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Hornet Playbook - IOTA

This repository installs a fully operational IOTA HORNET node.

Table of contents

Requirements

Tested on the following operating systems/architectures:

  • CentOS 7 and 8 (x86_64)
  • Ubuntu 18.04LTS or 20.04LTS (x86_64, aarch64/arm64 for Raspberry)
  • Debian 10 "Buster" (x86_64, aarch64/arm64)
  • Raspbian 10 (64 bit)

Recommendations

  • RAM: At least 1.5GB RAM, as less than this can result in out-of-memory failures.
  • x2 CPUs are recommended

Installation

You can first download the script to inspect it before running it, or run it directly:

sudo bash -c "bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nuriel77/hornet-playbook/main/fullnode_install.sh)"

This pulls the installation file from the root of this repository and executes it.

The installation will:

  • Install latest Hornet and start it up.
  • Configure basic security (firewalls) and open all required ports for Hornet to operate.
  • Install nginx as a reverse proxy to access Hornet's Dashboard.
  • Add some helpful tools, e.g.: horc and nbctl.

For Development

If you are working on a fork in a feature branch or happen to directly contribute to this repository you can run the installer pointing it to the appropriate branch, e.g.:

BRANCH="dev-branch"; GIT_OPTIONS="-b $BRANCH" bash <(curl -s "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nuriel77/hornet-playbook/$BRANCH/fullnode_install.sh")

To update the playbook to use a different hornet tag/version, for example hornet prerelease version v0.4.0-rc2:

ansible-playbook -i inventory site.yml -v -e hornet_version=v0.4.0-rc2 -e overwrite=yes

Note that a Hornet prerelease might require changes on the playbook's code.

Docker Usage Commands

These are just a few helpful commands to help you find your way around docker:

Docker Images

List all images

docker images

The output will look something like:

REPOSITORY          TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
iotaledger/hornet      v0.2.1              c97cba628d38        2 hours ago         90.4MB
<none>              <none>              b7b60a909a8f        2 hours ago         1.01GB
golang              1.13                a1072a078890        8 days ago          803MB
certbot/certbot     latest              3b7ec24cacc3        11 days ago         148MB
nginx               latest              231d40e811cd        3 weeks ago         126MB
alpine              latest              965ea09ff2eb        7 weeks ago         5.55MB

Note that an image consists of a "REPOSITORY" name and a "TAG".

Images with <node> are "dangling" images that have been used for building a docker image (you can use horc to cleanup unused images).

Delete a certain image using the image's ID. Images can also be referenced by the image's repository:tag as syntax, e.g. nginx:latest:

docker rmi 231d40e811cd

View Docker Containers

View all docker containers:

docker ps -a

Hornet Help Output

Run hornet with --help: given that we know the image's name and the tag. A quick way to get the tag variable configured:

docker run --rm -it iotaledger/hornet:v0.2.1 --help

You can get the tag by viewing all images, or check the configuration file to see what is the currently used TAG:

On CentOS:

grep ^TAG /etc/sysconfig/hornet

On Ubuntu/Debian/Raspbian:

grep ^TAG /etc/default/hornet

Configuration

In the file below we can specify the image and tag to use. In addition we can configure which command line arguments to pass to hornet:

  • On Ubuntu/Debian/Raspbian: /etc/default/hornet

  • On CentOS: /etc/sysconfig/hornet

Control Hornet

Hornet app start:

systemctl start hornet

You can also replace start with stop or restart.

Hornet logs follow:

journalctl -u hornet -e -f

(omit the -f for not to follow the logs "live")

Hornet Controller App

A GUI utility has been added to help manage some basics like controlling the server, viewing logs, upgrading hornet etc.

Make sure you are root (sudo su) and run:

horc

Hornet Dashboard

Point your browser to your host's IP address or fully qualified domain name, e.g.:

https://my-node.io

Note that if you haven't configured the HTTPS certificate via horc you will get a warning about a self-signed certificate being used.

The first time you connect you'll have to entre the username and password you've configured during the installation. However there's one more "dashboard" to login to for which you should just use the same credentials.

