration"

here:

https://github.com/wavesplatform/Waves/wiki/How-to-configure-Waves-node

After the successful configuration, you can start your node in the background

with the following command:

waves waves-testnet.json &

Those steps are shown in the following video:

Check installation

Since you have now a clean installation, your node needs to sync first. Here,

syncing means that your node has to download the history of blocks / transaction

that occured in the network so far. In order to check if your node is syncing,

you can connect to the Swagger UI of your node by pointing your web browser to

the following URL.

http://<ip address of your server>:6869

Since one of my server is running on ip 138.68.56.182, the URL would be:

http://138.68.56.182:6869

On the loaded page, you'll find an endpoint called "debug". If you click on it,

you'll find another endpoint called "/debug/info". Again, click on it and hit

"Try it out". The result you'll get should look something like the following

image.

Here, you can see that the stateHeight of my node is currently at 7150.

We can compare this to synced nodes, e.g., the ones you find unter "knownPeers"

in your waves-testnet.json file on your server, in order to check how far your

nodes is in the syncing process.

On you server, you can also check the "scorex.log" file. If you find entries

like:

08/08 11:34:19 DEBUG[t-dispatcher-11] s.n.HistorySynchronizer Got blockIds: Vector(1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111, EoeZ7RSQVZ7QXvrpfXgrDeBS61z

ByRsdz4fmHSxRLv3LHWcAWzM22fZYsd8gMbemQBn83BvkFpURiHy6u9zgNJQ, 3xSfryez3w2cCTj7vq2QSoWgYxZmSZXttRyii2y6QCqE2cTv9vfG1BfMGyWpK3fyvushjCrfNFqrMwnifZJ58wU, 4diJ2cx7RW9WAysitNdkX5R9b

RLULThNkmhkMRyYFRLgGqWt8zJ1HTCnW4SgWqSfsgggUQEV3ZWwB9GGUjvCDpjq, 65gTSJ5Ha1xWrdKDXU3voQ57mFNL4qnUMA7mFiVPTL53RwJTt9SfjktR911BN2sN6JMQjvzVLmL2xREqP9k5LDdT, 2oFphHrGMMTQeKhZJwzvD

DiPnsc3V3HKjsVjasX5bgRJTUNNJza3j26wyuKVU5eJ18u7PKS8LZ31GnyD1A6TafvE, TygmcnAPTynrKavZfpVEbxhPziLaedxq1XJd296TPbrrxB3QRrSjQ7kGFxg3bNHvWUAgcrr2pjisKD8PwzcM1t7, 2Ko4eGmmnKkdwbbYUv

Ct75mjhyUUuuLFRtkndsnbrygnbKXs3jriLmynDdNcmVDoKCeseqx74d2FSBXXW28gxGkB, 21d6iFPmAELHynfQyoGB74ibRSYCMNmvgyYgRX93E2mFhNogfTZKWf6ncrETY9zu1Yp6tmvQ1JPg8bG1zLYmtsMe, GmB1PaRnbdDDoz

TNrPxZXMFL97PDS5etadLanmAVZx93EVqAib5HsJAg3D5WmubW78KFr45PYmHy6HiYS3oeGrm, 36BDtsEXoLxsvjCyWXCDUzr9yJGDuEEWWSj2HqLRjAx1dVAdFReLTe8LTY9B8oAuf9EScAdVC42zZqT72uKE7FCG, 5VsVZQXuuoL

CXPhCtTm8bFapst3CN6jRvM653ZUMn2YJXguqGg5mUesgCQZb3jYG3ha74jxAArN7kRMpdFwtmCCh, 3QXWR8kmA1HK7SGjEpaiqoWpULXWHtwfiSuJ7a1Xd9kfWCxuPH1pZubtpqGdGGnRyHrnEfC1dydLsX4jH8BeVUY1, 5PjFUiX

zvCuQfcQ7aA6HgCYn3aXc8jSJ7Zdg9MqDtPsLBN6DjQewq6KH7Er5x5n1EAv7z7sEHp8VEkiTStm7Pa96, 4sokUJSzh2gh7PnxvZXyNpp66nvUYWvRWAgx92ECZBzNi8q4z4XEehaRYtDDaQjKff4Hd3WwJJNwex5WqcuiodE9, 4iS

AgU5wdKJaQuRJ2v5gT3WPwUZsaSYu63SuqP5AEbkj9GWfVFfyrdpT67LvTV24q2aPKHZzmvHJaSgfyWpD83DH, 4Eqp7vcojfiupUjiCiDFMr87pwLkXWrkW41JDmAEa9gFwaT9Yno27mbigD8xRBTq1Re4jmFJwPHaeMHbBpYFhxVx,

2v1UGCHgtFwaFNX91shpLQyS2dYaTURXfXqeSREvdjCUfPdUey31TmZvUNdsufx2nyqGDAGAmZeC14iueZxtUxEE, 5kTEjA8tauSUoF7Z2NqBDqHCH6wnkXkfxLzmA87PHocL7GDfcDmyGpdUiBHVCw4ajuyUvmVKnzMCftYMiyEdL

stN, Ycd2JVVdA2UNR3WcQEBQvwgJhVsaGnmKqwNoteTNMvriqdhmHRyU4ytbnN1kENXLAiwEBv2raADrdKU9ESpJ9R6, 3dke6cEq6a5Zg2gjeVzw6qzUUEVAYXCzdgeExdof4vdyZj3Xq5pe4FZcypfNh7GSM6w4DjNm1UTQimQ219N4Q9qZ)

this shows that your node is adding new blocks.

Remember, the syncing process might take some (serious) time to finish. The

bigger the blockchain of the waves testnet network will get, the more time it

will take.

I hope that you enjoyed the tutorial. Please feel free to contact me (@hawky) on

slack in #testnet-maintainers or #fullnode if you have any questions, or just

leave a comment with your questions here.