Lisk is a next generation crypto-currency and decentralized application platform, written entirely in JavaScript. The official documentation about the whole ecosystem can be found in https://lisk.io/documentation.

Lisk Core is the program that implements the Lisk Protocol. In other words, Lisk Core is what every machine needs to set-up in order to run a node that allows for participation in the network.

This document details how to install Lisk Core from source, but there are two other ways to participate in the network: binaries and Docker images. If you have satisfied the requirements from the Pre-Installation section, you can jumpt directly to the next section Installation Steps.

• Pre-Installation
  • Create lisk user
  • Tool Chain Components
  • Git
  • Node.JS
  • PostgreSQL
  • Redis (optional)
• Installation
• Managing Lisk
• Configuring Lisk
  • Structure
  • Command Line Options
  • Examples
• Tests
  • Preparing Node
  • Running Tests

The next section details the prerequisites to install Lisk Core from source using the different tagged releases.

• Ubuntu:

sudo adduser lisk

Note: The lisk user itself does not need any sudo rights to run Lisk Core.

Used for compiling dependencies.

• Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y python build-essential curl automake autoconf libtool ntp

• MacOS 10.12-10.13 (Sierra/High Sierra):

Make sure that you have both XCode and Homebrew installed on your machine.

Update homebrew and install dependencies:

brew update
brew doctor
brew install curl automake autoconf libtool

Used for cloning and updating Lisk

• Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install -y git

• MacOS 10.12-10.13 (Sierra/High Sierra):

brew install git

Node.js serves as the underlying engine for code execution.

Install System wide via package manager:

• Ubuntu:

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

• MacOS 10.12-10.13 (Sierra/High Sierra):

brew install [email protected]

Especially when installing on Ubuntu, check if you have a compatible node version runnging:

node -v

Compare with package.json

Best practice to manage node version is to install a node version manager like nvm or n.

1. Login as lisk user, that has been created in the first step:

su - lisk

2. Install nvm following these instructions
3. Install the correct version of Node.js using nvm:

nvm install 8.12.0

For the following steps, logout from the 'lisk' user again with CTRL+D, and continue with your user with sudo rights.

PM2 manages the node process for Lisk.

npm install -g pm2

• Ubuntu:

Firstly, download and install postgreSQL 9.6:

wget --quiet -O - https://www.postgresql.org/media/keys/ACCC4CF8.asc | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt/ $( lsb_release -cs )-pgdg main" |sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgdg.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --assume-yes postgresql-9.6 postgresql-contrib-9.6 libpq-dev

After installation, you should see the postgres database cluster, by running

  pg_lsclusters

Drop the existing database cluster, and replace it with a cluster with the locale en_US.UTF-8:

  sudo pg_dropcluster --stop 9.6 main
  sudo pg_createcluster --locale en_US.UTF-8 --start 9.6 main

Create a new database user called lisk and grant it rights to create databases:

  sudo -u postgres createuser --createdb lisk

Create the databases for Testnet and Mainnet:

  createdb -O lisk lisk_test
  createdb -O lisk lisk_main

Change 'password' to a secure password of your choice.

sudo -u postgres psql -d lisk_test -c "alter user lisk with password 'password';"
sudo -u postgres psql -d lisk_main -c "alter user lisk with password 'password';"

• MacOS 10.12-10.13 (Sierra/High Sierra):

brew install [email protected]
initdb /usr/local/var/postgres --encoding utf8 --locale=en_US.UTF-8
brew services start [email protected]
createdb lisk_test
createdb lisk_main

If you do not plan to use the API of your node for some reason, you can skip this step.

Redis is an optional dependency, that caches database queries that need to be done to answer API requests.

It is recommended to install Redis to improve the performance of API responses.

• Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install redis-server

Start redis:

service redis start

Stop redis:

service redis stop

• MacOS 10.12-10.13 (Sierra/High Sierra):

brew install redis

Start redis:

brew services start redis

Stop redis:

brew services stop redis

NOTE: Lisk does not run on the Redis default port of 6379. Instead it is configured to run on port: 6380. Because of this, in order for Lisk to run, you have one of two options:

1. Change the Redis launch configuration

Update the launch configuration file on your system. Note that there are a number of ways to do this.

