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Connect to an existing Blockchain network on Machine

It is highly recommended to use the Docker Compose Setup guide instead of this Setup guide. Only use this guide if docker cannot be used

This guide describes how to connect to an existing network without the use of Docker, Docker Compose or Kubernetes. Before starting make sure to have node,npm and the latest release of MultiChain available on your machine. To check if all required tools are installed correctly use following check commands:

  • node: node -v
  • npm: npm -v
  • multichain: multichain-util & multichaind

If the above commands cannot be found make sure the tools are installed and the PATH variables are set correctly.

Table of Contents​

Get the repository​

Clone the Github repository of the components onto the designated machines.

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/openkfw/TruBudget.git
cd TruBudget
info

If you work with an existing checkout, make sure you have the latest changes:

git pull

Blockchain​

A blockchain node defines itself as beta node if the environment variable P2P_HOST is set.

First make sure the alpha node has set its EXTERNAL_IP environment variable and is available (check firewall), otherwise it will not be possible to connect to the alpha node. Adapt and set the environment parameters listed below. A detailed description can be found in the environment variable overview

export PRETTY_PRINT="true"
export ORGANIZATION="BetaOrga"
export MULTICHAIN_RPC_USER="multichainrpc"
export MULTICHAIN_RPC_PASSWORD="password"
export RPC_ALLOW_IP="0.0.0.0/0"
export MULTICHAIN_DIR="/tmp/beta"
export PORT=8086
export P2P_PORT=7447
export MULTICHAIN_RPC_PORT=8000
export API_PORT=8080
export P2P_HOST=[IP of alpha node]
export EXTERNAL_IP=[IP where this node is external available]
export API_HOST=[IP of alpha node API]

Use absolute paths for environment variables. If it's not the first start and the .multichain folder exists already a multichain error will be shown in the logs but multichain will work as expected. (Error while creating Multichain err: "ERROR: Blockchain parameter set was not generated.\n" )

Navigate into the blockchain directory and install the node packages defined in the package.json and start the blockchain using following lines:

cd blockchain/
npm install
npm start

To run the process as background process use npm start > blockchain.log 2>&1 &, the blockchain.log contains the logs of the blockchain process

If the logs are showing the line Node ready the node is setup correctly. The blockchain can be checked by HTTP-Request localhost:8085/version using postman, curl or even a browser. The response is the current version of TruBudget's blockchain.