Enable Initial Login Prompt to Dashboard

By default anyone can access the node's dashboard with limited access. To disable that, a user/password login prompt can be enabled with the following steps:

cd /opt/hornet-playbook && git pull && grep "^dashboard_auth_basic_enabled: true" group_vars/all/z-installer-override.yml || echo "dashboard_auth_basic_enabled: true" >> group_vars/all/z-installer-override.yml

Then run:

run-playbook --tags=nginx_role

Overwrite Hornet Config

It is possible to edit /var/lib/hornet/config.json manually and restart HORNET to apply the changes. Re-running the playbook will not overwrite your changes by default.

The recommended way to configure the file without having to worry about it getting overwritten is by copying the variables file to a new overwrite file.

Copy the config variables file to a new file:

cp /opt/hornet-playbook/group_vars/all/hornet-config-file.yml /opt/hornet-playbook/group_vars/all/z-append.yml

Edit the /opt/hornet-playbook/group_vars/all/z-append.yml as required (using nano, vi or your preferred editor). The variable names are similar to how you'd read the config.json. For example hornet_config_snapshots_local_downloadURLs corresponds to snapshots.local.downloadURLs in config.json. If you want to see the actual mapping you can view the template file in /opt/hornet-playbook/roles/hornet/templates/config.json.j2.

Then re-run the playbook while tagging the task to update the configuration file. Any variables you have overwritten and modified in z-append.yml will be applied and take precedence.

cd /opt/hornet-playbook && sudo ansible-playbook -i inventory site.yml -v --tags=hornet_config_file -e overwrite=yes

Hornet HTTPS

When you access your node via its IP address you will likely get a warning from the browser about the site not being secure or certificate invalid for the domain. The reason is that a self-signed certificate has been generated for the node during the installation.

Some browsers should allow you to bypass the warning (advanced -> proceed). Some browsers may not allow this (e.g. Chrome or Brave on Mac).

You can get a domain name to point to your node's IP. In that case you can use horc to request a certificate for your domain. Then you'll be able to access the node using that domain name and the certificate will be approved.

HTTPS Certificate

Via horc (run on the command line) it is possible to request and enable HTTPS certificate for the node.

Note that you must already have a fully qualified domain name A record pointing to your server's IP.

Enabling a certificate will allow you to connect to your node with IOTA's official wallet.

Ports

Below is a list of ports and URL paths configured by the playbook by default. External communication goes via nginx acting as a reverse proxy. The internal ports are not accessible externally.

NAME PORT INTERNAL PORT EXTERNAL PROTOCOL URL PATH DESCRIPTION
Dashboard 8087 443 HTTPS / Main dashboard
Hornet API 14265 443 HTTPS /api Used for wallet/API calls
Hornet peering 15600 15600 TCP not applicable Main peering port
Grafana 3000 443 HTTPS /grafana Grafana monitoring /grafana
Prometheus 9090 443 HTTPS /prometheus Prometheus metrics
Alertmanager 9093 443 HTTPS /alertmanager Alertmanager for prometheus

All the external ports have been made accessible in the firewall. There is no need to configure the firewall on the node.

Forward Ports

If you are running the node in an internal network/lan you have to forward at least the following ports from the router to the node:

Ports: 80/tcp (for certificate verification/enabling HTTPS), 443/tcp and 15600/tcp

Peers

Peers can be added via:

  • Hornet's dashboard
  • via horc tool available on the node cli
  • nbctl (see below) a cli tool

nbctl

You will find that the tool nbctl was installed on your node. Using this tool you can manage peers from the command line. See examples below:

Add a peer with alias:

nbctl -a -p /dns/node01.iota.io/tcp/15600/p2p/12D3KzzWDLS1c1O6AaZlf8oipHnJb1361SoYMdh9S1T2Jz7lDd5P,alias/my_friend

Remove a peer:

nbctl -r -p 12D3KzzWDLS1c1O6AaZlf8oipHnJb1361SoYMdh9S1T2Jz7lDd5P
# or
nbctl -r -p /dns/node01.iota.io/tcp/15600/p2p/12D3KzzWDLS1c1O6AaZlf8oipHnJb1361SoYMdh9S1T2Jz7lDd5P,alias/my_friend

List peers:

nbctl -l

List peers with shorter output:

nbctl -s

Monitoring

If you have monitoring enabled you can point your browser to https://your-ip-or-domain/grafana. That will open Grafana where some monitoring dashboards are available.

