bitcoind, c-lightning and RTL on centos 7 (walktrough)

[psycodad]

The whole nginx install and config is to be able to use a HTTPS certificate? I have not installed a node on a VPS, always in local networks that's why I ask, I just use the local IP.

Yes, that and you get the advantage of being able to restrict access further by ip-addresses (and more webserver config kung-fu if you like).
It's certainly not advisable but RTL can be exposed to the network in many easier ways (like a port redirector).

[mocacinno]

Just a minor issue, all the images in your guide are broken (maybe you removed them from your hosting server or changed their names/paths?)

Thanks for notifying me... It's quite odd tbh... The images themselves are still online, but for some strange reason bitcointalk's image proxy shows an error..

For example, the very first image is

Code:

https://mocacinno.com/hotlinkimages/bitcoind/1.png

Which works perfectly fine, unless you watch my post, then it shows an error

@psycodad: thanks for the feedback, it's great to hear the walktrough still works , i wrote it over 1,5 years ago, so it's always a big guess as to how long an extensive walktrough will continue to function.

I wanted to chip in into the discussion a couple of times over the last couple of days, but everytime i saw somebody else stepped in and gave a good answer to the questions that had been asked, so thanks for keeping the discussion alive guys 

[n0nce]

Hey @mocacinno, I was trying some stuff with your pictures; very weird that the image proxy has issues with them. However, I noticed we can index your webserver & see the contents, not sure if intended or not, but I personally prefer to disable this in most cases:
https://mocacinno.com/hotlinkimages/

EDIT: The issue is that your URLs lack https!

Example:

Code:

[img width=200]http://www.mocacinno.com/hotlinkimages/RTL/1.png[/img]

Code:

[img width=200]https://www.mocacinno.com/hotlinkimages/RTL/1.png[/img]

Broken:

Code:

[img]http://www.mocacinno.com/hotlinkimages/RTL/1.png[/img]
[img]http://www.mocacinno.com/hotlinkimages/RTL/2.png[/img]
[img]http://www.mocacinno.com/hotlinkimages/RTL/3.png[/img]
[img]http://www.mocacinno.com/hotlinkimages/RTL/4.png[/img]
[img]http://www.mocacinno.com/hotlinkimages/RTL/5.png[/img]

Fixed:

Code:

[img]https://www.mocacinno.com/hotlinkimages/RTL/1.png[/img]
[img]https://www.mocacinno.com/hotlinkimages/RTL/2.png[/img]
[img]https://www.mocacinno.com/hotlinkimages/RTL/3.png[/img]
[img]https://www.mocacinno.com/hotlinkimages/RTL/4.png[/img]
[img]https://www.mocacinno.com/hotlinkimages/RTL/5.png[/img]

My guess: Your webserver had no TLS certificate in 2020 but does now

Yup, looks to me like your certificate is new since 9/8/2021!

[mocacinno]

@n0nce: thanks, that was it... Fixed it now

[n0nce]

@n0nce: thanks, that was it... Fixed it now

Thank you for the guide! Looks way better now
I think my next setup will be based on something with systemd as well, so I will use this guide - already saw some things that seem like very good practices which I'm missing in my current setup.
Right now, I use AntiX (Debian) and while I find SysV init scripts cooler, it seems many more people use systemd and it has more abilities.

Just wondering: Why CentOS 7? I just checked Wikipedia and it says it will be discontinued end of year? Actually, there's CentOS 8 as latest version, so even 7 would be an old version now (while still maintained).

[psycodad]

Just wondering: Why CentOS 7? I just checked Wikipedia and it says it will be discontinued end of year? Actually, there's CentOS 8 as latest version, so even 7 would be an old version now (while still maintained).

That's not mocacinno's fault, when he wrote that walkthrough Centos 7 was still a thing with an EOL far in the future but Redhat (IBM) totally fucked this one up.
They saw Centos eating into their RHEL sales a lot and decided to move EOL for 7 and 8 forward quickly (8 EOLs end of this year). It will be replaced by Centos Stream which is unsuitable as a free replacement for RHEL in the enterprise landscape like Centos was as it seems to be a rolling version.

However the Centos community forked AlmaLinux which aims to replace Centos as free point release of the RHEL sources and so far it does a great job. Projects that build on Centos now mostly use AlmaLinux.
I would say most if not all of this walkthrough should work with AlmaLinux perfectly fine.

