Iquidus Explorer Setup in 30 Minutes

The ultimate installation guide for the Iquidus Block Explorer. There are no up-to-date and complete guides on the internet. Here the all in one guide from 2020 incl. https certificate creation with Let’s Encrypt, MongoDB 4, PM2 process manager and troubleshooting section.

Pre-requisites

• VPS server with at least 2x CPU cores and 2 GB Ram
• Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or 20.04 LTS
• Create an A DNS record at your hosting provider for your explorer URL. (i.e. explorer.yourdomain.com)

Preparing the server

Install the latests updates

sudo apt update && sudo apt -y upgrade

When all updates are installed, reboot the server

sudo reboot

Install needed depencies and remove all unused packages

sudo apt -y install git libkrb5-dev nginx nano gnupg && sudo apt -y autoremove --purge

When it’s done, reboot the server

sudo reboot

Install the coin daemon

Install the daemon reboot safe and add the parameters in the config file. Use no special characters for the username and password! Only the local host have rpc access, so the username and password mustn’t be very difficult and long. Start and sync the blockchain.

rpcuser=username
rpcpassword=password
rpcallowip=127.0.0.1
rpcport=coin rpc port
server=1
txindex=1

Install the Mongo Database Server

We are using the MongoDB version 4.2

wget -qO - https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-4.2.asc | sudo apt-key add -

echo "deb [ arch=amd64,arm64 ] https://repo.mongodb.org/apt/ubuntu bionic/mongodb-org/4.2 multiverse" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-4.2.list && sudo apt update

sudo apt install -y mongodb-org

echo "mongodb-org hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
echo "mongodb-org-server hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
echo "mongodb-org-shell hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
echo "mongodb-org-mongos hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
echo "mongodb-org-tools hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections

Configure and run the MongoDB

sudo systemctl daemon-reload && sudo systemctl start mongod && sudo systemctl enable mongod && sudo systemctl status mongod

Create the explorer database

mongo
use explorerdb
db.createUser( { user: "Your-DB-User", pwd: "Your-DB-Password", roles: [ "readWrite" ] } )
exit

Install node.js and npm

sudo apt update && sudo apt -y install build-essential nodejs npm

Install the Iquidis Explorer

git clone https://github.com/iquidus/explorer.git

cd explorer && npm install --production

cp ./settings.json.template ./settings.json

Check that you have the directory “tmp” in the explorer directory. When not, create it.

mkdir tmp

Configure the Explorer

vi settings.json

The settings file is very well commented, so it’s useless to explain all here. I will explain only the most important things.

“address”: “127.0.0.1:3001”, –> “address”: “explorer.yourdomain.com”,

Don’t play around with the theme and logo setting right now.

// ensure links on API page are valid –> You will change it later when all is done and the explorer is up and running.

“block_parallel_tasks”: 1, –> Set this value to “35”. It’s speeds up the sync.

//genesis
“genesis_tx”: “65f705d2f385dc85763a317b3ec000063003d6b039546af5d8195a5ec27ae410”,
“genesis_block”: “b2926a56ca64e0cd2430347e383f63ad7092f406088b9b86d6d68c2a34baef51”,

You will find the genesis hashes in your wallet codebase, chainparams.cpp.

hashGenesisBlock = genesis_block
genesis.hashMerkleRoot = genesis_tx

Get it running

Start the application

npm start

The databases are created now. We will create indexes to speed up the db.
Stop the application with “Ctrl + C”

mongo
use explorerdb

db.txes.createIndex({total: 1})
db.txes.createIndex({total: -1})
db.txes.createIndex({blockindex: 1})
db.txes.createIndex({blockindex: -1})
db.addresstxes.createIndex({a_id: 1, blockindex: -1})
exit

Start the application.

npm start

Open a second terminal session (don’t touch the first session). Now we will sync the explorer. Note: It depends on your blockchain size, this process can run hours or days!

cd explorer && node scripts/sync.js index update reindex

Open web browser and check the frontend. http://explorer.yourdomain.com:3001

Wait now till the sync is done, don’t close any window. When the sync terminates, you will receive an exception and you have to Google what is the problem and how to fix it. For this we have no cookbook. With a correct working standard blockchain you will receive no problems.

