Skip to content

FAQ#

General#

Is there any benefits for running a node?#

There is no financial incentive to run a node, doing so helps increase the security of the network.

Are nodes visible anywhere?#

Public nodes can be seen on ergonodes.

Please note that unless you are running the node on a publicly accessible web-server, your node should be protected by your router.

  • To run a public node see this example nginx.conf available.
  • Using a remote node is insecure, please use them with caution.

How do I safely shut down?#

curl -X POST "http://127.0.0.1:9053/node/shutdown" -H "api_key: hello"

If you cannot safely shut-down, you can kill the ports. 

kill -9 $(lsof -t -i:9053)
kill -9 $(lsof -t -i:9030)

Minimum Requirements#

Java#

To run an Ergo node you need a JDK/JRE version >= 9 installed on your system.

We recommend Oracle Java SE or for Unix-based operating systems, SDKMAN.

curl -s "https://get.sdkman.io" | bash
sdk install java 11.0.13.8.1-amzn

Hardware#

The only hardware requirements is ~20GB of space to store the chain, and ~8GB of RAM memory for handling the sync.

The node uses Java so should work across all operating systems. You can even run on a Raspberri Pi.

Note that due to the intensive disk I/O, 4-6GB of ram is recommended with a fast SSD, running with the -Xmx4G flag on JVM9/11

Running the node#

Commands#

Please see the section on swagger

Security#

Unless you are running the node on a publicly accessible web-server, your node should be protected by your router.

If you wish to host a public node, there are a few important aspects your wallet and money's safety depends on:

  • You should never make the ergo.conf file public.
  • Sensitive API methods require a security token, which should never be sent over untrusted channels.
  • Access to the Ergo REST API must be restricted to known hosts. In particular, the API must not be accessible from the Internet.

Compiling from source#

Instead of downloading the precompiled Ergo jar, you can clone the repository and compile the jar from the source using the sbt assembly command.

As a service#

vi /etc/systemd/system/node.service


[Unit]
Description=ErgoNode Service
[Service]
User=user

#change this to your workspace
WorkingDirectory=/mnt/HC_Volume_19304500/ergo

#path to executable. 
#executable is a bash script which calls jar file
ExecStart=/mnt/HC_Volume_19304500/run_node.sh

SuccessExitStatus=143
TimeoutStopSec=10
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
create the sh file

echo "#!/bin/sh
sudo /usr/bin/java -jar -Xmx4G ergo.jar --mainnet -c ergo.conf" > run_node.sh
chmod +x run_node.sh

enable and start the service

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable node.service
sudo systemctl start node
sudo systemctl status node