Setting up a seed node.


Transcript

00:00     In this video, we will be setting up our seed node. The seed node is essential to start our blockchain. Without it, we would not be able to allow others to mine our coin. We need to setup the seed node on a virtual server, keeping it running 24/7.

00:30     As we have already created a virtual server for our QT, we now need to transfer our current wallet to the server. To do that, we need to go through GitHub.

Let's begin.

00:46     Open the master folder in the terminal and launch the QT. When the QT opens, you will notice the sync bar says ''No block source available''. We have not mined a single block yet, so there is no blockchain to sync. On the right, you will see that we have no active connections to the network. This is why we need our peer node. Once it is up and running, we will have 1 active connection. Our first peer. Let's exit the QT and prepare to set up our peer node.

01:26     What we need to do is locate the binary files for the wallet. These can be found inside the master folder. They were created when we compiled for the final time.

01:38     Run a search for ''visionX-qt''. This is our main wallet. We are going to copy this and create a new folder for it, in the desktop. We will name this folder Linux. Paste the QT inside the new folder, and return to the search bar.

02:12     We now want to find the file named ''visionXd''.  This is our daemon. It is essential to our blockchain. The daemon is a program that runs continuously and exists for the purpose of handling periodic service requests. Such as transactions, peers, data requests etc. Once this has been found, copy it into our Linux file on the Desktop.

02:43     Then return to the search. Now we want to find the file named ''visionX-tx''.  Copy and paste that into the Linux file too.

02:57     We just need one more file. This one is named ''visionX-cli''. We need this to be able to speak to our QT in the terminal. Now we can examine the files. Currently all these files are too big to be pushed to GitHub. If you right click and open Properties on each file, you will see the file sizes. You can see the daemon is far too big, it will not be accepted on GitHub. The QT is also too large right now. The 'cli' and the 'tx' files are quite small. We need to reduce the file sizes.

03:45     To do this, we will strip them to remove anything that is not being used. Let's open the file named Linux in a new terminal. Type the command ''strip visionX-qt'' and hit enter. Then do the same for the other 3 files inside the folder.

04:17     Once done, we will examine the files again. And see their new file sizes. Let's look at the 'cli'. Before we stripped it, its size was 7.4MB. It is now significantly smaller. Our QT size was a huge 173MB. And now it is just 10.9MB.

04:45     Returning to the Desktop, we are now going to compress our folder. Right click and choose compress. We will be compressing it to a tar.gz file. We will keep the name Linux. Click create, and then close.

05:04     Now our file is ready for GitHub. If you haven't already signed up for a free GitHub account, you should pause the video now and do it.

05:15     We are going to navigate to the plus sign, in the top right corner of your screen. Choose ''New repository''. Then choose a name for your repository. Usually this is the name of your cryptocurrency, but in this case, I will use Tutorial.

05:39     There is an option to write a description for your repo. I will just write anything to show you what it looks like. Then scroll down and you will see one more option. ''Initialize this repository with a README''. We must click on this box, then click CREATE.

06:05     Now you can see we have a new repo. This includes a README file. You can edit this file to show information about your repository. You would right info in here, detailing your coins use-case.

06:17     We are now going to add our Linux folder as a new release. Click on the tab named ''releases''. Hit ''Create a new release''. Now we need to create a version number for the release. Our wallet is version 1.0, so we will make our release tag 'v1.0'. For the release name, we would normally put our coin name such as; ''VisionX v1.0''. However, as I do not wish others to think the Tutorial  coin is a true release, I will name it ''Tutorial Release'' and mark it as a pre-release.

07:03     Anyone seeing this now, will not bother to mine as they will think it has no value. Be careful when releasing your QT or binary files. You should only release it when you are ready for others to mine your coin. There are people out there waiting for new releases. I would suggest paying for the premium subscription on GitHub. It cost just $7 per month. That way you can make your files private during this process, and open them to the public when you are ready. We will talk more about this later on.

