This document is an easy to follow guide to installing and running your own Electrum server on Linux. It is structured as a series of steps you need to follow, ordered in the most logical way. The next two sections describe some conventions we use in this document and hardware, software and expertise requirements.
The most up-to date version of this document is available at:
https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum-server/blob/master/HOWTO.md
In this document, lines starting with a hash sign (#) or a dollar sign (
Strings that are surrounded by "lower than" and "greater than" ( < and > ) should be replaced by the user with something appropriate. For example, should be replaced by a user chosen password. Do not confuse this notation with shell redirection ('command < file' or 'command > file')!
Lines that lack hash or dollar signs are pastes from config files. They should be copied verbatim or adapted, without the indentation tab.
Expertise. You should be familiar with Linux command line and standard Linux commands. You should have basic understanding of git, Python packages. You should have knowledge about how to install and configure software on your Linux distribution. You should be able to add commands to your distribution's startup scripts. If one of the commands included in this document is not available or does not perform the operation described here, you are expected to fix the issue so you can continue following this howto.
Software. A recent Linux distribution with the following software
installed: python, easy_install, git, a SQL server, standard C/C++
build chain. You will need root access in order to install other software or
Python libraries. You will need access to the SQL server to create users and
databases.
Hardware. It's recommended to run a pruning server with leveldb. It is a light setup with diskspace requirements well under 1 GB growing very moderately and less taxing on I/O and CPU once it's up and running. Full (archival) servers on the other hand use SQL. At the time of this writing, the Bitcoin blockchain is 5.5 GB large. The corresponding SQL database is about 4 times larger, so you should have a minimum of 22 GB free space just for SQL, growing continuously. CPU speed is also important, mostly for the initial block chain import, but also if you plan to run a public Electrum server, which could serve tens of concurrent requests. See step 6 below for some initial import benchmarks on SQL.
This step is optional, but for better security and resource separation I
suggest you create a separate user just for running bitcoind and Electrum.
We will also use the ~/bin directory to keep locally installed files
(others might want to use /usr/local/bin instead). We will download source
code files to the ~/src directory.
# sudo adduser bitcoin
# su - bitcoin
$ mkdir ~/bin ~/src
$ echo $PATH
If you don't see /home/bitcoin/bin in the output, you should add this line
to your .bashrc, .profile or .bash_profile, then logout and relogin:
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
We will download the latest git snapshot for Electrum and 'install' it in our ~/bin directory:
$ mkdir -p ~/src/electrum
$ cd ~/src/electrum
$ git clone https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum-server.git server
$ chmod +x ~/src/electrum/server/server.py
$ ln -s ~/src/electrum/server/server.py ~/bin/electrum
In order for the latest versions of Electrum to work properly we will need to use the latest build from Git and also patch it with an electrum specific patch. Please make sure you run a version of bitcoind from git from at least December 2012 or newer:
$ cd src && git clone git://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.git
$ cd bitcoin
$ patch -p1 < ~/src/electrum/server/patch/patch
$ cd src && make -f makefile.unix
In order to allow Electrum to "talk" to bitcoind, we need to set up a RPC
username and password for bitcoind. We will then start bitcoind and
wait for it to complete downloading the blockchain.
$ mkdir ~/.bitcoin
$ $EDITOR ~/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf
Write this in bitcoin.conf:
rpcuser=<rpc-username>
rpcpassword=<rpc-password>
daemon=1
Restart bitcoind:
$ bitcoind
Allow some time to pass, so bitcoind connects to the network and starts
downloading blocks. You can check its progress by running:
$ bitcoind getinfo
You should also set up your system to automatically start bitcoind at boot time, running as the 'bitcoin' user. Check your system documentation to find out the best way to do this.
Electrum server can currently be operated in two modes - as a pruning server or as a full server. The pruning server uses leveldb and keeps a smaller and faster database by pruning spent transactions. It's a lot quicker to get up and running and requires less maintenance and diskspace than the full abe server.
The full version uses abe as a backend. While the blockchain in bitcoind is at roughly 5.5 GB in January 2013, the abe mysql for a full server requires ~25 GB diskspace for innodb and can take a week or two (!) to freshly index on most but the fastest of hardware.
Full servers are useful for recovering all past transactions when restoring from seed. Those are then stored in electrum.dat and won't need to be recovered until electrum.dat is removed. Pruning servers summarize spent transactions when restoring from seed which can be feature. Once seed recovery is done switching between pruning and full servers can be done at any time without effect to the transaction history stored in electrum.dat.
While it's useful for Electrum to have a number of full servers it is expected that the vast majority of servers available publicly will be pruning servers.
