Set environment variables

Set environment variables when running an Aleph node on the testnet for validating transactions.

To run the node you will have to set several variables. Below you can find example configurations which you might want to tailor to your needs.

Variables

It is the most convenient to put all of the variables into a file that you can later source, let's assume it's called set_env.sh and has the following contents:

export NAME="..."             # <-- FILL THIS
export PUBLIC_IP_OR_DNS="..." # <-- FILL THIS
export PUBLIC_ADDR="..."      # <-- FILL THIS
export BASE_PATH="$HOME/data" # choose any directory you'd like, `$HOME/.aleph_zero` is also a popular choice
export BOOT_NODES="/dns4/bootnode-eu-central-1-0.test.azero.dev/tcp/30333/p2p/12D3KooWRkGLz4YbVmrsWK75VjFTs8NvaBu42xhAmQaP4KeJpw1L/dns4/bootnode-us-east-1-0.test.azero.dev/tcp/30333/p2p/12D3KooWSv1nApKkcnq8ZVHJQLK5GJ4NKS9ebag9QrRTzksLTGUy"
export CHAIN="${BASE_PATH}/chainspec.json"
export NODE_KEY_PATH="${BASE_PATH}/p2p_secret"
export BACKUP_PATH="${BASE_PATH}/backup-stash"
export POOL_LIMIT="100"
export PORT="30333"
export VALIDATOR_PORT="30343"
export PUBLIC_VALIDATOR_ADDRESS="${PUBLIC_IP_OR_DNS}:${VALIDATOR_PORT}"
export RPC_PORT="9944"
export RUST_LOG="info"
export SYNC="Fast"
export TELEMETRY_URL='wss://telemetry.polkadot.io/submit/'
export TELEMETRY_VERBOSITY_LVL='0'
export VALIDATOR="true"
export RPC_MAX_CONNECTIONS="100"
export DATABASE_ENGINE="paritydb"

❗Note There are a couple parameters above you should fill by yourself (the first three):

1. NAME should be a name for your node. It’s mostly used for logging in various ways, so make it specific and recognizable.

2. PUBLIC_IP_OR_DNS should be set to the public, static IP of your node (or a domain name pointing to such address). Note that this should not include the port, which is specified by a separate variable (VALIDATOR_PORT).

3. PUBLIC_ADDR should contain a public address in the libp2p format that your node will be using. This can also be omitted: in that case it will be auto-generated. The libp2p format is the following: /ip4/<your ip>/tcp/30333 or /dns4/<your domain>/tcp/30333 (the port number is what you set as PORT above).

Remember to export the variables for later use.

Note that these variables should be available every time you run the binary, so you might want to put them in your .bashrc (or your shell's equivalent)

Note that the directory that's your $BASE_PATH has to be manually created if it doesn't exist:

mkdir -p $BASE_PATH && cd $BASE_PATH