Post Installation

At time of writing, the database is quite large (10GB+). In order to help your node catch up to speed it is recommended to download a fully synced database copy. Please refer to Where can I get a fully synced database to help kick start my node on how to get this done.

We can run a few checks to verify everything is running as expected. First, let’s use the systemctl utility to check status of iri (this is the main full node application)

Using the systemctl status iri we can see if the process is Active: active (running).

See examples in the chapters below:

Note

See Maintenance for additional information, for example checking logs and so on. Also, you can refer to Command Glossary for a quick over view of most common commands.

Warning

All web pages served by this installer will be served on HTTPS with self-signed certificates. The browser will issue a warning when you connect for the first time. You can proceed and accept the certificate as an exception. If you want valid certificates you can refer to serverHTTPS and look for the Let’s encrypt

link.

Controlling IRI

Check status:

systemctl status iri

Stop:

systemctl stop iri

Start:

systemctl start iri

Restart:

systemctl restart iri

Controlling IOTA Peer Manager

Check status:

systemctl status iota-pm

Stop:

systemctl stop iota-pm

Start:

systemctl start iota-pm

Restart:

systemctl restart iota-pm

Checking Ports

IRI uses 2 ports by default:

  1. TCP neighbor peering port
  2. TCP API port (this is where a light wallet would connect to or iota peer manageR)

You can check if IRI and iota-pm are “listening” on the ports if you run:

lsof -Pni|egrep "iri|iotapm".

Here is the output you should expect:

# lsof -Pni|egrep "iri|iotapm"
java     2297    iri   21u  IPv6  20334      0t0  TCP *:15600 (LISTEN)
java     2297    iri   32u  IPv6  20345      0t0  TCP 127.0.0.1:14265 (LISTEN)
node     2359 iotapm   12u  IPv4  21189      0t0  TCP 127.0.0.1:8011 (LISTEN)

What does this tell us?

  1. *:<port number> means this port is listening on all interfaces - from the example above we see that IRI is listening on port TCP no. 15600
  2. IRI is listening for API (or wallet connections) on a local interface (not accessible from “outside”) no. 14265
  3. Iota-PM is listening on local interface port no. 8011

Now we can tell new neighbors to connect to our IP address.

Here’s how to check your IP address:

If you have a static IP - which a VPS most probably has - you can view it by issuing a ip a. For example:

ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN qlen 1
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 8950 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP qlen 1000
    link/ether fa:16:3e:d6:6e:15 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 10.50.0.24/24 brd 10.50.0.255 scope global dynamic eth0
       valid_lft 83852sec preferred_lft 83852sec
    inet6 fe80::c5f4:d95b:ba52:865c/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

See the IP address on eth0? (10.50.0.24) this is the IP address of the server.

Yes - for those of you who’ve noticed, this example is a private address. But if you have a VPS you should have a public IP.

I could tell neighbors to connect to my tcp port: tcp://10.50.0.14:15600.

Note that the playbook installation automatically configured the firewall to allow connections to these ports. If you happen to change those, you will have to allow the new ports in the firewall (if you choose to do so, check google for iptables or firewalld commands).

Checking IRI Full Node Status

The tool curl can issue commands to the IRI API.

For example, we can run:

curl -s http://localhost:14265 -X POST -H 'X-IOTA-API-Version: someval' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"command": "getNodeInfo"}' | jq

The output you will see is JSON format. Using jq we can, for example, extract the fields of interest:

curl -s http://localhost:14265 -X POST -H 'X-IOTA-API-Version: someval' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"command": "getNodeInfo"}' | jq '.latestSolidSubtangleMilestoneIndex, .latestMilestoneIndex'

Note

If you’ve just started up your IRI node (or restarted) you will see a matching low number for both latestSolidSubtangleMilestoneIndex and latestMilestoneIndex. This is expected, and after a while (10-15 minutes) your node should start syncing (given that you have neighbors).

Connecting to IOTA Peer Manager

For IOTA Peer Manager, this installation has already configured it to be accessible via a webserver. See Peer Manager Behind WebServer with Password.

Adding or Removing Neighbors

In order to add neighbors you can either use the iota Peer Manager or the command-line.

To use the command line you can use the script nbctl that was shipped with this installation.

