Dogecoin Node, Raspberry Pi
Latest Update 17th October 2021
Step 1 Preparing the Pi
The Raspberry Pi foundation has made a great utility for flashing the operating system to SD cards. This tool can be found on their official site:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/
But before you just straight in some helpful tips you may not know:
Step (2) Power on your Pi and get your OS updated:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
select 'y' to accept the storage requirement.
Step (3) Installing Dogecoin
This used to take quite a long time but now has pre-built binaries available released by the dev team. The latest of which can be found here:
github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/releases
So we just download and use them.
But let me manage your expectations. The Raspberry Pi has an ARMv7 (or v8 for the Pi4) processor, so in a moment we'll select that package. In side this package among a few other tools is "dogecoind" (The node), and "dogecoin-cli" (The command line wallet) that is used to send commands to the node. Because ARM devices are single-board-computers and low powered graphically the decision has been made at some point to not include the dogecoin-GUI wallet with that package. It is still possible to build the GUI wallet from source on a Pi but is outside the scope of this short node guide.
So download the ARM package: (Note that when I'm writing this v1.14.4 is the latest. Check on the releases link above to see if there is a newer one there)
wget https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/releases/download/v1.14.4/dogecoin-1.14.4-arm-linux-gnueabihf.tar.gz
And unpack it with:
tar -zxvf dogecoin-1.14.4-arm-linux-gnueabihf.tar.gz
It gives a long directory name that is inconvenient to type loads later so we'll change it now:
mv ~/dogecoin-1.14.4 ~/dogecoin
And the old package can be deleted now we have everything out of it
rm dogecoin-1.14.4-arm-linux-gnueabihf.tar.gz
And that's it, ready to use
Step (3) Usage
To start the node use:
dogecoin/bin/dogecoind -daemon
And controlling the node is done with the dogecoin-cli. So to stop the node use:
dogecoin/bin/dogecoin-cli stop
For a full list of commands use:
dogecoin/bin/dogecoin-cli help
It should be that simple. For it's own security control of the node with the cli is only possible on it's own localhost (same device) as the same user. If you get errors regarding RPC permissions etc then use the command `top` which will show your task manager and show what user is in control of the process dogecoind. Only that user can send commands to dogecoind so watch out for that (like when you use sudo or something).
The blockchain will be stored at /home/${USER}/.dogecoin
Currently approx 50GB
Step (4) Security
Despite these next couple of suggestions I would never recommend storing any significant amount of dogecoin on this system. This brief how-to is focused on just running a node 24/7, which makes this device a bad choice to store any funds.
Some underlying defaults that can affect system security and it's best to harden some simple things. One is to disable root login by ssh by editing
sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
and changing
PermitRootLogin without-password
to
PermitRootLogin no
and add the line below to only allow ssh access to user 'pi' or whatever your username is.
AllowUsers pi
Save, ctrl+o, enter, exit ctrl+x
then reboot sshd by
sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart
That will prevent any user other than "pi" being able to log in remotely.
To further this a tool called "Fail2Ban" can be installed so repeat attempts for unauthorised login by and attacker are firewalled.
sudo apt install fail2ban
Also you should have already but in:
sudo raspi-config
and follow the top menu option to change the user password to something other than the default of "raspberry"
Step (5) Port forwarding
If you would like to help the network further you can allow other node users to sync their nodes blockchain from you. The more people that do this the stronger the network becomes.
If you choose to do this by forwarding port 22556 you must first ensure you have set a new Master password in the raspi-config settings menu!
Port forwarding is configured in your router settings and so will be different for each user.
Step 1 Preparing the Pi
The Raspberry Pi foundation has made a great utility for flashing the operating system to SD cards. This tool can be found on their official site:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/
But before you just straight in some helpful tips you may not know:
- Running any crypto node on MicroSD cards isn't great. They're not particularly fast by 2021's standards and have a finite life in terms of read/write cycles, which running a node has plenty of. In my experience a MicroSD card used in this way lasts a bit over 1 year, and they're cheap when budgets come into play.
