Node Configuration and Maintenance

Advanced Node Configuration

Without any additional arguments, the script installs the node in a most common configuration. But the script also enables various advanced options to be configured, via the command line prompts. Following is a list of advanced options and their usage:

• admin - Admin API will be enabled
• archival - disables database pruning and preserves the complete transaction history
• state-sync - if on state-sync for the C-Chain is used, if off it will use regular transaction replay to bootstrap; state-sync is much faster, but has no historical data
• db-dir - use to provide the full path to the location where the database will be stored
• fuji - node will connect to Fuji testnet instead of the Mainnet
• index - Index API will be enabled
• ip - use dynamic, static arguments, of enter a desired IP directly to be used as the public IP node will advertise to the network
• rpc - use any or local argument to select any or local network interface to be used to listen for RPC calls
• version - install a specific node version, instead of the latest. See here for usage.

note

Configuring the index and archival options on an existing node will require a fresh bootstrap to recreate the database.

Complete script usage can be displayed by entering:

./avalanchego-installer.sh --help

Unattended Installation

If you want to use the script in an automated environment where you cannot enter the data at the prompts you must provide at least the rpc and ip options. For example:

./avalanchego-installer.sh --ip 1.2.3.4 --rpc local

Usage Examples

• To run a Fuji node with indexing enabled and autodetected static IP:

  ./avalanchego-installer.sh --fuji --ip static --index

• To run an archival Mainnet node with dynamic IP and database located at /home/node/db:

  ./avalanchego-installer.sh --archival --ip dynamic --db-dir /home/node/db

• To use C-Chain state-sync to quickly bootstrap a Mainnet node, with dynamic IP and local RPC only:

  ./avalanchego-installer.sh --state-sync on --ip dynamic --rpc local

• To reinstall the node using node version 1.7.10 and use specific IP and local RPC only:

  ./avalanchego-installer.sh --reinstall --ip 1.2.3.4 --version v1.7.10 --rpc local

Node Configuration

The file that configures node operation is ~/.avalanchego/configs/node.json. You can edit it to add or change configuration options. The documentation of configuration options can be found here. Configuration may look like this:

{
  "public-ip-resolution-service": "opendns",
  "http-host": ""
}

Note that the configuration file needs to be a properly formatted JSON file, so switches should formatted differently than they would be for the command line. Therefore, don't enter options like --public-ip-resolution-service=opendns as shown in the example above.

The script also creates an empty C-Chain config file, located at ~/.avalanchego/configs/chains/C/config.json. By editing that file, you can configure the C-Chain, as described in detail here.

Using a Previous Version

The installer script can also be used to install a version of AvalancheGo other than the latest version.

To see a list of available versions for installation, run:

./avalanchego-installer.sh --list

It will print out a list, something like:

AvalancheGo installer
---------------------
Available versions:
v1.3.2
v1.3.1
v1.3.0
v1.2.4-arm-fix
v1.2.4
v1.2.3-signed
v1.2.3
v1.2.2
v1.2.1
v1.2.0

To install a specific version, run the script with --version followed by the tag of the version. For example:

./avalanchego-installer.sh --version v1.3.1

danger

Note that not all AvalancheGo versions are compatible. You should generally run the latest version. Running a version other than latest may lead to your node not working properly and, for validators, not receiving a staking reward.

Thanks to community member Jean Zundel for the inspiration and help implementing support for installing non-latest node versions.

Reinstall and Script Update

The installer script gets updated from time to time, with new features and capabilities added. To take advantage of new features or to recover from modifications that made the node fail, you may want to reinstall the node. To do that, fetch the latest version of the script from the web with:

wget -nd -m https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ava-labs/avalanche-docs/master/scripts/avalanchego-installer.sh

After the script has updated, run it again with the --reinstall config flag:

./avalanchego-installer.sh --reinstall

This will delete the existing service file, and run the installer from scratch, like it was started for the first time. Note that the database and NodeID will be left intact.

Removing the Node Installation

If you want to remove the node installation from the machine, you can run the script with the --remove option, like this:

./avalanchego-installer.sh --remove

This will remove the service, service definition file and node binaries. It will not remove the working directory, node ID definition or the node database. To remove those as well, you can type:

rm -rf ~/.avalanchego/

warning

Please note that this is irreversible and the database and node ID will be deleted!

What Next?

That's it, you're running an AvalancheGo node! Congratulations! Let us know you did it on our Twitter, Telegram or Reddit!

If you're on a residential network (dynamic IP), don't forget to set up port forwarding. If you're on a cloud service provider, you're good to go.

Now you can interact with your node, stake your tokens, or level up your installation by setting up node monitoring to get a better insight into what your node is doing. Also, you might want to use our Postman Collection to more easily issue commands to your node.

Finally, if you haven't already, it is a good idea to back up important files in case you ever need to restore your node to a different machine.

If you have any questions, or need help, feel free to contact us on our Discord server.