Validator Node

Instructions to run a validator node for the Polis Chain

Requirements

  • docker
  • docker-compose
  • node

Download the source files

The official scripts repository is hosted in https://github.com/polischain/polis-chains/
Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/polischain/polis-chains/ && cd polis-chains

Create a new validator key

To run a validator you first need create a validator key that will sign blocks (if possible)
./run.sh generate
This command will install the necessary packages to create a validator key and store it under the keystore folder together with the password to decrypt the key under the passwords folder inside the polis-chains directory.
To prevent loosing your validator key make sure you make a backup of the keystore and passwords folders.

Starting the validator instance

Once you have the validator address (executed from the command above) you need to run the docker-compose file to start your validator.
You can choose to put a name to your validator to display it in the network status page.
To execute your validator you need to prepend the NAME and ACCOUNT variables to the command
NAME="Test Validator" ACCOUNT="0x123...123" docker-compose -f docker/olympus/validator.yml up
This will execute the validator scripts and start a validator instance with a full monitoring stack.
Once the validator is started you will have the monitoring service at port 3000. To access it you can use the default username and password: User: admin Password: admin

Stopping the validator instance

To stop the validator instance once the docker-compose command is executed you must simply close the session or send a finish signal with CTRL+C

Run the validator in the background

To run a validator process in the background the recommended tool is to use the screen command.
To do so, simply type screen in the command line interface and execute the docker-compose command above.
Once the validator is initialized simply use CTRL+A and then click the letter D to detach the instance.
To re-attach the instance simply type the command screen -x