How to setup an RSK node on Docker

Before installing Docker, ensure your system meets the minimum requirements before installing the RSK node.

Install Docker Desktop Client

Docker Desktop provides an easy and fast way for running containerized applications on various operating systems.

For Mac OSX and Windows:

• Download and install
• Start the Docker Desktop client
• Login with a Docker Hub free account

For Linux:

• Install Docker Engine Community
• Note that you will need to use sudo for all docker commands, by default. To avoid this additional steps are required.

Ensure that docker is running by running the following command - it should run without any errors.

docker ps

More information about Docker install here.

Install RSKj Using Docker

To install an RSK node using Docker, download the RSKj Dockerfiles and supervisord.conf from the artifacts repo or pull the image from Docker Hub.

Inside the artifacts repo, you can choose which type of node you are going to install:

• A node connected to the public RSK Mainnet: Dockerfile.MainNet
• A node connected to the public RSK Testnet: Dockerfile.TestNet
• A node connected to a private RegTest network: Dockerfile.RegTest

Install the node using Docker containers (Intel Chips)

Build the container by running any of the following commands:

Note: The type of node to run is dependent on the node's type installed in install RSKj using Docker.

• Mainnet

  docker build -t mainnet -f Dockerfile.MainNet .

• Testnet

  docker build -t testnet -f Dockerfile.TestNet .

• Regtest

  docker build -t regtest -f Dockerfile.RegTest .

When the build finishes, you should see an output similar to this:

  RSK-Node % docker build -t mainnet -f Dockerfile.MainNet . 
  [+] Building 452.4s (12/12) FINISHED                                            
  => [internal] load build definition from Dockerfile.MainNet

  Use 'docker scan' to run Snyk tests against images to find vulnerabilities and learn how to fix them

Now you have a container ready to run RSK!

To run the container, you should execute:

• Mainnet

  docker run -p 5050:5050 rsksmart/rskj:latest

This will start a Mainnet node.

• Testnet

  docker run -p 50505:50505 rsksmart/rskj:latest --testnet

• Regtest

  docker run rsksmart/rskj:latest --regtest

Install the node using Docker containers (M1 Chips)

To install the node using docker containers from Mac M1:

• Pull rskj-standalone docker image and run container from this image with the following command:

  docker run rsksmart/rskj-standalone

It's possible that you may need to enable experimental features of Docker if your version does not support BuildX plugin by default. In order to enable experimental features:

• You can update /etc/docker/daemon.json to add the property experimental: true.
• If you have docker desktop just click: Settings -> Docker Engine. In the center you will see the same json from daemon.json, just add the property experimental: true at the top level of the json. Finally click on Apply and Restart

Build the container by running any of the following commands:

Note: The type of node to run is dependent on the node's type installed ininstall RSKj using Docker.

• Mainnet

  docker buildx build --platform linux/amd64 -t mainnet -f Dockerfile.MainNet .

• Testnet

  docker buildx build --platform linux/amd64 -t testnet -f Dockerfile.TestNet .

• Regtest

  docker buildx build --platform linux/amd64 -t regtest -f Dockerfile.RegTest .

When the build finishes, you have a container ready to run RSK.

To run the container, you should execute:

• Mainnet

  docker run -p 5050:5050 rsksmart/rskj:latest

This will start a Mainnet node.

• Testnet

  docker run -p 50505:50505 rsksmart/rskj:latest --testnet

• Regtest

  docker run rsksmart/rskj:latest --regtest

Video

Keep in mind that RSK's blockchain is stored locally in the container. If you want to save it to a permanent storage, you can use a volume mount while starting the container as shown in the command below:

docker run -p 5050:5050 -v /path/to/my/storage:/var/lib/rsk/.rsk rsksmart/rskj:latest

In order to interact with the node's JSON-RPC endpoint, you'll need to expose it to the host:

docker run -p 5050:5050 -p 127.0.0.1:4444:4444 rsksmart/rskj:latest

Then, you could, for example, query the current block number with

curl -H "Content-type: application/json" -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"eth_blockNumber","id":1}' http://127.0.0.1:4444/

Finally, you can provide a custom configuration to the node with:

docker run -p 5050:5050 -v /path/to/my/custom/node.conf:/etc/rsk/node.conf rsksmart/rskj:latest