Contribute!

Want to add a feature to AutoNode? Feel free to contribute to the open-sourced repo here!

Step 1: Spin up your instance on AWS or other providers

It is recommended to go with Ubuntu 18+ or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8+ as your operating system.

Step 2: SSH into the machine

Step 2.5: (Optional) Create a new user

You can choose any <new-user-name> you want. The command below will ask for a passphrase for the user, choose one and keep track of this password for future use! The command below will also add the user to the sudo group for convenience.

new_user_name=<new-user-name>
sudo adduser $new_user_name

Answer the prompts, then execute:

sudo adduser $new_user_name sudo
sudo loginctl enable-linger $new_user_name

Next, if you wish to use the same SSH credentials as your current user to log into your new user, execute the following commands:

sudo mkdir -p /home/$new_user_name/.ssh
sudo cp ~/.ssh/authorized_keys /home/$new_user_name/.ssh/authorized_keys
sudo chown $new_user_name:$new_user_name /home/$new_user_name/.ssh/authorized_keys

Command above assumes you use the default home directory for your new user

Otherwise, you can create your own SSH key for your user following this documentation.

Lastly, exit your SSH session and re-SSH back into your machine under your new user. Your ssh command may look something like this:

ssh -i "key.pem" <new-user-name>@your-server.com

Alternatively, you can swap users when SSH-ed in as your default user with the following command:

su - <new-user-name>

If you choose to swap users, you must export 2 environment variables to install AutoNode. Do so with the following command:

export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR="/run/user/$UID"
export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS="unix:path=${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}/bus"

It may be convient to add this command to your ~/.bashrc profile.

Step 3: Install AutoNode

sudo access for your user is needed for installation.

install_file_source="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/harmony-one/auto-node/master/scripts/first-install.sh"
tmp_install_file="/tmp/autonode-first-install.$(date +'%s').sh"
curl -o "$tmp_install_file" "$install_file_source" && bash "$tmp_install_file" && rm -f "$tmp_install_file"

Make sure to answer the prompts!

Step 3.5: (Optional) Update your shell

You can reload your shell by exiting your SSH session and SSH-ing back into the machine, or you can execute the following command:

export PATH=$PATH:~/bin

This step is only needed if the command: auto-node does not work.

Step 4: Add or import a Validator Key

auto-node hmy keys add example-validator-wallet-name

auto-node hmy keys import-ks <path-to-keystore-file>

auto-node hmy keys import-private-key <private-key-string>

auto-node hmy keys list

Step 5: Run AutoNode & start your Validator

auto-node run --clean --fast-sync

auto-node run --clean --fast-sync --auto-active \
    --network testnet --beacon-endpoint https://api.s0.b.hmny.io/ --shard 0

Step 5.5: (Optional) Create your validator after the initial run

You can go through the create validator flow again by executing the following command:

auto-node create-validator

Note that this can only be done if you failed to create a validator on the inital run of auto-node

1. Sending a Collect Rewards Transaction

You can simply collect rewards for your validator with the following command:

auto-node collect-rewards

2. (Optional) Send funds to your 'main' wallet

If you have followed the recommended method of creating a wallet just for running a validator, you can send funds to your 'main' wallet with the following steps.

First, get the balance of your validator wallet with the following command:

auto-node balances

Note the shard 0 balance, this is where the rewards get deposited. Next, transfer the funds to your 'main' wallet with the following command:

validator_addr=$(auto-node config | jq '.["validator-addr"]' -r)
auto-node hmy transfer -n https://api.s0.t.hmny.io/ --from-shard 0 --to-shard 0 \
  --from $validator_addr --to <main-wallet-address> --amount <amount> --passphrase

Substitute <main-wallet-address> with the ONE address of your main wallet. Substitute <amount> with how much you want to transfer from your validator wallet.

Checking for AutoNode updates

AutoNode will quickly check for an update on each execution of the auto-node command. If there is an update you will see the following message:

Updating AutoNode

Step 0: (Optional) Stop Auto

Kill your AutoNode with the following command:

auto-node kill

Note that if you are still elected and signing, AutoNode will ask for you to confirm before killing your node.

Step 1: Start the update

You can start the update with the following command:

auto-node update

Note that AutoNode will check to make sure the harmony node is stopped. If it detects that the harmony node is still running, It will ask to kill itself before starting the update.

Step 2: Restart/Rerun your AutoNode

Make sure to restart your AutoNode after the update to resume validating or operations. For a validator, it will most likely be:

auto-node run

DO NOT restart AutoNode with the --clean or --fast-sync as it will probably regress your block hight (since it edits the DB files).

