Miner Prerequisites

Prerequisites

VM setup

The VM will not need a lot of resources to run a miner - the most resources will be consumed during the blockchain syncs (for both Bitcoin and Stacks). For this example, we'll assume a Debian host with x86_64 architecture (commands may also work on any Debian-derived distribution).

A single CPU system with at least 4GB of memory and 1TB of disk space should be considered the minimum required specs to run the miner.

VM Specs

• Minimum CPU: 1 vCPU

• Minimum Memory: 4GB

• Minimum Storage: 1TB Disk to allow for chainstate growth

  • as of July 2022:

    • Bitcoin chainstate is roughly 420GB

    • Stacks chainstate is roughly 45GB

Disk Configuration

Two options here — either are fine but it's recommended to mount the chainstate from a separate disk that only contains the chainstate (see the first option).

1

Separate disks for chainstate(s) and OS

• mount a dedicated disk for bitcoin at /bitcoin of 1TB

• mount a dedicated disk for stacks-blockchain at /stacks-blockchain of at least 100GB

• root volume / of at least 25GB

2

Combined Disk for all data

• root volume / of at least 1TB

Create the required directories:

Create directories

$ sudo mkdir -p /bitcoin
$ sudo mkdir -p /stacks-blockchain
$ sudo mkdir -p /etc/bitcoin
$ sudo mkdir -p /etc/stacks-blockchain

If using mounted disks: mount the disks to each filesystem created above — edit /etc/fstab to automount these disks at boot.

Example /etc/fstab entries:

/dev/xvdb1 /bitcoin xfs rw,relatime,attr2,inode64,noquota
/dev/xvdc1 /stacks-blockchain xfs rw,relatime,attr2,inode64,noquota

Mount the disks:

sudo mount -a

Scripted install

You can use the scripts/prerequisites.sh to install everything:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stacksfoundation/miner-docs/main/scripts/prerequisites.sh | bash

Install required packages

The following packages are required and used by the rest of these docs:

Install packages

$ curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_16.x | sudo -E bash -
$ sudo apt-get update -y && sudo apt-get install -y \
    build-essential \
    jq \
    netcat \
    nodejs \
    git \
    autoconf \
    libboost-system-dev \
    libboost-filesystem-dev \
    libboost-thread-dev \
    libboost-chrono-dev \
    libevent-dev \
    libzmq5 \
    libtool \
    m4 \
    automake \
    pkg-config \
    libtool \
    libboost-system-dev \
    libboost-filesystem-dev \
    libboost-chrono-dev \
    libboost-program-options-dev \
    libboost-test-dev \
    libboost-thread-dev \
    libboost-iostreams-dev
$ curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh && source $HOME/.cargo/env
$ sudo npm install -g @stacks/cli rimraf shx