When the chain is synced, you can sync the other components, it depends on your configuration.

node scripts/sync.js market

node scripts/peers.js

Finalization

We will make the application reboot safe and install as service. For this we’re using the “Process Manager 2” (PM2) tool.

Stop the application in your 1st terminal with “Ctrl + C”.

sudo npm install -g pm2

sudo pm2 start bin/cluster

sudo env PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin pm2 startup

sudo pm2 save && sudo systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl start pm2--> fill it with your service name (use tab)

Check that the serice is up and running.

sudo systemctl status pm2--> fill it with your service name (use tab)

Important commands to stop, start, restart, monitor the explorer application

pm2 stop

pm2 start

pm2 restart

pm2 monit

We will automate the scripts via cron

sudo crontab -e

*/5 * * * * cd /root/explorer && /usr/bin/nodejs scripts/sync.js index update > /dev/null 2>&1
*/7 * * * * cd /root/explorer && /usr/bin/nodejs scripts/sync.js market > /dev/null 2>&1
*/8 * * * * cd /root/explorer && /usr/bin/nodejs scripts/peers.js > /dev/null 2>&1

Nginx reverse proxy for security to run the app under port 80/443

We will remove the default nginx configuration and create a new one.

sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

sudo vi /etc/nginx/sites-available/explorer

Paste the config into the new file and change the server name with your URL.

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name explorer.yourdomain.com;

    location / {
        proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header   Host $http_host;
        proxy_pass         "http://127.0.0.1:3001";
    }
}

We will link our new nginx config.

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/explorer /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/explorer

And start the nginx reverse proxy.

sudo systemctl start nginx

Check: http://explorer.yourdomain.com

Secure your server

We will close all ports, except the ssh, http and https port.

ufw limit 22/tcp comment "Limit SSH "
ufw allow 22/tcp comment "SSH"
ufw allow http comment "HTTP"
ufw allow https comment "HTTPS"

Create a https certificate with Let’s Encrypt

Here an example to create a https certificate with Let’s Encrypt to have a secure browser session.

Add the certbot package repo. Press Enter to accept the key.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot

sudo apt install python-certbot-nginx

Obtaining an SSL Certificate. Replace the URL with yours.

sudo certbot --nginx -d explorer.yourdomain.com -d www.explorer.yourdomain.com

If that’s successful, certbot will ask how you’d like to configure your HTTPS settings.

Output
Please choose whether or not to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS, removing HTTP access.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1: No redirect - Make no further changes to the webserver configuration.
2: Redirect - Make all requests redirect to secure HTTPS access. Choose this for
new sites, or if you're confident your site works on HTTPS. You can undo this
change by editing your web server's configuration.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Select the appropriate number [1-2] then [enter] (press 'c' to cancel):

Choose here the option “2”.

Verifying Certbot Auto-Renewal

sudo certbot renew --dry-run

Now you have a running explorer with https security. We need to close the http port in the firewall, because we only want to accept http traffic.

sudo ufw status numbered
sudo ufw delete number from your http rule (IP v4 and IP v6 you have to delete)

Finally you can configure the design and the correct API links. Switch trough the templates and choose what you like, replace the logo and the favicon.

To set the API links correct, choose a block and fill the settings.conf with the relevant values from your chain.

Create in /public a file “robots.txt” to prevent that the web crawlers index the explorer into public search engines.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /address
Disallow: /api
Disallow: /transaction

Troubleshooting

Sync script error: Script already running

rm tmp/index.pid

Clean the MongoDB

You can drop the mongo db with the following commands. It’s required it the db is corrupt.

mongo  
use explorerdb

db.addresses.remove({})
db.addresses.drop()
db.coinstats.remove({})
db.coinstats.drop()
db.markets.remove({})
db.markets.drop()
db.peers.remove({})
db.peers.drop()
db.richlists.remove({})
db.richlists.drop()
db.txes.remove({})
db.txes.drop()
exit

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