Updating hmy CLI

For your convenience, AutoNode wraps the hmy CLI. You can update it with the following command:

auto-node hmy-update

1) Harmony Monitor

View live updates (at 8 seconds intervals) of your node's status (block height, EPOS status, etc..) with the following command:

auto-node monitor log

2) TUI

View an overview of your validator and node with a text-based user interface. You can start it with the following command:

auto-node tui run

3) Harmony Node

You can view the status of the harmony node with the following command:

auto-node node status

You can also view the logs from the node as it was initialized with the following command:

auto-node node log

Extra

1. Restart monitor

Should the monitor crash or timeout, you can restart it with the following command:

auto-node monitor restart

2. Update TUI

You can update the TUI to the latest release with the following command:

auto-node tui update

Using wallet passphrase from file

We do not recommend storing your passphrase in plain text. If you choose to, you can have AutoNode import your wallets passphrase from a file. First, save the passphrase using the following convention:

Then, move the saved passphrase into the harmony wallet passphrase directory using the following command:

Then, when you run AutoNode with auto-node run it will automatically pick up the passphrase.

BLS key(s) location

You can find the path to your BLS keys directory (used by the harmony node) with the following command:

By default, this should be ~/.hmy/blskeys

BLS key for shard

You can find which shard a public BLS key belongs to with the following command:

Cleanse BLS key(s) from Validator

You can automatically cleanse your validator of BLS key(s) that have not signed any blocks in the current epoch with the following command:

You can cleanse all BLS key(s) that are not on the same shard as the BLS key(s) used by the current harmony node's shard with the following command:

You can also cleanse the BLS key(s) that are not being used by the current harmony node with the following command:

Remove BLS key from Validator

You can remove an explicit BLS key from your validator with the following command:

Edit Validator config

After your validator is created, you can edit your validator config with the following command:

This will open up a Nano session to edit the config. After you do your edits, save it by pressing Ctrl+X then Y.

After you finish editing, you will be asked to update the config on-chain. If you say yes, AutoNode will send an edit validator transaction to update your validator.

Deactivate Validator

You can deactivate your validator if you would like to not get elected the following epoch. You can do so with the following command:

Activate Validator

When you are ready to get elected and sign the following epoch, you can activate your validator with the following command:

Inspect the Harmon Node logs

Node logs are saved in the following directory: $HOME/harmony_node/latest

You can view the logs with the following command:

Inspect the Harmony Node service logs

Inspect the AutoNode monitor service logs

Similar to the Harmony Node, the monitor is ran as a service and you can inspect the logs for the service with the following command:

Inspect AutoNode logs

All AutoNode generated logs are saved in $HOME/.hmy when you execute the following command:

You should see 2 files, autonode_monitor.log and autonode_node.log. Inspect those two files with your favorite command-line editor (i.e: vim) to see where things might have gone wrong.

You might also find it useful to inspect the Harmony Node logs. You can do so with the following command:

You can change the vim part of the command for your favorite text editor.

Node failed to start

A symptom of this is seeing an error to connect to http://localhost:9500/. You can inspect what went wrong with the following command:

A common issue is that your machine will not have enough disk space. You can check your disk space usage with the following command:

If your use% is at 95-100% and your node failed to start, you probably have insufficient disk space. Look into how to increase your disk space on your cloud provider.

You can also try to reboot your AutoNode with:

Substitute <params> with whatever run params you want to use.

Fixing Signing Issues

Sometimes the Harmony Node may have some signing issues. In this case, we have found it best to just restart the Node. You can do so by first killing AutoNode:

Then restarting AutoNode with whatever your initial run command was. For example, one could run it with:

Restart the Harmony Node

You can restart the Harmony Node service with the following command:

You can check the status of the service with the following command:

You can fetch the Harmony Node version with the following command:

Restart the AutoNode Monitor

You can restart the monitor service with the following command:

You can check the status of the service with the following command:

Re-Authenticating your validator wallet

If your encrypted passphrase for your validator is ever invalidated, you can re-encrypt and save it with the following command:

Optimize Operating System

You can choose to optimize your operating system for running a harmony node. The optimizations, or tunes, are made to keep your node safe but also lifts some default restrictions. Here is the command to tune your OS with AutoNode:

This will tune the kernel and the --save option will make it persistant. If you do not have the --save option, the tunes will only last untill the system is rebooted (by you or your VPS). Note that all the tunes will be displayed and confirmation asked before applying the tunes.

You can also tune/optimize your network settings with the following command:

Restoring Operating System from Optimization

If you want to revert the optimization/tune applied by AutoNode, you can do so by running the following command:

Note that you can run the command muliple times to restore previous tunes chronologically. Moveover, the restored tunes will be displayed and a confirmation will be asked before applying the restoreation.

Fresh Install

First, remove all of the AutoNode files. You can do so with the following command:

After, you can re-install AutoNode from fresh using the steps in the Install & Run section.