PRODUCTS AND SUPPORT


Installing Bitcoin Full Node with Ordinal Protocol support on Ubuntu AWS EC2 Instance


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This section describes how to launch and connect to Bitcoin Fullnode kit in a Google Compute environment.

Note: Bitcoin Full Node upgraded to latest Bitcoin Core V0.24 along with bitcoin-qt, bitcoin-cli and bitcoin-wallet on Ubuntu 22.04. The VM also provide you the latest Ordinal installed which is a numbering scheme for satoshis that allows tracking and transferring individual sats. For more details please visit- Ordinals Documentation

  1. Open Bitcoin FullNode listing on GCP Marketplace.

/img/gcp/gcp_bitcoin_offer.png


  1. Click Launch on Compute Engine.
  • For zone, you must select us-central1-a . The VM can be deployed only in us-central1-a
  • Optionally change the number of cores and amount of memory. (This defaults to 2 vCPUs and 7.5 GB ram.)
  • Optionally change the boot disk type and size. Boot disk size should be greater than or equal to 700 GB. (This defaults to "Standard Persistent Disk" and 700 GB respectively)
  • Optionally change the network name and subnetwork names. Be sure that whichever network you specify has ports 22 (for ssh) and 3389 (for RDP) exposed.
  • Click Deploy when you are done. Bitcoin Full Node Suit will begin deploying.

/img/gcp/gcp_bitcoin_launcher.png


  1. A summary page displays when the compute engine is successfully deployed. Click on the Instance link to to go to the instance page .

  1. On the instance page, click on the "SSH" button, select "Open in browser window".

    2. /img/gcp/gcp_bitcoin_ssh_option.png

  2. This will open SSH window in a browser.
  3. Run below command to set the password for "ubuntu" user
    4. sudo passwd ubuntu

    /img/gcp/gcp_bitcoin_password_dashed.png

  4. Now the password for ubuntu user is set, you can connect to the VM's desktop environment from any local windows machine using RDP protocol or linux machine using Remmina.

  5. To connect using RDP via Windows Machine, first note the external IP of the VM from VM details page as highlighted below

    6. /img/gcp/gcp_bitcoin_vm_details.png

  6. Then From you local windows machine, goto "start" menu , in the search box type and select "Remote desktop connection"

  7. In the "Remote Desktop connection" wizard, copy the external ip and click connect

    8. /img/gcp/bitcoin_gcprdp.png

  8. This will connect you to the VM's desktop environment. Provide "ubuntu" as the userid and the password set in step 6 to authenticate. Click OK

    9. /img/gcp/bitcoin_rdp_login.png

  9. Now you are connected to the out of box Bitcoin Full Node environment via Windows Machine..

    10. /img/gcp/bitcoinvm.png

  10. To connect using RDP via Linux machine, first note the external IP of the VM from VM details page,then from your local Linux machine, goto menu , in the search box type and select "Remmina".

    Note: If you don't have Remmina installed on your Linux machine, first Install Remmina as per your linux distribution.

    11. /img/gcp/common/remmina-search.png
  11. In the "Remmina Remote Desktop Client" wizard, select the RDP option from dropdown and paste the external ip and click enter.

    12. /img/gcp/common/remmina-external-ip.png
  12. This will connect you to the VM's desktop environment. Provide "ubuntu" as the userid and the password set in step 6 to authenticate. Click OK

    13. /img/gcp/common/remmina-rdp-login.png
  13. Now you are connected to the out of box Bitcoin Fullnode environment via Linux machine.

    14. /img/gcp/bitcoinvm.png

  14. Bitcoin directories:

    15. All Bitcoin ledger data is stored under /home/bitcoin directory

    /img/gcp/gcp_bitcoin_folder_location.png

    Bitcoin wallet and configuration file (bitcoin.conf) are located under /home/ubuntu/.bitcoin directory

    /img/gcp/gcp_bitcoin_conf_location.png

  15. Once VM is provisioned, you can start Bitcoin node either via command line or using the Bitcoin QT GUI wallet

    16. a. Start Bitcoin sync process using command line :
    Go to terminal and execute below command as ubuntu user to run Bitcoin daemon in background -

       bitcoind

    /img/gcp/bitcoin-bitcoind-command.png

    To verify the command execution or to monitor the daemon, you can tail the bitcoin debug log

    tail -f /home/bitcoin/debug.log

    /img/gcp/bitcoin-tail-command.png

    b. Start Bitcoin sync process using GUI:
    You can also run the sync process by running the Bitcoin-QT GUI wallet. For this, connect to the VM using RDP as described in steps 8 to 12 .Once connected, click on bitcoin-qt to start the sync process. A window may popup asking to mark the application executable . Click on "Mark Executable" button to avoid seeing this window in future.

    /img/gcp/bitcoin-mark-executable.png

    /img/gcp/bitcoin-GUI.png

  16. How to stop bitcoind daemon :

    17. To manually stop bitcoind, run below command.

    "bitcoin-cli stop"

    /img/gcp/bitcoin-cli-stop-command.png

  17. Delete the wallet.dat file by running below command
    18. sudo rm /home/ubuntu/.bitcoin/wallets/wallet.dat

    /img/gcp/bitcoin-wallet-dat-remove-02.png

  • To know how to use the Bitcoin Full Node kit, please refer to the video tutorial series available on Bitcoin overview page.

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