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Run an Avalanche Node Manually

The quickest way to learn about Avalanche is to run a node and interact with the network.

In this tutorial, we will:

  • Install AvalancheGo and run an Avalanche node
  • Connect to Avalanche
Other Options

  • To use a third-party service to host your node or run a validator, see here for dedicated tutorials.

  • If you're just interested in setting up a node for staking, it's recommended to follow the AvalancheGo Install Script tutorial.

Hardware and OS Requirements​

Avalanche is an incredibly lightweight protocol, so nodes can run on commodity hardware. Note that as network usage increases, hardware requirements may change.

  • CPU: Equivalent of 8 AWS vCPU
  • RAM: 16 GiB
  • Storage: 1 TiB SSD
  • OS: Ubuntu 20.04 or MacOS >= 12
caution

Please do not try running a node on an HDD, as you may get poor and random read/write latencies, therefore reducing performance and reliability.

Run an Avalanche Node from Source​

The following steps walk through downloading the AvalancheGo source code and locally building the binary program.

Install Dependencies​

Build and Start​

1. Set the $GOPATH​

2. Create a directory in your $GOPATH​

mkdir -p $GOPATH/src/github.com/ava-labs

3. Clone AvalancheGo​

In the $GOPATH, clone AvalancheGo, the consensus engine and node implementation that is the core of the Avalanche Network.

cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/ava-labs
git clone https://github.com/ava-labs/avalanchego.git

4. Run the Build Script​

From the avalanchego directory, run the build script

cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/ava-labs/avalanchego
./scripts/build.sh

5. Start the Node​

On Avalanche Mainnet:

cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/ava-labs/avalanchego
./build/avalanchego

On Fuji Testnet:

cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/ava-labs/avalanchego
./build/avalanchego --network-id=fuji
info

To kill the node, press Ctrl + C.

Run with a Pre-Built Binary​

To download a pre-built binary instead of building from source, go to the AvalancheGo releases page, and select the desired version.

Download​

Under Assets, select the appropriate file.

MacOS​

Download: avalanchego-macos-<VERSION>.zip

Unzip:

unzip avalanchego-macos-<VERSION>.zip

the resulting folder, avalanchego-<VERSION>, contains the binaries.

Linux(PCs or Cloud Providers)​

Download: avalanchego-linux-amd64-<VERSION>.tar.gz

Unzip:

tar -xvf avalanchego-linux-amd64-<VERSION>.tar.gz

The resulting folder, avalanchego-<VERSION>-linux, contains the binaries.

Linux(Arm64)​

Download: avalanchego-linux-arm64-<VERSION>.tar.gz

Unzip:

tar -xvf avalanchego-linux-arm64-<VERSION>.tar.gz

The resulting folder, avalanchego-<VERSION>-linux, contains the binaries.

Start the Node​

MacOS​

Avalanche Mainnet:

./avalanchego-<VERSION>/build/avalanchego

Fuji Testnet:

./avalanchego-<VERSION>/build/avalanchego --network-id=fuji

Linux​

Avalanche Mainnet:

./avalanchego-<VERSION>-linux/avalanchego

Fuji Testnet:

./avalanchego-<VERSION>-linux/avalanchego --network-id=fuji

Run with Docker​

See the AvalancheGo GitHub repository for more information.

Networking​

To run successfully, AvalancheGo needs to accept connections from the Internet on the network port 9651. Before you proceed with the installation, you need to determine the networking environment your node will run in.

Running on a Cloud Provider

If your node is running on a cloud provider computer instance, it will have a static IP. Find out what that static IP is, or set it up if you didn't already.

Running on a Home Connection

If you're running a node on a computer that is on a residential internet connection, you have a dynamic IP; that is, your IP will change periodically. For the sake of demonstration, you can ignore the following information. Otherwise, you will need to set up inbound port forwarding of port 9651 from the internet to the computer the node is installed on.

As there are too many models and router configurations, we cannot provide instructions on what exactly to do, but there are online guides to be found (like this, or this ), and your service provider support might help too.

warning

Please note that a fully connected Avalanche node maintains and communicates over a couple of thousand of live TCP connections. For some low-powered and older home routers that might be too much to handle. If that is the case you may experience lagging on other computers connected to the same router, node getting benched, failing to sync and similar issues.

info

To be able to make API calls to your node from other machines, include the argument --http-host= when starting the node.

Bootstrapping​

A new node needs to catch up to the latest network state before it can participate in consensus and serve API calls. This process (called bootstrapping) currently takes several days for a new node connected to Mainnet, and a day or so for a new node connected to Fuji Testnet. When a given chain is done bootstrapping, it will print logs like this:

[09-09|17:01:45.295] INFO <C Chain> snowman/transitive.go:392 consensus starting {"lastAcceptedBlock": "2qaFwDJtmCCbMKP4jRpJwH8EFws82Q2yC1HhWgAiy3tGrpGFeb"}
[09-09|17:01:46.199] INFO <P Chain> snowman/transitive.go:392 consensus starting {"lastAcceptedBlock": "2ofmPJuWZbdroCPEMv6aHGvZ45oa8SBp2reEm9gNxvFjnfSGFP"}
[09-09|17:01:51.628] INFO <X Chain> snowman/transitive.go:334 consensus starting {"lenFrontier": 1}

Check Bootstrapping Progress​

To check if a given chain is done bootstrapping, in another terminal window call info.isBootstrapped by copying and pasting the following command:

curl -X POST --data '{
    "jsonrpc":"2.0",
    "id"     :1,
    "method" :"info.isBootstrapped",
    "params": {
        "chain":"X"
    }
}' -H 'content-type:application/json;' 127.0.0.1:9650/ext/info

If this returns true, the chain is bootstrapped; otherwise, it returns false. If you make other API calls to a chain that is not done bootstrapping, it will return API call rejected because chain is not done bootstrapping. If you are still experiencing issues please contact us on Discord.

note

The 3 chains will bootstrap in the following order: P-chain, X-chain, C-chain.

Learn more about bootstrapping here.

RPC​

When finished bootstrapping, the X, P, and C-Chain RPC endpoints will be:

localhost:9650/ext/bc/P
localhost:9650/ext/bc/X
localhost:9650/ext/bc/C/rpc

if run locally, or

XXX.XX.XX.XXX:9650/ext/bc/P
XXX.XX.XX.XXX:9650/ext/bc/X
XXX.XX.XX.XXX:9650/ext/bc/C/rpc

if run on a cloud provider. The “XXX.XX.XX.XXX" should be replaced with the public IP of your EC2 instance.

For more information on the requests available at these endpoints, please see the AvalancheGo API Reference documentation.

Going Further​

Your Avalanche node will perform consensus on its own, but it is not yet a validator on the network. This means that the rest of the network will not query your node when sampling the network during consensus. If you want to add your node as a validator, check out Add a Validator to take it a step further.

Also check out the Maintain section to learn about how to maintain and customize your node to fit your needs.

To track a Subnet with your node, head to the Subnet Node tutorial.

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