If you don’t have nbctl installed you can get it by running:

wget -O /usr/bin/nbctl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nuriel77/iri-playbook/master/roles/iri/files/nbctl && chmod +x /usr/bin/nbctl

nbctl script

You can run nbctl with -h to get help on all the options:

# nbctl -h
usage: nbctl [-h] [--neighbors NEIGHBORS] [--remove] [--add] [--list]
             [--file FILE] [--host HOST] [--api-version API_VERSION]

Add or remove full node neighbors.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --neighbors NEIGHBORS, -n NEIGHBORS
                        Neighbors to process. Can be specified multiple times.
  --remove, -r          Removes neighbors
  --add, -a             Add neighbors
  --list, -l            List neighbors
  --file FILE, -f FILE  Configuration file to update
  --host HOST, -i HOST  IRI API endpoint. Default: http://localhost:15265
  --api-version API_VERSION, -x API_VERSION
                        IRI API Version. Default: 1.4

Example: nbctl -a -n tcp://1.2.3.4:12345 -n tcp://4.3.2.1:4321 -f /etc/default/iri

The nice thing about nbctl is that it communicates with IRI to add/remove neighbors and also updates the configuration file.

Updating the configuration file is important - if you restart IRI it will start with the neighbors listed in the configuration file.

  • The script will connect by default to IRI API on http://localhost:14265.
  • If you need to connect to a different endpoint you can specify that using -i http://my-node-address:port.
  • nbctl also has the ability to configure the configuration file for you!

Listing Neigbors

If you want to list neighbors, simply run:

nbctl -l

To show only the addresses and ports, run:

nbctl -l | jq -r '.neighbors[] | "\(.address)/\(.connectionType)"'

Adding Neighbors

To add one or more neighbors use the -a option and specify the neighbors using -n neighbors-address, once or multiple times, e.g.:

nbctl -a -n tcp://1.2.3.4:12345 -n tcp://4.3.2.1:4321 -n tcp://[2a01:a0a0:c0c0:1234::1]:14600 -f /etc/default/iri

Note that the last options -f /etc/default/iri will also add the neighbors to the configuration file, but make sure you are pointing to the correct file. For example, in CentOS it is /etc/sysconfig/iri, on other guides it is locted in /home/iota/node/iota.ini!!!

In the example above note the IPv6 address: it is encapsulated in square brackets. This is the correct syntax for IPv6 addresses.

Removing Neighbors

To remove one or more neighbors use the -r option and specify the neighbors using -n neighbors-address, once or multiple times, e.g:

nbctl -r -n tcp://1.2.3.4:12345 -n tcp://4.3.2.1:4321 -f /etc/default/iri

Note that the last option -f /etc/default/iri will also add the neighbor(s) to the configuration file. Make sure you are pointing to the correct file. For example, in CentOS it is /etc/sysconfig/iri, on other guides it is located in /home/iota/node/iota.ini!!!

Using curl

If you don’t have nbctl script you can to run a curl command, e.g. to add:

curl -H 'X-IOTA-API-VERSION: 1.4' -d '{"command":"addNeighbors",
  "uris":["tcp://neighbor-ip:port", "tcp://neighbor-ip:port", "tcp://[2a01:a0a0:c0c0:1234::1]:14600"]}' http://localhost:14265

to remove:

curl -H 'X-IOTA-API-VERSION: 1.4' -d '{"command":"removeNeighbors",
  "uris":["tcp://neighbor-ip:port", "tcp://neighbor-ip:port"]}' http://localhost:14265

to list:

curl -H 'X-IOTA-API-VERSION: 1.4' -d '{"command":"getNeighbors"}' http://localhost:14265

Note

Adding or remove neighbors is done “on the fly” with curl, so you will also have to add (or remove) the neighbor(s) in the configuration file of IRI.

The reason to add it to the configuration file is that after a restart of IRI, any neighbors added with the peer manager will be gone.

On CentOS you can add neighbors to the file:

/etc/sysconfig/iri

On Ubuntu:

/etc/default/iri

Edit the IRI_NEIGHBORS="" value as shown in the comment in the file.

Note

See Using Nano to Edit Files for instructions on how to use nano for editing files.

Install IOTA Python libs

You can install the official iota.libs.py to use for various python scripting with IOTA and the iota-cli.

On Ubuntu:

apt-get install python-pip -y && pip install --upgrade pip && pip install pyota

You can test with the script that shipped with this installation (to reattach pending transactions):

reattach -h

On CentOS this is a little more complicated, and better install pyota in a “virtualenv”:

cd ~
yum install python-pip gcc python-devel -y
virtualenv venv
source ~/venv/bin/activate
pip install pip --upgrade
pip install pyota

Now you can test by running the reattach script as shown above.

Note

Note that if you log in back to your node you will have to run the source ~/venv/bin/activate to switch to the new python virtual environment.