#Starting a Relay

Setting up the new ARK Core has never been easier! If you want to have your own instance up and running, this guide will help you set one up in a few minutes with some basic Linux knowledge.

This guide is structured in a few sections:

• 1. A Guide For Setting Up Relay Node — this is a more in depth step by step guide that covers all aspects of setting up a Relay Node.
• 2. Configuring And Starting the Forging Process — those who want to be delegates will need to configure and start a separate Forger process in order to be able to confirm new blocks to run an active delegate.
• 3. Making A Snapshot — snapshot functionality makes a backup of the current DB state so you can recover from it and get synced in no time. This should be done regularly in case you need to recover due to any unforeseen circumstance or to get you up and running quickly on additional servers.
• 4. Restoring From Snapshot — process for restoring from a previously made snapshot.
• 5. Rollback Blockchain — if you want to rollback your blockchain to some previous state (eg. you forked or are testing something).
• 6. Copying Snapshots Between Servers — if you want to move a snapshot to a different server, either as independent backup or get your second node up and running quickly.

#Step 1: Provision a Linux Server

With each provider, the setup process for creating a new virtual server is going to be different. You can choose one of the listed providers below, or use another VPS provider of your own choosing. You will need to follow the providers instructions to create the server instance.

• AWS
• Digital Ocean
• Google Cloud
• Linode
• Microsoft Azure
• OVH
• Vultr

#Step 2: Connect to Your Server

After creating a server, you need to connect to it. Your provider should have given you an IP address, username, and password to connect to your new server.

This information can usually be found somewhere in your provider’s dashboard for your new server or be sent to your email.

Do note that your IP and default SSH port (default is 22, can be something else) are assigned by your provider and can vary depending on who you use.

Depending on your operating system you will connect to your server in different ways. Windows users will want to use something like PuTTy or the newer Windows Subsystem for Linux . When using the WSL, the Linux part of this guide should be relevant.

Windows

Open PuTTy and place the IP address given to you by your provider in the Host Name field as shown below. You should probably save this host, so you don’t have to enter it every time.

MacOS / Linux

Open up a new terminal window and type in the following to connect to your new server via SSH (replace user and IP address with the one provided by the hosting provider).

1ssh user@ipaddress

When first connecting to your new server, you will be asked to cache the servers host key and validate the RSA fingerprint, click yes. If this message appears after you have already configured your server, take precautions, it might have been compromised.

1The authenticity of host '{SERVER_IP}' can't be established.
2ECDSA key fingerprint is SHA256:kgjgjfihut985ht984754643354+hrQ.
3Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? y

When prompted, use the password given to you by your hosting provider. Some providers will require you to set up a root password when creating the VM, while others may give you a temporary password.

#Step 3: Create a user

Executing this guide as the root user should be avoided. Instead, create a new dedicated user to manage ARK related software. On your server, type the following into the command line and press enter. username is the name you want to log in with with. We’ll illustrate it as adduser ark to create a user by the name of ‘ark’, but you can chose something else, if preferred.

1sudo adduser <username> //in our example we'll create user by the name of 'ark' so we'll replace <username> with ark and run:
2sudo adduser ark

You will need to enter a user password and confirm it by entering the same password again. After that, you will be prompted to enter in the user’s full name and some other information. Feel free to leave them all blank, as they are optional, by pressing ‘enter’. When prompted to confirm, type ‘Y’ and press ‘enter’ to finish.

 1Adding user 'ark' ...
 2Adding new group 'ark' (1000) ...
 3Adding new user 'ark' (1000) with group 'ark' ...
 4Creating home directory '/home/ark' ...
 5Copying files from '/etc/skel' ...
 6Enter new UNIX password:
 7Retype new UNIX password:
 8passwd: password updated successfully
 9Changing the user information for ark
10Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
11    Full Name []:
12    Room Number []:
13    Work Phone []:
14    Home Phone []:
15    Other []:
16Is the information correct? [Y/n] Y

#Step 4: Granting sudo privileges

Next, we need to make sure that our user has all of the necessary privileges for it to run ARK Core properly. Type the command below into your command line and press ‘enter’. In this example, ark is the name of the new account you created, but it can be a different user name depending on what you chose in previous step. This will give our user sudo privileges.

1sudo usermod -a -G sudo ark

#Step 5: Installing ARK Core

We’re now ready to begin installing Ark. The initial install may take a while, and at times, appear to not be doing anything. Please be patient and let the process finish.

#Step 6: Switch to the ARK user

While installing Ark Core, we should use the ark user that we created above and go to the base directory. To switch to it (again, it can be different than ark depending on your choice of user names in first step where we created the new user), run:

1sudo su - ark

#Step 7: Running ARK Core installation script

Installing ARK Core is a straightforward process. We will use the ARK installer script that will install all of the necessary dependencies and ARK Core onto your server, and publish configuration files for it. To install, run this command (copy and paste it, this is a one line command):

1sudo apt-get install curl
2 
3bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ArkEcosystem/core/master/install.sh)

You will be asked to input your current users password for sudo privileges:

1[sudo] password for ark: <input your password for user you created>

Write or paste it and press enter to start installation process.

The install process might take a while, don’t interrupt it, wait for it to finish.

#Step 8: Selecting ARK Core network

Once the installation of dependencies and ARK Core is finished you will need to select which network you wish to operate on. This can be achieved by pressing up or down arrow keys and confirming selection with enter.

Mainnet is the public network, Devnet is the development network for testing, and Testnet is our private testing network.

1? What network do you want to operate on? › - Use arrow-keys. Return to submit.
2    devnet
3❯   mainnet
4    testnet

After you have made your selection, you will need to confirm by pressing y and confirm again with enter

1? Can you confirm? › (y/N)

With that we have successfully installed ARK Core and published our configuration options.

#Step 9: Configuring ARK Core database

The last step of the required ARK Core configuration is to configure the database parameters. You will be presented with a prompt:

1Would you like to configure the database? [y/N]:

Press y and confirm with enter.

Input the database credentials of your choosing.

1Enter the database username: ark
2Enter the database password: password
3Enter the database name: <network_name> # your chosen network name

This will create a PostgreSQL role and database to be used for storing blockchain data. That’s it, you are all set!

#Step 10: Starting ARK Relay process

NOTE: if you are going to operate on Devnet, before you start relay you will need to run this command to switch NPM channels to latest release (do not run this on Mainnet):

1# only run these on Devnet, before starting the relay process with 'ark relay:start'
2# !!! DO NOT RUN THESE ON MAINNET !!!
3ark config:cli --channel=next
4rm -rf ~/.config/ark-core/ && ark config:publish --network=devnet --reset

1ark config:cli --channel=next

To start the ARK relay process, and with it the synchronization process with the ARK blockchain, we need to start the relay process with our integrated CLI:

1ark relay:start

When the process has started you will get a message:

1Starting ark-relay... done

#Step 11: Checking that Everything is Working

Now we want to see if the ARK Relay process has started the synchronization process. You can do that by running one of these two commands:

1ark relay:log
2// OR RUN
3pm2 logs

If the process has started, you will see a lot of messages like this, with actual data.

1[YYYY-DD-MM hh:mm:ss][DEBUG]: Delegate <delegate name> (<public key>) allowed to forge block <#> 👍

Note that depending on the network you use, synchronization of the blockchain can take upwards of 10 hours (on Public Network).

Once the syncing finishes you will see messages ‘Delegate allowed to forge’ about every 8 seconds. You can always check the current height of the blockchain on our Explorer .