Relay Node

How to Deploy a Mochimo VPS Relay Node

Summary

The below steps will allow you to set up a VPS node that self-reboots weekly, installs the Mochimo server in a ramdisk (for high performance) creates a local mochimo service, and automatically restarts the Mochimo server as a non solving node upon reboot.

Audience

People who want to support the network by operating a node to relay transactions / blocks.

Minimum System Requirements

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 1 vCPU 2 GB RAM 10 GB Hard Disk

Create a new user for Mochimo

1 Log into root user on your VPS.

2. Create a new user specific for this Mochimo relay node.

adduser mochimorelay

3. Enter a strong password. (you can return through the prompts asking for user details, they can all be blank)

4. Give your new user Sudo permissions.

usermod -aG sudo mochimorelay

5. Switch to your new user.

su - mochimorelay

If you've sucessfully created a new user with Sudo permissions your terminal should say something like:

To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".
See "man sudo_root" for details.

You are now ready to start your node deployment.

Deployment Steps

1. Create ramdisk directory.

sudo mkdir /mnt/ramdisk

2. Setup crontab to reboot daily. Below script selects nano with "1" and sets the system to reboot weekly at 6 am.
(you may be prompted to press Y when using apt-get)

sudo apt-get install nano

cd /etc
sudo crontab -e

File Contents:

0 6 * * 1 /sbin/shutdown -r

3. Install build tools, and build Mochimo
(you may be prompted to press Y when using apt-get)

cd 
sudo apt-get install git
sudo apt-get install build-essential
git clone https://github.com/mochimodev/mochimo
cd mochimo/src
./makeunx bin -DCPU
./makeunx install

4. Tar the binary directory, and copy to /mochimorelay

cd ..
tar -czvf bin.tgz bin
cp bin.tgz /home/mochimorelay/bin.tgz
cd ..
rm -rf mochimo

5. Set the fstab to load the ramdisk on reboot

sudo nano /etc/fstab

File Contents (append to bottom of file):

tmpfs       /mnt/ramdisk tmpfs   nodev,nosuid,nodiratime,size=1024M

6. Create the systemd system service to start Mochimo on boot.

cd /etc/systemd/system
sudo nano mochimo.service

File Contents:

[Unit]
Description=Mochimo Server

[Service]
ExecStart=/bin/bash /home/mochimorelay/start-mochimo.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

7. Make the service privs 644:

sudo chmod 644 mochimo.service

8. Create the startup script off of /mochimorelay

sudo nano /home/mochimorelay/start-mochimo.sh

#! /bin/bash
sudo cp /home/mochimorelay/bin.tgz /mnt/ramdisk
cd /mnt/ramdisk
sudo tar -xzvf bin.tgz
cd bin
cp maddr.mat maddr.dat
./gomochi d -n -D

9. Make the startup script executable:

sudo chmod +x /home/mochimorelay/start-mochimo.sh

10. Return to root user, start the service, and reboot to confirm:

su -
systemctl enable mochimo.service
systemctl start mochimo.service
sudo reboot

11. (Optional) Log back into your VPS to validate the mochimo.service is running:

journalctl -u mochimo.service -f

Verifying Deployment

1. Verify the Service is running:

 ps -aux | grep /mochimo 

The output will list the mochimo service followed by a status.

../mochimo %STATUS% 

Status will start as 'quorum', then transition to 'tfval', and finally to 'Listen'.

In 'listen' mode (may take 10-15 minutes) the node is running and accessible for sending, receiving and relaying transactions.

2. Verify your IP address on the Mochimap:

Find your node on MochiMap.net, this is a good sign that it's operating correctly.
If you click your node on MochiMap, it will give you the apparent health status of your node.

3. Query the API and verify your server is peered.

Complete an API call (in this example we show the URL for the Mochimo Public API, but you can maintain your own - and we recommend that you do.) To query the network nodes browse to:
http://api.mochimo.org:8888/net/nodes
Your node's IP address should display in the list of "peers":[]