electrs/doc/usage.md

## Installation

Install [latest Rust](https://rustup.rs/) (1.28+),
[latest Bitcoin Core](https://bitcoincore.org/en/download/) (0.16+)
and [latest Electrum wallet](https://electrum.org/#download) (3.2+).

Also, install the following packages (on Debian):
```bash
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install clang cmake  # for building 'rust-rocksdb'
```

## Build

First build should take ~20 minutes:
```bash
$ git clone https://github.com/romanz/electrs
$ cd electrs
$ cargo build --release
```


## Bitcoind configuration

Allow Bitcoin daemon to sync before starting Electrum server:
```bash
$ bitcoind -server=1 -txindex=0 -prune=0
```

If you are using `-rpcuser=USER` and `-rpcpassword=PASSWORD` for authentication, please use `--cookie="USER:PASSWORD"` command-line flag.
Otherwise, [`~/.bitcoin/.cookie`](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/0212187fc624ea4a02fc99bc57ebd413499a9ee1/contrib/debian/examples/bitcoin.conf#L70-L72) will be read, allowing this server to use bitcoind JSONRPC interface.

## Usage

First index sync should take ~1.5 hours:
```bash
$ cargo run --release -- -vvv --timestamp --db-dir ./db [--cookie="USER:PASSWORD"]
2018-08-17T18:27:42 - INFO - NetworkInfo { version: 179900, subversion: "/Satoshi:0.17.99/" }
2018-08-17T18:27:42 - INFO - BlockchainInfo { chain: "main", blocks: 537204, headers: 537204, bestblockhash: "0000000000000000002956768ca9421a8ddf4e53b1d81e429bd0125a383e3636", pruned: false, initialblockdownload: false }
2018-08-17T18:27:42 - DEBUG - opening DB at "./db/mainnet"
2018-08-17T18:27:42 - DEBUG - full compaction marker: None
2018-08-17T18:27:42 - INFO - listing block files at "/home/user/.bitcoin/blocks/blk*.dat"
2018-08-17T18:27:42 - INFO - indexing 1348 blk*.dat files
2018-08-17T18:27:42 - DEBUG - found 0 indexed blocks
2018-08-17T18:27:55 - DEBUG - applying 537205 new headers from height 0
2018-08-17T19:31:01 - DEBUG - no more blocks to index
2018-08-17T19:31:03 - DEBUG - no more blocks to index
2018-08-17T19:31:03 - DEBUG - last indexed block: best=0000000000000000002956768ca9421a8ddf4e53b1d81e429bd0125a383e3636 height=537204 @ 2018-08-17T15:24:02Z
2018-08-17T19:31:05 - DEBUG - opening DB at "./db/mainnet"
2018-08-17T19:31:06 - INFO - starting full compaction
2018-08-17T19:58:19 - INFO - finished full compaction
2018-08-17T19:58:19 - INFO - enabling auto-compactions
2018-08-17T19:58:19 - DEBUG - opening DB at "./db/mainnet"
2018-08-17T19:58:26 - DEBUG - applying 537205 new headers from height 0
2018-08-17T19:58:27 - DEBUG - downloading new block headers (537205 already indexed) from 000000000000000000150d26fcc38b8c3b71ae074028d1d50949ef5aa429da00
2018-08-17T19:58:27 - INFO - best=000000000000000000150d26fcc38b8c3b71ae074028d1d50949ef5aa429da00 height=537218 @ 2018-08-17T16:57:50Z (14 left to index)
2018-08-17T19:58:28 - DEBUG - applying 14 new headers from height 537205
2018-08-17T19:58:29 - INFO - RPC server running on 127.0.0.1:50001
```

If initial sync fails due to `memory allocation of xxxxxxxx bytes failedAborted` errors, as may happen on devices with limited RAM, try the following arguments when starting `electrs`. It should take roughly 18 hours to sync and compact the index on an Odroid HC1 with 8 cpu cores @ 2GHz, 2GB RAM, and an SSD using the following command.

```bash
$ cargo run --release -- -vvvv --index-batch-size=10 --jsonrpc-import --db-dir ./db [--cookie="USER:PASSWORD"]
```

The index database is stored here:
```bash
$ du db/
38G db/mainnet/
```

## Electrum client
```bash
# Connect only to the local server, for better privacy
$ ./scripts/local-electrum.bash
+ ADDR=127.0.0.1
+ PORT=50001
+ PROTOCOL=t
+ electrum --oneserver --server=127.0.0.1:50001:t
<snip>
```

In order to use a secure connection, TLS-terminating proxy (e.g. [hitch](https://github.com/varnish/hitch)) is recommended:
```bash
$ hitch --backend=[127.0.0.1]:50001 --frontend=[127.0.0.1]:50002 pem_file
$ electrum --oneserver --server=127.0.0.1:50002:s
```

You can also use [NGINX as an SSL endpoint](https://docs.nginx.com/nginx/admin-guide/security-controls/terminating-ssl-tcp/#) by placing the following block in `nginx.conf`.

```nginx
stream {
        upstream electrs {
                server 127.0.0.1:50001;
        }

        server {
                listen 50002 ssl;
                proxy_pass electrs;

                ssl_certificate /path/to/fullchain.pem;
                ssl_certificate_key /path/to/privkey.pem;
                ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:1m;
                ssl_session_timeout 4h;
                ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
                ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
        }
}
```

## Docker
```bash
$ docker build -t electrs-app .
$ docker run --network host \
             --volume /home/roman/.bitcoin:/home/user/.bitcoin:ro \
             --volume $PWD:/home/user \
             --rm -i -t electrs-app
```

## Monitoring

Indexing and serving metrics are exported via [Prometheus](https://github.com/pingcap/rust-prometheus):

```bash
$ sudo apt install prometheus
$ echo "
scrape_configs:
  - job_name: electrs
    static_configs:
    - targets: ['localhost:4224']
" | sudo tee -a /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml
$ sudo systemctl restart prometheus
$ firefox 'http://localhost:9090/graph?g0.range_input=1h&g0.expr=index_height&g0.tab=0'
```