Using Docker

The easiest way

The easiest/faster option to run Tidechain in Docker is to use the latest release images. These are small images that use the latest official release of the Tidechain binary, pulled from our package repository.

Following examples are running on lagoon network and without SSL. They can be used to quick start and learn how Tidechain needs to be configured. Please find out how to secure your node, if you want to operate it on the internet. Do not expose RPC and WS ports, if they are not correctly configured.

Let's first check the version we have. The first time you run this command, the Tidechain docker image will be downloaded. This takes a bit of time and bandwidth, be patient:

docker run --rm -it tidelabs/tidechain:latest --version

You can also pass any argument/flag that Tidechain supports:

docker run --rm -it tidelabs/tidechain:latest --chain lagoon --name "TideDocker"

Examples

Once you are done experimenting and picking the best node name :) you can start Tidechain as daemon, exposes the Tidechain ports and mount a volume that will keep your blockchain data locally. Make sure that you set the ownership of your local directory to the Tidechain user that is used by the container. Set user id 1000 and group id 1000, by running chown 1000.1000 /my/local/folder -R if you use a bind mount.

To start a Tidechain node on default rpc port 9933 and default p2p port 30333 use the following command. If you want to connect to rpc port 9933, then must add Tidechain startup parameter: --rpc-external.

docker run -d -p 30333:30333 -p 9933:9933 -v /my/local/folder:/tidechain tidelabs/tidechain:latest --chain lagoon --rpc-external --rpc-cors all

Additionally if you want to have custom node name you can add the --name "YourName" at the end

docker run -d -p 30333:30333 -p 9933:9933 -v /my/local/folder:/tidechain tidelabs/tidechain:latest --chain lagoon --rpc-external --rpc-cors all --name "TideDocker"

If you also want to expose the webservice port 9944 use the following command:

docker run -d -p 30333:30333 -p 9933:9933 -p 9944:9944 -v /my/local/folder:/tidechain tidelabs/tidechain:latest --chain lagoon --ws-external --rpc-external --rpc-cors all --name "TideDocker"

Using Docker compose

You can use the following docker-compose.yml file:

version: '3'

services:
  tidechain:
    container_name: tidechain
    image: tidelabs/tidechain
    ports:
      - 30333:30333 # p2p port
      - 9933:9933 # rpc port
      - 9944:9944 # ws port
    volumes:
      - /my/local/folder:/tidechain
    command: [
      "--name", "TideDocker",
      "--ws-external",
      "--rpc-external",
      "--rpc-cors", "all"
    ]

Limiting Resources

Chain syncing will utilize all available memory and CPU power your server has to offer, which can lead to crashing.

If running on a low resource VPS, use --memory and --cpus to limit the resources used. E.g. To allow a maximum of 512MB memory and 50% of 1 CPU, use --cpus=".5" --memory="512m". Read more about limiting a container's resources here.

Start a shell session with the daemon:

docker exec -it $(docker ps -q) bash;

Check the current version:

tidechain --version

Build your own image

To get up and running with the smallest footprint on your system, you may use the Tidechain Docker image. You can build it yourself (it takes a while...) in the shell session of the daemon:

cd scripts/docker/tidechain
./build.sh

Reporting issues

If you run into issues with Tidechain when using docker, please run the following command (replace the tag with the appropriate one if you do not use latest):

docker run --rm -it tidelabs/tidechain:latest --version

This will show you the Tidechain version as well as the git commit ref that was used to build your container. Just paste that in the issue you create.