Follow these instructions at your own risk.
This guide is intended to take you from a fresh Ubuntu 20.04 installed on a Raspberry Pi 4 to working bee node.
This guide is written for bee 0.5.3, things are changing rapidly and this guide may not work for other versions.
This guide is for setting up and running a single node. If you want to run and manage more there are better approuchs than the steps outlined here, please look elsewhere for guides.
A single working Bee node using bee-clef using a local geth instance. Bee, bee-clef, and geth will all be running as services.
- Rasperry Pi 4 (I used a 4GB RAM version) running Ubuntu 20.04.
- SD Card
- External USB SSD (I used a Samsung T5 Portable 2TB)
- Using Hard Drives instead of SSDs. Hard Drives are not fast enough to keep up with even a single nodes load.
- Using an SD card instead of an SSD. SD cards will qucily fail under the load of a bee node as they are not designed for intensive writes.
The offical docs are here: https://docs.ethswarm.org/
If you need help ask in the #bee-support channel on the swarm discord.
goerli explorer: https://goerli.etherscan.io/
cashout troubleshooting guide: https://hackmd.io/95rvXRswSh-xm9Td_Xl2cg?view
Format dirve as ext 4. exfat does not support permisions.
Edit /etc/fstab and add a line for moutning the drive. TODO: better insturctions.
Reboot sudo reboot.
Verify drive is mounted:
run df -h and verfiy there is a line that ends with: /mnt/samsung01
Create folders for bee and geth:
cd /mnt/samsung01/
mkdir bee
sudo chown -R bee.bee bee
mkdir geth
sudo chown -R geth.geth geth
cd ~
Bee needs to interact with the ethereum blockchain for chasing out checks. geth provides a local interface to the blockchain. Alterantivly a public interface can be used. Please see for instructions on using a public interface. If using a public interface setting up geth can be skipped.
sudo useradd geth
sudo mkdir /home/geth
sudo chown geth.geth /home/geth
sudo -u geth -s
cd /home/geth
wget https://gethstore.blob.core.windows.net/builds/geth-linux-arm64-1.10.2-97d11b01.tar.gz
tar -xvf geth-linux-arm64-1.10.2-97d11b01.tar.gz
exit
sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/geth.service
[Unit]
Description=Ethereum go client
After=syslog.target network.target
RequiredBy=bee.service
[Service]
User=geth
Group=geth
Environment=HOME=/home/geth
Type=simple
ExecStart=/home/geth/geth --datadir /mnt/samsung01/geth/ --http --goerli --syncmode light
KillMode=process
KillSignal=SIGINT
TimeoutStopSec=90
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=10s
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
sudo systemctl enable geth
sudo systemctl start geth
Clef is a utility for mangaing ethereum wallets. The swarm team provides a version preconfigured to work with bee called bee-clef.
Download bee-clef: wget https://github.com/ethersphere/bee-clef/releases/download/v0.4.9/bee-clef_0.4.9_arm64.deb
And then install it: sudo dpkg -i bee-clef_0.4.9_arm64.deb
sudo systemctl enable bee-clef.service
sudo systemctl start bee-clef.service
verify bee-clef is running with: sudo systemctl status bee-clef.service
Backup the keys for your node by exporting them using bee-clef-keys. This create a key and a password file somewhere and give you a path to the files. These files contain a copy of the ethereum wallet that will be used by bee. Save them somewhere safe and not on this node! Note the key file is encrpyted using the password in the password file .
Once they have been backed up, delete the files from node using rm bee-clef-key*.json and bee-clef-password*.txt. The key is still stored safely within bee-clef, this just cleans up the exported copies to reduce the places they can be exposed.
Download bee: wget https://github.com/ethersphere/bee/releases/download/v0.5.3/bee_0.5.3_arm64.deb
And then install it: sudo dpkg -i bee_0.5.3_arm64.deb
There are a couple of options that need to be configured
Open bee's config file with nano: sudo nano /etc/bee/bee.yml
if you get "command nano not found" install nano with sudo apt install nano
Find and edit the following lines:
clef-signer-enable: true
clef-signer-endpoint: /var/lib/bee-clef/clef.ipc
data-dir: /mnt/samsung01/bee
swap-endpoint: http://localhost:8545
verbosity: debug
Some of these lines may start with #. If they do remove the # and following space from the start of the line.
When finished editing use ctrl + o to save the file and ctrl + x to exit nano.
sudo systemctl enable bee.service
sudo systemctl start bee.service
Find your node's ethereum address with: sudo journalctl -u bee -g "ethereum address"
Copy the address.
In the #faucet-request channel in the swarm discord type sprinkle <ethereum address>
start bee: sudo systemctl start bee.service
restart bee: sudo systemctl restart bee.service
stop bee: sudo systemctl stop bee.service
check the status of bee: sudo systemctl status bee.service
accessing the logs for bee: sudo journalctl -u bee -f
start bee-clef: sudo systemctl start bee-clef.service
restart bee-clef: sudo systemctl restart bee-clef.service
stop bee-clef: sudo systemctl stop bee-clef.service
check the status of bee-clef: sudo systemctl status bee-clef.service
start geth: sudo systemctl start geth.service
restart geth: sudo systemctl restart geth.service
stop geth: sudo systemctl stop geth.service
check the status of geth: sudo systemctl status geth.service
df -h
- using this guide with an x86 install of Ubuntu
- using this guide with raspbian or other raspberry pi operating systems.
- using this guide with debian or dervied operting systems.
If you find something wrong or want something added please open an issue or a pull request.