[n0nce]

Just wondering: Why CentOS 7? I just checked Wikipedia and it says it will be discontinued end of year? Actually, there's CentOS 8 as latest version, so even 7 would be an old version now (while still maintained).

That's not mocacinno's fault, when he wrote that walkthrough Centos 7 was still a thing with an EOL far in the future but Redhat (IBM) totally fucked this one up.
They saw Centos eating into their RHEL sales a lot and decided to move EOL for 7 and 8 forward quickly (8 EOLs end of this year). It will be replaced by Centos Stream which is unsuitable as a free replacement for RHEL in the enterprise landscape like Centos was as it seems to be a rolling version.

However the Centos community forked AlmaLinux which aims to replace Centos as free point release of the RHEL sources and so far it does a great job. Projects that build on Centos now mostly use AlmaLinux.
I would say most if not all of this walkthrough should work with AlmaLinux perfectly fine.

Oh right, I didn't check the topic creation's date! I'll see which distro to use, not sure yet Maybe plain Debian with systemd.

[mocacinno]

Currently, i'm usually going for either debian or openSuse. My daytime job centers around SLES, so i have a very reasonable amount of experience... If you pick either distro and run into problems: don't hesitate to post them. I cannot guarantee i'll be able to fix everything, but i'll certainly try to answer any question (unless somebody else beats me to the punch ).

The next time i have some spare resources to do a complete setup, i might consider doing a complete writeup using one of those two distro's.
The diff between a walktrough for centos and debian (or opensuse) should be minimal... Basically, just the way the prereqs are installed would differ since you wouldn't use yum, but apt (debian) or zypper (suse) or rpm (suse) instead. Maybe some extra prereqs, but all in all, the way you use git, add users, compile, setup systemd services,... isn't all that different between those 3 distro's (albeit, you probably won't be able to blindly copy/paste commands if you switch distro's).

If anybody wants a walktrough for debian or opensuse and has a VPS he/she isn't using for a while that can be scratched: if you have the resources, i can writeup a walktrough... I can't personally spare the resources right now (my dedicated boxes are basically overloaded as it is), but if you have them, i'm allways willing to help out

[n0nce]

Currently, i'm usually going for either debian or openSuse. My daytime job centers around SLES, so i have a very reasonable amount of experience... If you pick either distro and run into problems: don't hesitate to post them. I cannot guarantee i'll be able to fix everything, but i'll certainly try to answer any question (unless somebody else beats me to the punch ).

Cool, good to know! Maybe I will choose openSuse just because I haven't used it at all so far
I could write down all the steps as well and post it here; as you say it'll be mostly copy-paste anyway, just small differences.

In my experience, the only differences when following writeups for other distros were always package manager and how services are created to run and restart Bitcoin / Lightning / RTL.

[mocacinno]

--snip--
Cool, good to know! Maybe I will choose openSuse just because I haven't used it at all so far
I could write down all the steps as well and post it here; as you say it'll be mostly copy-paste anyway, just small differences.

In my experience, the only differences when following writeups for other distros were always package manager and how services are created to run and restart Bitcoin / Lightning / RTL.

Just a quick sidenode in case you want to try opensuse: they have 2 versions (leap and tumbleweed). I'd recommand Leap, since it's more stable with regular releases... Tumbleweed is also using rolling releases, i personally don't like to use it for systems that should be stable.

[n0nce]

Just a quick sidenode in case you want to try opensuse: they have 2 versions (leap and tumbleweed). I'd recommand Leap, since it's more stable with regular releases... Tumbleweed is also using rolling releases, i personally don't like to use it for systems that should be stable.

Thanks, I'm installing Leap right now

Not really OS related, but to be safe: I put my .bitcoin directory on the second hard drive of the machine.
I would then configure the service like this. It should recognise everything, correct?
Let's assume the HDD is mounted on /home/harddrive.

ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/bitcoind -daemon -conf=/home/bitcoin/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/bitcoind -daemon -conf=/home/harddrive/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf

And I'd change bitcoin.conf like this:

datadir=/home/bitcoin/.bitcoin/
datadir=/home/harddrive/.bitcoin

[mocacinno]

@n0nce: that looks correct to me