Monitoring applications (e.g. node-exporter, prometheus, etc) and dashboards can be upgraded using the command:

cd /opt/hornet-playbook && ansible-playbook -i inventory site.yml -v --tags=monitoring_role

Security

Node Security

Security should not be taken lightly. It is recommended to take several steps to improve how you interact and authenticate with your server.

Please follow this guide, it works for any Linux server.

Get JWT Token

If you've enabled JWT token access for the REST API you can get a valid token by running the following command:

docker run -u 39999:39999 --rm -it -v /var/lib/hornet/config.json:/app/config.json -v /var/lib/hornet/p2p:/app/p2p:rw -v /var/lib/hornet/mainnetdb:/app/mainnetdb iotaledger/hornet:1.1.3 tools jwt-api

Make sure to use the right hornet version on the image tag above (iotaledger/hornet:1.1.3)

Troubleshooting

If something isn't working as expected, try to gather as much data as possible, as this can help someone who is able to help you finding out the cause of the issue.

If anything is wrong related to Hornet, first thing to look at are Hornet's logs. See how to get logs in Control Hornet chapter.

To check if Hornet's API port is listening you can use the command to see if any output:

sudo lsof -Pni:14265

Note that after restarting Hornet it takes it some time to make the port available (e.g. when loading snapshot file).

502 Bad Gateway

If you receive this error when trying to browse to the dashboard then:

  • nginx (the webserver/proxy) is working properly
  • the back-end to which it is trying to connect isn't working properly.

Nginx takes requests from the web and forwards those internally. For example, https://my-site.io tells nginx to connect to Hornet's dashboard. If Hornet is inactive (crashed? starting up?) then nginx would not be able to forward your requests to it. Make sure Hornet is working properly, e.g. checking logs: see Control Hornet. Note that when checking the logs, start from the bottom of the logs and scroll up to the line where you see the error began.

Hornet Does Not Startup

There are too many reasons and possibilities why this could happen. As stated above, check hornet logs: see Control Hornet.

Some of the most common reasons are:

  • no space left on device - Your storage has been used up completely. Try to download a new DB via horc, this will delete the existing one. This is often the problem. Note that you might want to lower the DB Max Size via horc to match your storage.

  • panic: unable to initialize data store for peer store: Value log truncate required to run DB. This might result in data loss - If your node crashed there might be corruption in the node's ID store DB. The way to fix this is by deleting it: sudo rm -rf /var/lib/hornet/p2p/store and starting up hornet.

Connection not Private

You will probably get this message when trying to connect to the dashboard using your IP address.

Other messages might claim certificate is invalid for the domain.

You can safely proceed (most browsers allow to bypass the warning). And please read Hornet HTTPS

DB Corruption

If Hornet wasn't shut down properly there is a good chance that the DB is corrupted and you will have to remove it and start all over again.

Logs

In the following link you can read more about how to collect logs from your system. Although this documentation is for IRI, the commands are similar (just replace iri with hornet if needed):

https://iri-playbook.readthedocs.io/en/master/troubleshooting.html#troubleshooting

Rerun Playbook

You can rerun the playbook to fix most issues. Use the tool horc, there's an option to rerun the playbook.

If horc isn't working, try the following command:

cd /opt/hornet-playbook && git pull && ansible-playbook -v site.yml -i inventory -e overwrite=yes

This command will reset all configuration files but also make a backup of existing ones so you'll be able to restore any previous peers and settings you had.

Grafana Dashboards Missing

If you've opened Grafana for the first time and don't see any dashboards listed on the upper-left corner (Home) then you might have to restart Grafana. Simply run:

sudo systemctl restart grafana-server

Appendix

Hornet Plugins

Some of Hornet's plugins can be enabled and disabled using the horc tool via the menu.

Known Issues

  • Due to the rapid development and changes to Hornet, the configuration file can break the existing configuration when upgrading.

Support the Project

To create, test and maintain this playbook requires many hours of work and resources. This is done wholeheartedly for the IOTA community.

If you liked this project and would like to leave a donation you can use this IOTA address:

iota1qpsszw7jnknct8960t80ffxn2hmx8wrrrw69ca3us6u5kt92c2hhj8s7ccf

No IOTA? ⭐ the project is also a way of saying thank you! 😎

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Ansible Playbook for Hornet IOTA Full Node

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