No big hoops needed Internet provider wise :)
I have hardware that could run a witness node in the very room I'm sitting in, I just want someone to hold my hand to help me set it up step by step, because, while I am computer literate - I am not a system administrator - and I'm scared of fucking it up.
If anyone wants to help, feel free to message me :P
I think @therealwolf has something for you there.
Although it might just me witness related and not about nodes, can't recall.
I've looked at someguy's witness node in a box before (the dockerised version), but my brain cannot fathom many of the concepts - because, I am not a sys admin :P
If we have a shell script that lets anyone deploy a witness node, given an operating system and a hardware requirement - and clear instructions on what needs to be added to the config, then we would probably see a lot more witness nodes up and running.
For me, that's the dream state for hive :)
Turn on a computer, run a script. Put in your priv key for declaring you're a witness, wait for the chain to sync, and presto, go and campaign for some votes based on your reptuation / history around the place (and your ability to feed the server power, data, and care over an extended period)
I guess it would be good for people who want to run a witness node to have some level of sys admin knowledge and some technical understanding of the workings of the chain. Doesn't have to be deep but some level of understanding will really help the decentralization. If it's just a matter of "set it and forget it", then during difficult periods there is a much higher likelihood of all those nodes going down (or worse, to be tricked, infiltrated or co-opted). The witness node operator also has to review proposed updates to the chain and implement them if deemed desirable. Imagine hundreds of witnesses who blindly implement updates - that can be very problematic.
I don't think every witness has to be a sys admin and a developer, but a conceptual understanding of things and being able to operate the node on their own would be highly beneficial to the network's resilience.
Anyways, there is a step-by-step guide on setting up a witness node, if you'd like to give it a try: https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/devportal/-/blob/develop/_nodeop/witness-node.md We can help if you get stuck on any point, and the guide can be improved accordingly, so that it becomes cleaner for others. If you also have questions about any of this, I and others would be happy to chime in. Better to do it on-chain than in messages so that it would be available to others.
I've self-hosted my own wordpress site at home, exposed to the Internet, without issue; so I know a little more than someone who will just run a shell script and press update every single time :P
I saw many of the hardforks through steem's early times, and also, of course, the one that led to hive.
I might have some time later this week. I have an unraid machine with 128GB of RAM, 10C, 20T processor, but my limiting factor might be the fact that I only have ~2TB SSD space on it.
Plenty of space for spinning rust though, and plenty of space free. I feel like that will be the biggest bottleneck. My intent would be to run the witness node in a VM, to ensure it is isolated from other processes on the machine, with no access to my local network.
Sounds good. :) Your machine should be more than sufficient. For a witness node, you currently need something like 600GB. The most recommended storage is NVMe but I'm sure your SSD will work just fine, and you can put the shared memory in RAM.
And now I am stuck. I cannot get the CLI_Wallet instance to run, even while running the local hived instance after creating a config.ini. It appears the block log is syncing, albeit it very slowly - does it need to be fully synced before the CLI_Wallet can be used to generate the brainkey for the witness node?
Edit: 2 hours later :D
Nevermind, I figured that out myself, only took two hours of poking around. The config.ini in the same dir as the
hivedapplication was not being used, instead it was a different directory in my config file.I have now got the cli wallet appearing to operaating. The chain is syncing and that will take some time, so I am waiting (probably a few days) for that occur before I can likely do anything else, correct?
Yes, your node first has to reach the present time so it can start validating blocks in real-time. I recommend waiting for a bit after that to make sure everything is working correctly, setting your price feed, and then activating your witness.
The initial sync might take some time. But this made me think of some possible improvement there, so I opened this issue for it: https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hive/-/issues/793
Oh, it is NVME :) I will give it a shot in the coming days and see how I go.
Seems to be going fine so far, up to the build step of the above tutorial