Install and Setup

Installation

This guide will explain how to install the GotaBit binary and run the cli. With this binary installed on a server, you can participate on the mainnet as either a Full Node or a Validator.

Build Requirements

At present, the GotaBit fully supports installation on linux distributions. For the purpose of this instruction set, we'll be using Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS. It is also possible to install GotaBit on Unix, while Windows may require additional unsupported third party installation. All steps are listed below for a clean install.

1. Update & install build tools

2. Install Go

3. Install GotaBit binaries

Build Tools

Install make and gcc.

Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y make gcc

Install Go

📝 Go 1.19+ or later is required for the GotaBit.

We suggest the following two ways to install Go. Check out the official docs and Go installer for the correct download for your operating system. Alternatively, you can install Go yourself from the command line. Detailed below are standard default installation locations, but feel free to customize.

Go Binary Downloads

Ubuntu:

At the time of this writing, the latest release is 1.18.2. We're going to download the tarball, extract it to /usr/local, and export GOROOT to our $PATH

curl -OL https://go.dev/dl/go1.19.10.linux-arm64.tar.gz

sudo tar -C /usr/local -xvf go1.19.10.linux-amd64.tar.gz

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin

Remember to add GOPATH to your $PATH environment variable. If you're not sure where that is, run go env GOPATH. This will allow us to run the gotabitd binary in the next step. If you're not sure how to set your $PATH take a look at these instructions

export PATH=$PATH:$(go env GOPATH)/bin

Install GotaBit

Next, let's install the latest version of GotaBit. Make sure you git checkout the correct released [official version] (https://github.com/gotabit/gotabit) and check out the main branch for the latest stable release.

git clone -b <latest-release-tag> https://github.com/gotabit/gotabit
cd gotabit && make install

If this command fails due to the following error message, you might have already set LDFLAGS prior to running this step.

# github.com/gotabit/gotabit/cmd/gotabitd
flag provided but not defined: -L
usage: link [options] main.o
...
make: *** [install] Error 2
Unset this environment variable and try again.

LDFLAGS="" make install

📝 NOTE: If you still have issues at this step, please check that you have the latest stable version of GO installed.

That will install the gotabitd binary. Verify that everything installed successfully by running:

gotabid version --long

You should see something similar to the following:

name: gotabit
server_name: gotabitd
version: <x.x.x>
commit: <Commit hash>
build_tags: netgo,ledger
go: go version go1.18.2 linux/amd64
build_deps:
#

Build Tags

Build tags indicate special features that have been enabled in the binary.

Build Tag	Description
netgo	Name resolution will use pure Go code
ledger	Ledger devices are supported (hardware wallets)

Server Requirements

The following are setup requirements for the mainnet production server.

Important mandatory firewall setups

At a minimum, the following 3 endpoints are to be opened for the network traffic.

• Reset UFW to disallow all incoming connections and allow outgoing

sudo ufw default deny incoming
sudo ufw default allow outgoing

• Make sure that port 22 (ssh) stays open. Both commands are the same.

sudo ufw allow ssh   or   sudo ufw allow 22

• Allow Port 26656 (tendermint p2p port). If the node has a modified p2p port then that port must be used here.

sudo ufw allow 26656/tcp

• Allow port 26660 (tendermint prometheus). This acts as the applications monitoring port as well.

sudo ufw allow 26660/tcp

Optional firewall ports

Please check with your network admnistrator for assistance.

Tendermint JsonRPC

sudo ufw allow 26657/tcp

GotaBit SDK GRPC

sudo ufw allow 9090/tcp

GotaBit SDK REST

sudo ufw allow 1317/tcp

Enable ufw

sudo ufw enable

Run with docker

The installation given is from binary but docker installation option is also available below:

We also have a pre-built docker images. Github Packages Docker Hub

• Run with docker

docker pull gotabit/gotabit:1.0.0
docker run --name gotabit -d -p 1317:1317 -p 26657:26657 \
        -v $PWD/runtime:/root/.gotabit gotabit/gotabit:1.0.0 /opt/chain_run

• Run with docker compose

git clone https://github.com/gotabit/gotabit
cd gotabit
docker-compose up -d

Signing

File

File based signing is simple and default usage. It uses both files $HOME/.gotabit/config/priv_val_key.json and data/priv_val_state.json

The following is an example server backend configured using keyring to keep the public/private key pairs protected. A use for it is when setting up the validators.

Do the following to setup a variable called "myvalidator"

gotabitd keys add myvalidator --keyring-backend=test --home "[home directory]"

📝 Note subcommand "--home" is optionally used to allow gotabitd to store the keys pointing to a different home directory.

As blockchain addresses are long, set up an environment variable for extracting the content of myvalidator address variable. Unix shell command is given below.

MY_VALIDATOR_ADDRESS=$(gotabitd keys show myvalidator -a --keyring-backend test --home "[home directory]")

Remote signer

A remote signer uses a different server to sign blocks with the consensus key. There is more security signing blocks using a separate remote server other than from the running node.

Two common signers are tmkms and horcrux. Please refer to the links provided.