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Create Node Service(s)

Create or Debian service file

We are now ready to create our Tessellation service!

Instructions

Log into your node

From your local system, log into your cloud instance's terminal as nodeadmin using your Apple terminal, Window's PuTTY, or your terminal application of choice.

note

You can remind yourself how to access your VPS here for Macintosh or Windows.

Update node

Bring our Node up to date

sudo apt -y update && sudo apt -y upgrade

You will be prompted for your nodeadmin password.

warning

Your screen will not react and your password will not show as you type.
Reminder: [...] in the output command examples means that there is a bunch of output that has been redacted to eliminate confusion. 

[sudo] password for nodeadmin:
[...]

Create new bash script(s)

We are going to create our cn-nodel0 or cn-nodel1 Bash scripts first.

Once again we will using Nano editor.

NANO INSTRUCTIONS

How to use the nano text editor is out of scope of this document; however, you can read up on how to create, edit and save a document at this link: How to Use Nano, the Linux Command Line Text Editor

You can use whatever editor you want.

Nano Quick Notes
  • sudo nano cn-cnodel0 will start the editor
  • use your keyboard arrows to navigate (not your mouse)
  • ctrl-o or command-o (letter o) will save the contents of the file
  • give the file a name (cn-nodel0)
  • ctrl-x or command-x to exit the editor
sudo nano /usr/local/bin/cn-nodel0

Add the commands to read your cn-node file and start the layer0 or layer1 service

#!/bin/bash
. /usr/local/bin/cn-node
/usr/bin/java -jar '-Xms1024M' '-Xmx7G' '-Xss256K' /var/tessellation/cl-node.jar run-validator --seedlist /var/tessellation/seed-list & 
sudo nano /usr/local/bin/cn-nodel1

Add the commands to read your cn-node file and start the layer0 or layer1 service

#!/bin/bash
. /usr/local/bin/cn-node
/usr/bin/java -jar '-Xms1024M' '-Xmx3G' '-Xss256K' /var/tessellation/cl-dag-l1.jar run-validator --public-port 9010 --p2p-port 9011 --cli-port 9012 &
The above commands will:
  • Add our environment variables
  • Execute the command to startup our Constellation process on the Node.
  • Run in the background
OPTIONAL

The documentation creates environment variables to export for the tessellation process to read during the initialization process. This can be helpful in different circumstances. You may also apply these variables directly at the command line during execution.

--public-port
--p2p-port
--cli-port

Create service file(s)

Using our Nano editor. (You can use whatever editor you want.)

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/node_l0.service

You will be adding the following lines into our new service file.

[Unit]
Description=Constellation Node service Layer0
StartLimitBurst=50
StartLimitIntervalSec=0
[Service]
Type=forking
WorkingDirectory=/var/tessellation
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/cn-nodel0
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/node_l1.service

You will be adding the following lines into our new service file.

[Unit]
Description=Constellation Node service Layer1
StartLimitBurst=50
StartLimitIntervalSec=0
[Service]
Type=forking
WorkingDirectory=/var/tessellation
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/cn-nodel1
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Our service files are created, and we can exit Nano. (see quick ref above 👆)

QUICK UNDERSTANDING

Normally, we would want to enable the node_l0.service and node_l1.service to start automatically on boot. This would be done with the following command:

sudo systemctl enable node_l0
suod systemctl enable node_l1

HOWEVER this introduces a security vulnerability concerning our Validator Node.

In order to start the service properly, you will need to supply your p12 passphrase. Unless you have an automated process in place to fetch the passphrase securely via security focused external tool sets (out of scope of this document), your other alternative is to supply the passphrase in clear text. This is HIGHLY undesirable method. Your p12 passphrase is a gateway into our Crypto wallets, finances, your PRO Score, etc.

As an alternative we will not automatically start the service on system boot. We will add to our list of to-dos to manually start the process and supply the passphrase on each restart.

Constellation Network nodectl command line utility will ease this process as a better solution.

We will create a temporary environment variable prior to joining the network. The export we do below will only survive the current working session, and it will be lost after we log out. 

export CL_PASSWORD="place_your_passphrase_here"

We can now start our Node service.

sudo systemctl start node_l0
sudo systemctl start node_l1

Verification step: Let's see if our service started.

sudo systemctl is-active node_l0
sudo systemctl is-active node_l1

VERIFY that the output of the command above, is simply active.

active

Our Node should be started.

Our node should be ready to join the Hypergraph!

MULTIPLE METAGRAPHS

In the event that you would like to participate in multiple metagraphs, you can start a new java process separately for each metagraph process you have running on the Node.

You can also update the service file to include multiple commands to run on service start.

MULTIPLE METAGRAPHS

Make sure you VPS (or bare metal server) is properly sized to handle multiple metagraphs

SIZING

The vCPU, Memory, and HDD storage allocation is dependent on each specific metagraph. Consult with the metagraph operators/administrators for the specifications that meet the requirements for their individual metagraph.

This also pertains to the TCP ports each individual metagraph utilize. Obtaining the proper p2p-port can be dynamically acquired via a public-port API call.

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