07:40     Now click here, where it says ''attach binaries''. And choose your file named ''Linux.tar.gz''. Click 'open' and wait for the file to be uploaded. When it has finished, go to the bottom and click on 'Publish release'.

08:00     We have now created a new release with our Linux QT. At this point, anyone could download our wallet and mine. But we don't want anyone to do that until we have our peer online.

08:15     We now need to go to our virtual server. Here we can add a label for our server. This is so we can remember what is on it. We will call this ''Seed 1''. We are then going to open a new terminal in our Ubuntu virtual machine. Then SSH into this server.

08:38     We will need to install our SSH client before we can do this. We will need to post these commands into our terminal. As I have already done this, I will not be hitting enter for this one. I will speed up the video for this part.

09:00     Once you have installed the SSH client, close the terminal. Return to your server details. Here we can see our IP address, our username and our password. We will need all these to enter the server through SSH. Copy the IP address and open a new terminal.

09:22     We are going to type ''ssh root@" and paste our IP address. Now enter. We need to copy and paste the password into the terminal. Once we hit enter again, we will be inside our server. If we type ''ls'', we can see that the server is clean.

09:54     In order to run our QT on this server, we must install the dependencies. We do this using the Reden docs, just like in our past video. I will speed this up to save time. If you don't remember how to install the dependencies, revert back to the video named ''Setting up our environment''.

10:18     With our dependencies installed, we are going to head back to our release on GitHub. Copy everything from the tool bar. This will be our path to the release. Back in our terminal, type ''clear''. Then to get our QT from GitHub, we will type ''wget'', then paste our path into the command. Then replace the word ''tag'' for ''download''.  And at the end type, ''/Linux.tar.gz'' as this is the name of the file containing the QT. Press enter.

11:16     You can now see our file is being imported into our server. With that done, type ''ls''. You can see we have the tar.gz file. We now need to extract it using the following command. ''tar xzvf'' and copy and paste the file name. Press Enter.

11:55     Typing ''ls'' again will show our Linux folder that has been extracted. Let's navigate into that folder. Type ''cd Linux'', then ''ls'' to see the contents of the folder. We can now see our 4 files that came from our GitHub release.

12:14     We need to launch our daemon to start the QT on the server. To do that type ''sudo ./visionXd -daemon''. Pressing enter, will start the daemon.

12:39     We will wait a few seconds, then we will stop the daemon by typing ''sudo visionX-cli stop''. By doing this, we have now created a hidden file that we can edit. Navigate back by typing ''cd''. Then to access our hidden folder, we type ''cd .visionXcore''. Type ''ls'' to see the contents of that folder.

13:14     We are interested in the ''visionX.conf'' file. We are going to highlight and copy this. Then we are going to type ''sudo nano'' and paste the file name. This will open the file so we can edit it. Currently there is nothing in this configuration file.

13:40     We are going to type ''server=1, daemon=1, addnode= ''. Then we are going to add the IP address of our Ubuntu virtual machine. This will mean our QT will bind with this server. When that is done, exit the file and save by holding ''CTRL + X'', then typing ''Y'' to save. Press Enter.

14:18     We are now going to navigate back to our Linux folder, and start the daemon again. This time, we do not need to add ''-dameon'' to the end. As we have added ''daemon=1'' to the config file.

14:38     Now we can scroll up through our previous commands, and find the CLI command we used to stop the daemon. This time we are going to type ''getinfo'' instead of ''stop''. This is all our blockchain info. Currently we have no connections, we have zero blocks mined and a zero balance.

15:00     We will now return to our QT on our Ubuntu server and check the connections. If we now check the peers, we can see we have one active connection to the network. Here you can see the IP matched the address of the one we have just set up. And we are now on the VisionX Core blockchain.

15:43     In the information tab we can see all the details about our blockchain. Our client version is correct. We can see the build date and the startup time. We see that we are on the main network. And the number of connections is one. We currently have zero masternodes online. And zero blocks mined.

16:05     In our next video, we will be mining the Genesis block. This will be the beginning of our blockchains life.