If you decide to setup a pruning server with leveldb take a break from this document, read and work through README.leveldb then come back install jsonrcp (but not abe) from step 5 and then skip to step 8
Electrum server depends on various standard Python libraries. These will be
already installed on your distribution, or can be installed with your
package manager. Electrum also depends on two Python libraries which we wil
l need to install "by hand": Abe and JSONRPClib.
$ sudo easy_install jsonrpclib
$ cd ~/src
$ git clone https://github.com/jtobey/bitcoin-abe
$ cd bitcoin-abe
$ git checkout c2a9969e20305faa41c40ae47533f2138f222ffc
$ sudo python setup.py install
Electrum server does not currently support abe 0.7.2+ so please stick with a specific commit between 0.7.1 and 0.7.2 for the time being.
Please note that the path below might be slightly different on your system, for example python2.6 or 2.8.
$ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Abe/abe.py
$ ln -s /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Abe/abe.py ~/bin/abe
Electrum server uses a SQL database to store the blockchain data. In theory, it supports all databases supported by Abe. At the time of this writing, MySQL and PostgreSQL are tested and work ok, SQLite was tested and does not work with Electrum server.
For MySQL:
$ mysql -u root -p
mysql> create user 'electrum'@'localhost' identified by '<db-password>';
mysql> create database electrum;
mysql> grant all on electrum.* to 'electrum'@'localhost';
mysql> exit
For PostgreSQL:
TBW!
When you run Electrum server for the first time, it will automatically import the blockchain into the database, so it is safe to skip this step. However, our tests showed that, at the time of this writing, importing the blockchain via Abe is much faster (about 20-30 times faster) than allowing Electrum to do it.
$ cp ~/src/bitcoin-abe/abe.conf ~/abe.conf
$ $EDITOR ~/abe.conf
For MySQL, you need these lines:
dbtype MySQLdb
connect-args = { "db" : "electrum", "user" : "electrum" , "passwd" : "<database-password>" }
For PostgreSQL, you need these lines:
TBD!
Start Abe:
$ abe --config ~/abe.conf
Abe will now start to import blocks. You will see a lot of lines like this:
'block_tx <block-number> <tx-number>'
You should wait until you see this message on the screen:
Listening on http://localhost:2750
It means the blockchain is imported and you can exit Abe by pressing CTRL-C. You will not need to run Abe again after this step, Electrum server will update the blockchain by itself. We only used Abe because it is much faster for the initial import.
Important notice: This is a very long process. Even on fast machines, expect it to take hours. Here are some benchmarks for importing ~196K blocks (size of the Bitcoin blockchain in Septeber 2012):
- System 1: ~9 hours.
- CPU: Intel Core i7 Q740 @ 1.73GHz
- HDD: very fast SSD
- System 2: ~55 hours.
- CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 @ 2.40GHz
- HDD: 2 x SATA in a RAID1.
It's much faster to import an existing dataset than to index the blockchain using abe yourself.
Importing a mysql dump of ~8 GB takes around 18-20 hours on a regular HDD and can be sped up by using SSDs or importing into /dev/shm memory
You can fetch recent copies of mysql dumps and further instructions from the Electrum full archival server foundry at: http://electrum-foundry.no-ip.org/
Electrum reads a config file (/etc/electrum.conf) when starting up. This file includes the database setup, bitcoind RPC setup, and a few other options.
$ sudo cp ~/src/electrum/server/electrum.conf.sample /etc/electrum.conf
$ sudo $EDITOR /etc/electrum.conf
Go through the sample config options and set them to your liking. If you intend to run the server publicly have a look at README-IRC.md
If you're looking to run SSL / HTTPS you need to generate a self-signed certificate using openssl. Otherwise you can just comment out the SSL / HTTPS ports and run without.
The magic moment has come: you can now start your Electrum server:
$ server
You should see this on the screen:
starting Electrum server
cache: yes
If you want to stop Electrum server, open another shell and run:
$ electrum-server stop
You should also take a look at the 'start' and 'stop' scripts in
~/src/electrum/server. You can use them as a starting point to create a
init script for your system.
We will assume you have a working Electrum client, a wallet and some transactions history. You should start the client and click on the green checkmark (last button on the right of the status bar) to open the Server selection window. If your server is public, you should see it in the list and you can select it. If you server is private, you need to enter its IP or hostname and the port. Press Ok, the client will disconnect from the current server and connect to your new Electrum server. You should see your addresses and transactions history. You can see the number of blocks and response time in the Server selection window. You should send/receive some bitcoins to confirm that everything is working properly.
Say hi to the dev crew, other server operators and fans on irc.freenode.net #electrum and we'll try to congratulate you on supporting the community by running an Electrum node
If you're operating a public Electrum server please subscribe to or regulary check the following thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=85475.0 It'll contain announcements about important updates to Electrum server required for a smooth user experience.