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Join Testnet

tip

See the node repo for information on the mainnet, including the correct version of the binaries to use and details about the genesis file

note

You need to install bnbchaind before you go further

Minimum System Requirements​

The hardware must meet certain requirements to run a Full Node.

  • Desktop or laptop hardware running recent versions of Mac OS X, Windows, or Linux.
  • 1 TB of free disk space, accessible at a minimum read/write speed of 100 MB/s.
  • 4 cores of CPU and 8 gigabytes of memory (RAM).
  • A broadband Internet connection with upload/download speeds of at least 1 megabyte per second.

Setting Up a New Node​

  1. You need to choose a home folder $BNCHOME (i.e. ~/.bnbchaind) for BNB Beacon Chain. You can setup this by:
mkdir ~/.bnbchaind
mkdir ~/.bnbchaind/config
  1. Download app.toml, config.toml and genesis.json from https://github.com/bnb-chain/node/releases and copy them into $BNCHOME/config
wget   $(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/bnb-chain/node/releases/latest |grep browser_ |grep testnet_config |cut -d\" -f4)
unzip testnet_config.zip

You can edit this moniker later, in the ~/.bnbchaind/config/config.toml file:

# A custom human readable name for this node
moniker = "<your_custom_moniker>"
note

Monikers can contain only ASCII characters. Using Unicode characters will render your node unreachable.

Now your Full Node has been initialized.

  1. The genesis.json file will be downloaded along with the other config files in step #2.
tip

If you want to understand genesis file, click here

  1. Start your Full Node.
bnbchaind start &
note

Alternatively, if you choose a different $BNCHOME location and you are not using the suggested default ~/.bnbchaind, you may start the full node by using below script, where $BNCHOME is your selected directory.

Example: If you set /usr/local/beaconchain-testnet as your home directory. Run the Full Node with below command.

bnbchaind start --home /usr/local/beaconchain-testnet &

If you encounter any issue when running a Full Node, you should read the FAQ provided here.

Additional Configuration​

  • Seed node: Your Full Node needs to know how to find peers in the blockchain network. You'll need to add healthy seed nodes to $BNCHOME/config/config.toml. The recommended config.toml already contains links to some seed nodes. If those seeds aren't working, you can find more seeds and persistent peers in the HTTP API endpoints: https://testnet-dex.binance.org/api/v1/peers
  • Sync type: By default, new nodes will sync with state-sync mode. To change sync mode, read the instructions here
  • Log: The log file is under home- the directory specified when starting bnbchaind. The latest log file is bnc.log. The process will create a new log file every one hour. To make sure you have sufficient disk space to keep the log files, we strongly recommend you to change the log location by changing logFileRoot option in $BNCHOME/config/app.toml.
  • Service Port: RPC service listens on port 27147 and P2P service listens on port 27146 by default. Make sure these two ports are open before starting a full node, unless the full node has to listen on other ports.
  • Store: All the state and block data will store under $BNCHOME/data, do not delete or edit any of these files.

Get Extra Information From Your Fullnode​

If you have a Full Node running, then you can publish extra messages to local files.

Monitor Syncing Process​

You can verify if state sync is done by curl localhost:27147/status several times and see whether latest_block_height is increasing in response.

"sync_info": {
  ...
  "latest_block_height": "878092",
  "latest_block_time": "2019-04-15T00:01:22.610803768Z",
  ...
}

Prometheus Metrics​

Prometheus is enabled on port 28660 by default, and the endpoint is /metrics.

Testnet Tools​