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Run a Full Node using Binaries

This tutorial guides you through starting and running a full node using binaries. For the system requirements, see the Minimum Technical Requirements guide.

Snapshots

Steps in this guide involve waiting for the Heimdall and Bor services to fully sync. This process takes several days to complete.

Please use snapshots for faster syncing without having to sync over the network. For detailed instructions, see Snapshot Instructions for Heimdall and Bor.

For snapshot download links, see the Polygon Chains Snapshots page.

Overview​

  • Prepare the machine
  • Install Heimdall and Bor binaries on the full node machine
  • Set up Heimdall and Bor services on the full node machine
  • Configure the full node machine
  • Start the full node machine
  • Check node health with the community
note

You have to follow the exact outlined sequence of actions, otherwise you will run into issues.

Install build-essential​

This is required for your full node. In order to install, run the below command:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential

Install Binaries​

Polygon node consists of 2 layers: Heimdall and Bor. Heimdall is a tendermint fork that monitors contracts in parallel with the Ethereum network. Bor is basically a Geth fork that generates blocks shuffled by Heimdall nodes.

Both binaries must be installed and run in the correct order to function properly.

Heimdall​

Install the latest version of Heimdall and related services. Make sure you checkout to the correct release version. Note that the latest version, Heimdall v.0.3.0, contains enhancements such as:

  1. Restricting data size in state sync txs to:
    • 30Kb when represented in bytes
    • 60Kb when represented as string
  2. Increasing the delay time between the contract events of different validators to ensure that the mempool doesn't get filled very quickly in case of a burst of events which can hamper the progress of the chain.

The following example shows how the data size is restricted:

Data - "abcd1234"
Length in string format - 8
Hex Byte representation - [171 205 18 52]
Length in byte format - 4

To install Heimdall, run the below commands:

curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/maticnetwork/install/main/heimdall.sh | bash -s -- <heimdall_version> <network_type> <node_type>

heimdall_version: valid v0.3+ release tag from https://github.com/maticnetwork/heimdall/releases network_type: mainnet and mumbai node_type: sentry

That will install the heimdalld and heimdallcli binaries. Verify the installation by checking the Heimdall version on your machine:

heimdalld version --long

Configure heimdall seeds (Mainnet)​

sed -i 's|^seeds =.*|seeds = "[email protected]:26656,[email protected]:26656,[email protected]:26656,[email protected]:26656,[email protected]:26656,[email protected]:26656,[email protected]:26656,[email protected]:26656,[email protected]:26656"|g' /var/lib/heimdall/config/config.toml
chown heimdall /var/lib/heimdall

Configure heimdall seeds (Mumbai)​

sed -i 's|^seeds =.*|seeds = "[email protected]:26656,[email protected]:26656,[email protected]:26656"|g' /var/lib/heimdall/config/config.toml
chown heimdall /var/lib/heimdall

Bor install​

Install the latest version of Bor, based on valid v0.3+ released version.

curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/maticnetwork/install/main/bor.sh | bash -s -- <bor_version> <network_type> <node_type>

bor_version: valid v0.3+ release tag from https://github.com/maticnetwork/bor/releases network_type: mainnet and mumbai node_type: sentry

That will install the bor binary. Verify the installation by checking the Bor version on your machine:

bor version

Configure bor seeds (mainnet)​

sed -i 's|.*\[p2p.discovery\]|  \[p2p.discovery\] |g' /var/lib/bor/config.toml
sed -i 's|.*bootnodes =.*|    bootnodes = ["enode://0cb82b395094ee4a2915e9714894627de9ed8498fb881cec6db7c65e8b9a5bd7f[email protected]44.232.55.71:30303","enode://88116f4295f5a31538ae409e4d44ad40d22e44ee9342869e7d68bdec55b0f83c1[email protected]159.203.9.164:30303","enode://4be7248c3a12c5f95d4ef5fff37f7c44ad1072fdb59701b2e5987c5f3846ef448[email protected]3.93.224.197:30303","enode://32dd20eaf75513cf84ffc9940972ab17a62e88ea753b0780ea5eca9f40f925406[email protected]3.212.183.151:30303"]|g' /var/lib/bor/config.toml
chown bor /var/lib/bor

Configure bor seeds (mumbai)​

sed -i 's|.*\[p2p.discovery\]|  \[p2p.discovery\] |g' /var/lib/bor/config.toml
sed -i 's|.*bootnodes =.*|    bootnodes = ["enode://320553cda00dfc003f499a3ce9598029f364fbb3ed1222fdc20a94d97dcc4d8ba[email protected]54.147.31.250:30303","enode://f0f48a8781629f95ff02606081e6e43e4aebd503f3d07fc931fad7dd5ca1ba52b[email protected]34.226.134.117:30303"]|g' /var/lib/bor/config.toml
chown bor /var/lib/bor

Update service config user permission​

sed -i 's/User=heimdall/User=root/g' /lib/systemd/system/heimdalld.service
sed -i 's/User=bor/User=root/g' /lib/systemd/system/bor.service

Start Services​

Run the full Heimdall node with these commands on your Sentry Node:

sudo service heimdalld start

Now, you need to make sure that Heimdall is synced completely, and then only start Bor. If you start Bor without Heimdall syncing completely, you will run into issues frequently.

To check if Heimdall is synced

  1. On the remote machine/VM, run curl localhost:26657/status
  2. In the output, catching_up value should be false

Once Heimdall is synced, run the below command:

sudo service bor start

Logs​

Logs can be managed by the journalctl linux tool. Here is a tutorial for advanced usage: How To Use Journalctl to View and Manipulate Systemd Logs.

Check Heimdall node logs

journalctl -u heimdalld.service -f

Check Heimdall Rest-server logs

journalctl -u heimdalld-rest-server.service -f

Check Bor Rest-server logs

journalctl -u bor.service -f

Ports and Firewall Setup​

Open ports 22, 26656 and 30303 to world (0.0.0.0/0) on sentry node firewall.

You can use VPN to restrict access for port 22 as per your requirement and security guidelines.