💪Pro Hardware Guide

This guide is written for professional liquidity providers to turn a powerful Mini PC into an always-on OpenDEX node.

Two options are available:

1. Light setup using Neutrino and a random open eth provider or optionally Infura. This keeps the setup light-weight & cheap, but creates a certain dependency on other people's full nodes.

2. Full setup using bitcoind, litecoind and geth. Requires more resources and an SSD, but keeps the setup trustless.

Light Reference Shopping List (Europe): ~180 €

• GIGABYTE GB-BLCE-4105 BRIX: 138 €

• 4 GB RAM: 15 €

• 120GB M.2 SSD: 20 €

• USB stick for backups: 3,99 €

  • Any >1GB USB stick will do.

  • A NAS/Samba share works too.

Full Reference Shopping List (Europe): ~465 €

• GIGABYTE GB-BLCE-4105 BRIX: 138 €

  • Alternative: ODROID H2+ - same platform, features NVME, needs separate case, power supply and wifi dongle, out of stock at times

• 32 GB RAM: 127 €

  • Alternative: List of compatible RAM

• 2TB SSD: 193 €

  • Alternative: 1 TB M.2 SSD NVME - for Odroid H2+

  • Alternative: 240GB M.2 SSD + 2TB HDD

• USB stick for backups: 3,99 €

  • Any >1GB USB stick will do.

  • A NAS/Samba share works too.

Setup

1. Download Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS onto your computer. Any other linux distribution supporting docker is also fine. This guide was written using Ubuntu Server 20.04.

2. Insert a USB Stick into your computer and create the a bootable USB Stick with the ubuntu image you just downloaded.

3. Open your Mini PC, plug in RAM & drives, close it, connect it to your router via ethernet cable and to a power supply. Connect a screen via HDMI, a USB keyboard, the created bootable USB Stick, fire the Mini PC up and follow the the inital setup instructions.

4. Update ubuntu via sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

5. If you are using Ubuntu 20.04, install docker & docker-compose by running sudo apt install docker.io. Otherwise if you are using any version besides Ubuntu 20.04, follow the official instructions to install docker.

6. Add new user opendex:

   ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo adduser opendex
   Adding user `opendex' ...
   Adding new group `opendex' (1001) ...
   Adding new user `opendex' (1001) with group `opendex' ...
   Creating home directory `/home/opendex' ...
   Copying files from `/etc/skel' ...
   New password: 
   Retype new password: 
   passwd: password updated successfully
   Changing the user information for opendexd
   Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
    Full Name []: 
    Room Number []: 
    Work Phone []: 
    Home Phone []: 
    Other []: 
   Is the information correct? [Y/n] ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ Y

7. Add the opendex user to the sudo group (advanced users can skip this and use another user to run sudo commands), the docker group and test if docker is working:

   ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo usermod -aG sudo opendex
   ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo usermod -aG docker opendex
   # switch to user opendex
   ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo su - opendex
   opendex@ubuntu:~$ docker run hello-world
   Hello from Docker!
   This message shows that your installation appears to be working correctly.

8. Looking good! Optionally, add an alias to enter your opendexd environment by simply typing "opendex":

   opendex@ubuntu:~$ sudo nano ~/.bash_aliases
   # add the line
   alias opendex='bash ~/opendex.sh'
   # CTRL+S, CTRL+X. Then run
   opendex@ubuntu:~$ source ~/.bashrc

9. Connect the USB stick to your machine and set it up. It is very important to do this for a mainnet setup (given you do not want to lose money)!

   # check the USB stick's path with
   opendex@ubuntu:~$ ls -la /dev/ | grep sd
   crw-------  1 root root      2,  61 Dec  3 16:27 ptysd
   brw-rw----  1 root disk      8,   0 Dec  3 16:27 sda
   brw-rw----  1 root disk      8,   1 Dec  3 16:27 sda1 #this is your USB Stick
   crw-------  1 root root      3,  61 Dec  3 16:27 ttysd
   # set it to automount via fstab
   opendex@ubuntu:~$ sudo nano /etc/fstab
   # add the line
   /dev/sda1 /media/USB ext4 defaults 0 2
   # CTRL+S, CTRL+X. Then mount it
   opendex@ubuntu:~$ sudo mkdir /media/USB
   opendex@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount -a
   # check if mounting worked
   opendex@ubuntu:~$ df -h
   # make sure opendexd can use it
   opendex@ubuntu:~$ sudo chown opendex:opendex /media/USB

   DONE! Continue here.