But... Did you know that Raspberry Pi model 3 and above has the ability to boot from USB? YES! No MicroSD card required at all. Using their standard Raspberry Pi OS imaging software linked above you can select a USB HDD/SSD or NVMe drive to hold your system on. Combined with the Pi4's USB3 port and you get great speeds, reliability and much longer life. - A tip about that Raspberry Pi imager software, it has a hidden menu, and I know know why it's hidden because it's so useful.
Select the drive and OS you want to install, then press "CTRL+SHIFT+X", it will allow you to set the SSH password, WiFi, locale and other settings before you even power on your Pi! - However you do your storage you'll need enough space for the OS + 50GB for the blockchain which will only grow bigger.
Step (2) Power on your Pi and get your OS updated:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
select 'y' to accept the storage requirement.
Step (3) Installing Dogecoin
This used to take quite a long time but now has pre-built binaries available released by the dev team. The latest of which can be found here:
github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/releases
So we just download and use them.
But let me manage your expectations. The Raspberry Pi has an ARMv7 (or v8 for the Pi4) processor, so in a moment we'll select that package. In side this package among a few other tools is "dogecoind" (The node), and "dogecoin-cli" (The command line wallet) that is used to send commands to the node. Because ARM devices are single-board-computers and low powered graphically the decision has been made at some point to not include the dogecoin-GUI wallet with that package. It is still possible to build the GUI wallet from source on a Pi but is outside the scope of this short node guide.
So download the ARM package: (Note that when I'm writing this v1.14.4 is the latest. Check on the releases link above to see if there is a newer one there)
wget https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/releases/download/v1.14.4/dogecoin-1.14.4-arm-linux-gnueabihf.tar.gz
And unpack it with:
tar -zxvf dogecoin-1.14.4-arm-linux-gnueabihf.tar.gz
It gives a long directory name that is inconvenient to type loads later so we'll change it now:
mv ~/dogecoin-1.14.4 ~/dogecoin
And the old package can be deleted now we have everything out of it
rm dogecoin-1.14.4-arm-linux-gnueabihf.tar.gz
And that's it, ready to use
Step (3) Usage
To start the node use:
dogecoin/bin/dogecoind -daemon
And controlling the node is done with the dogecoin-cli. So to stop the node use:
dogecoin/bin/dogecoin-cli stop
For a full list of commands use:
dogecoin/bin/dogecoin-cli help
It should be that simple. For it's own security control of the node with the cli is only possible on it's own localhost (same device) as the same user. If you get errors regarding RPC permissions etc then use the command `top` which will show your task manager and show what user is in control of the process dogecoind. Only that user can send commands to dogecoind so watch out for that (like when you use sudo or something).
The blockchain will be stored at /home/${USER}/.dogecoin
Currently approx 50GB
Step (4) Security
Despite these next couple of suggestions I would never recommend storing any significant amount of dogecoin on this system. This brief how-to is focused on just running a node 24/7, which makes this device a bad choice to store any funds.
Some underlying defaults that can affect system security and it's best to harden some simple things. One is to disable root login by ssh by editing
sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
and changing
PermitRootLogin without-password
to
PermitRootLogin no
and add the line below to only allow ssh access to user 'pi' or whatever your username is.
AllowUsers pi
Save, ctrl+o, enter, exit ctrl+x
then reboot sshd by
sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart
That will prevent any user other than "pi" being able to log in remotely.
To further this a tool called "Fail2Ban" can be installed so repeat attempts for unauthorised login by and attacker are firewalled.
sudo apt install fail2ban
Also you should have already but in:
sudo raspi-config
and follow the top menu option to change the user password to something other than the default of "raspberry"
Step (5) Port forwarding
If you would like to help the network further you can allow other node users to sync their nodes blockchain from you. The more people that do this the stronger the network becomes.
If you choose to do this by forwarding port 22556 you must first ensure you have set a new Master password in the raspi-config settings menu!
Port forwarding is configured in your router settings and so will be different for each user.
