Getting started

This tutorial is fully covered in the video shown above.

In this tutorial you will learn how to setup:

• A full factomd node with a wallet daemon

• Factom-cli

• Docker

You need these to be able to get started with interacting with the Factom Blockchain. This tutorial is relevant for both mainnet and testnet and assumes that you've already setup an updated latest LTS version of Ubuntu. Minimum specifications for a node is listed below.

Minimum system requirements

• A modern CPU

• 16 GB RAM

• At least 50 GB storage

• 20 Mbit/s synchronous

• Up to 1TB / month data transfer

• Static IP-address

The specifications are subject to change at any time as the network matures.

Setting up a factomd node

Setting up a factomd node is very easy, download the latest release by running the following:

wget https://github.com/FactomProject/distribution/releases/download/v6.5.0/factom-amd64.deb

The version in the above command may be outdated, be sure to check what the latest release is.

After the download is finished, install the package:

sudo dpkg -i factom-amd64.deb

Once installation is complete you have access to the Factom daemon, wallet daemon and the Factom CLI.

To start the Factom daemon simply run:

factomd

You also have access to the wallet daemon and CLI tools:

factom-walletd
factom-cli

The Docker way

You can use the above deb package to interact with the protocol and complete the tutorial, but as an ANO your Factom daemon will run within a Docker container. Install Docker by following the official Docker guides. Make sure to allow your non-root user to use Docker:

sudo usermod -aG docker <username>

Create the Factomd volumes:

docker volume create factom_keys
docker volume create factom_database

Place the factomd.conf in the correct folder:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FactomProject/factomd/master/factomd.conf
sudo cp factomd.conf /var/lib/docker/volumes/factom_keys/_data/factomd.conf

Run factomd in Docker:

docker run -d --name "factomd" -v "factom_database:/root/.factom/m2" -v "factom_keys:/root/.factom/private" -p "8088:8088" -p "8090:8090" -p "8108:8108" -l "name=factomd" factominc/factomd:v6.5.0-alpine -startdelay=600 -faulttimeout=120 -config=/root/.factom/private/factomd.conf

The version in the above command may be outdated, be sure to check what the latest release is.

Setting up the wallet daemon

Now we want a wallet daemon running. You can easily just run factom-walletd above, but you might want to run it as a system service:

/etc/systemd/system/factom-walletd.service

[Unit]
Description=Run the Factom Wallet service
Documentation=https://github.com/FactomProject/factom-walletd
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=<username>
Group=<username>
EnvironmentFile=-/etc/default/factom-walletd
ExecStart=/usr/bin/factom-walletd $FACTOM_WALLETD_OPTS
KillMode=control-group
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable factom-walletd
sudo systemctl start factom-walletd

Congratulations, you now have a basic Factom daemon running in a docker container. You should be able to use this to complete the rest of the tutorial.