This document assumes that you are running Ubuntu 18.04.

The following steps outline the artifact installation of a Witness Node:

1. Prepare the environment

2. Download and extract the artifacts

3. Copy the artifacts to the proper locations

4. Update the config.ini File

5. Create a Peerplays Account

6. Update config.ini with Witness Account Info

7. Start the Witness and Vote for Yourself

8. Auto-Starting the Witness Node

1. Prepare the environment

1.1. Hardware requirements

Please see the general Witness hardware requirements.

For the GitLab artifact install, the requirements that we'll need for this guide would be as follows:

NOTE: The artifacts from GitLab are already built for x86_64 architecture. These will not work with ARM based architecture.

1.2. Install the dependencies

The following dependencies are necessary for a clean install of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y  install libzmq3-dev wget zip unzip

2. Download and extract the artifacts

Artifacts are pre-built binaries that are available to download from GitLab. You can see the available pipelines, sorted by release tags, on the GitLab Peerplays project page. The link in the code below refers to release tag 1.5.11 which is the latest production release as of the writing of this document. Please make sure to replace the tag with the one you need. The test releases are available as well, test-1.5.5 for example.

cd /home/ubuntu
mkdir artifacts
cd artifacts
sudo wget https://gitlab.com/PBSA/peerplays/-/jobs/artifacts/1.5.11/download?job=build -O artifacts.zip
unzip artifacts.zip

Important: Double check the tag in the download link!

3. Copy the artifacts to the proper locations

Putting the witness_node and cli_wallet programs in the /usr/local/bin directory will allow us to call the program from any directory.

sudo cp /home/ubuntu/artifacts/build/programs/witness_node/witness_node /usr/local/bin/witness_node
sudo cp /home/ubuntu/artifacts/build/programs/cli_wallet/cli_wallet /usr/local/bin/cli_wallet

Now we can run start the node with:

witness_node

Launching the witness creates the required directories which contain the config.ini file we'll need to edit. We'll stop the witness now with Ctrl + C so we can edit the config file.

4. Edit the config.ini file

We need to set the endpoint and seed-node addresses so we can access the cli_wallet and download all the initial blocks from the chain. Within the config.ini file, locate the p2p-endpoint, rpc-endpoint, and seed-node settings and enter the following addresses.

nano ~/witness_node_data_dir/config.ini
​
p2p-endpoint = 0.0.0.0:9777
rpc-endpoint = 127.0.0.1:8090
seed-node = 213.184.255.234:59500

Save the changes and start the Witness back up.

witness_node

5. Create a Peerplays Account

We'll need an account as the basis of creating a new Witness. The easiest way to do that is to use the GUI wallet.

5.1. Download the Peerplays Core GUI Wallet to Make an Account

​Peerplays Core GUI​

1. Install, open, and create an account. It's pretty self-explanatory. :)

2. Wait for your node to sync the blocks (about 7.3GB at the time of writing). We need to do this before we can use the CLI wallet.

3. From this point on, please note the results of the following commands as you'll need them later.

5.2. Use the cli_wallet to set a password and unlock the wallet

Back in a new command line window, we can access the cli_wallet program after all the blocks have been downloaded from the chain. Note that "your-password-here" is a password that you're creating for the cli_wallet and doesn't necessarily have to be the password you used in the GUI wallet earlier.

cli_wallet
set_password your-password-here
unlock your-password-here

The CLI wallet will show unlocked >>> when successfully unlocked.

Note: A list of CLI wallet commands is available here: https://www.peerplays.tech/api/peerplays-wallet-api/wallet-calls​

5.3. Generate OWNER private keys for the cli_wallet and import them

This will return an array with your owner key in the form of ["PPYxxx", "xxxx"]. Note that the "created-username" and "created-password" used here are the username and password from the GUI wallet!

get_private_key_from_password created-username owner created-password

The second value in the returned array is the private key of your owner key. Now we'll import that into the cli_wallet.

import_key "created-username" SECONDVALUEFROMLASTCOMMAND

5.4. Generate ACTIVE private keys for the cli_wallet and import them

Once again, this will return an array with your active key in the form of ["PPYxxx", "xxxx"]. Note that the "created-username" and "created-password" used here are the username and password from the GUI wallet!

get_private_key_from_password created-username active created-password

The second value in the returned array is the private key of your active key. Now we'll import that into the cli_wallet.

import_key "created-username" SECONDVALUEFROMLASTCOMMAND

NOTE: The keys that begin with "PPY" are the public keys.

5.5. Upgrade to lifetime membership

You will need some PPY for this command to succeed. The account must have lifetime membership status to create a new Witness.

upgrade_account created-username true

5.6. Create yourself as a Witness

The URL in this command is your own URL which should point to a page which describes who you are and why you want to become a Peerplays witness. Note your block signing key after you enter this command.

This command will require some PPY as well.

create_witness created-username "https://your-url-to-witness-proposal" true

5.7. Gather your Witness account info

First we'll get the private key for your block_signing_key.

get_private_key YOURBLOCKSIGNINGKEY

Then dump your keys to check and compare. One of the returned values from the following command should match your block_signing_key.

dump_private_keys

Last we'll get your witness ID.

get_witness created-username

6. Edit config.ini to include your Witness ID and your private key pair

Exit the cli_wallet with the quit command. We'll stop the Witness (Ctrl + C in the first command line window) and edit the config.ini file once again.

nano ~/witness_node_data_dir/config.ini
​
witness-id = "your_witness_id"
private-key = ["block_signing_key", "private_key_for_your_block_signing_key"]

7. Start the Witness and vote for yourself

witness_node

Once again, we need to wait for the node to sync the blocks to use the cli_wallet. After the sync, you can vote for yourself. Back in the second command line window:

cli_wallet
unlock your-password-here
vote_for_witness created-username created-username true true

Now you can check your votes to verify it worked.

get_witness your_witness_account

8. Auto-Starting the Witness Node

Up until this point we have been running the node in the foreground which is fragile and inconvenient. So let's start the node as a service when the system boots up instead.

Step 1. Create a log file to hold your stdout/err logging

sudo touch /var/log/peerplays.log

Step 2. Save this file in a Peerplays directory. nano /home/ubuntu/peerplays/start.sh

#!/bin/bash
​
witness_node &> /var/log/peerplays.log

Step 3. Make it executable

chmod 744 /home/ubuntu/peerplays/start.sh

Step 4. Create this file: sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/peerplays.service

[Unit]
Description=Peerplays Witness
After=network.target
​
[Service]
ExecStart=/home/ubuntu/peerplays/start.sh
Restart=always
RestartSec=3
​
[Install]
WantedBy = multi-user.target

Step 5. Enable the service

sudo systemctl enable peerplays.service
sudo systemctl status peerplays.service

Make sure you don't get any errors.

Step 6. Stop your Witness node, if it's currently running, then start it with the service.

sudo systemctl start peerplays.service

Step 7. Check your log file for entries

tail -f /var/log/peerplays.log