The following is one example:

1. Stop redis-server
2. Edit the file redis.conf and change: port 6379 to port 6380
   • Ubuntu: /etc/redis/redis.conf
   • MacOS: /usr/local/etc/redis.conf
3. Start redis-server

Now confirm that redis is running on port 6380:

redis-cli -p 6380
ping

And you should get the result PONG.

2. Change the Lisk configuration

To update the redis port in the Lisk configuration, check the section Configuring Lisk

Clone the Lisk Core repository using Git and initialize the modules.

git clone https://github.com/LiskHQ/lisk.git
cd lisk
git checkout master
npm install

To test Lisk is built and configured correctly, issue the following command:

node app.js

This will start the lisk instance with devnet configuration. Once the process is verified as running correctly, CTRL+C and start the process with pm2. This will fork the process into the background and automatically recover the process if it fails.

pm2 start --name lisk app.js

After the process is started, its runtime status and log location can be retrieved by issuing the following command:

pm2 show lisk

To stop Lisk after it has been started with pm2, issue the following command:

pm2 stop lisk

NOTE: The port, address and config-path can be overridden by providing the relevant command switch:

pm2 start --name lisk app.js -- -p [port] -a [address] -c [config-path] -n [network]

You can pass any of devnet, alphanet, betanet, testnet or mainnet for the network option.

1. The Lisk configuration is managed under different folder structures.
2. Root folder for all configuration is ./config/.
3. Default configuration file that used as base is config/default/config.json
4. You can find network specific configurations under config/<network>/config.json
5. Don't override any value in above mentioned files if you need custom configuration.
6. Create your own json file and pass it as command line options -c or LISK_CONFIG_FILE
7. Configurations will be loaded in following order, lowest in the list have highest priority:
   • Default configuration file
   • Network specific configuration file
   • Custom configuration file (if specified by user)
   • Command line configurations, specified as command flags or env variables
8. Any config option of array type gets completely overridden. If you specify one peer at peers.list in your custom config file, it will replace every default peer for the network.
9. For development use devnet as the network option.

There are plenty of options available that you can use to override configuration on runtime while starting the lisk.

node app.js [options]

Each of that option can be appended on command line. There are also few ENV variables that can be utilized for this purpose.

--network
-n

--config
 -c

--port
 -p

--http-port
 -h

--address
 -a

--log
 -l

--database
 -d

--redis
 -r

--peers
 -p

--snapshot
 -s

• All ENV variables restricted with operating system constraint of ENV variable maximum length.
• Comma separated lists will replace the original config values. e.g. If you specify LISK_PEERS, original peers.list specific to network will be replaced completely.

For more detail understanding of configuration read this online documentation

Update the redis.port configuration attribute in config/devnet/config.json or any other network you want to configure.

1. Recreate the database in order to run the tests against a new blockchain:

dropdb lisk_dev
createdb lisk_dev

2. Launch Lisk (runs on port 4000):

NODE_ENV=test node app.js

Tests are run using the following command:

npm test -- mocha:<tag>:<suite>:[section]

• Where tag can be one of default | unstable | slow | extensive (required)
• Where suite can be one of unit | integration | functional | network (required)
• Where section depending of the chosen suite can be:
  • when functional --> get | post | ws (optional)

Examples:

npm test -- mocha:slow:unit
npm test -- mocha:extensive:integration
npm test -- mocha:default:functional
npm test -- mocha:unstable:functional:get
npm test -- mocha:untagged:network

Individual test files can be run using the following command:

npm run mocha -- path/to/test.js

There are couple of command line scripts that facilitate users of lisk to perform handy operations. All scripts are located under ./scripts/ directory and can be executed directly by node scripts/<file_name>.

This script will help you to generate unified version of configuration file for any network. Here is the usage of the script:

Usage: generate_config [options]

Options:

-h, --help               output usage information
-V, --version            output the version number
-c, --config [config]    custom config file
-n, --network [network]  specify the network or use LISK_NETWORK

Argument network is required and can by devnet, testnet, mainnet or any other network folder available under ./config directory.

This script keep track of all changes introduced in Lisk over time in different versions. If you have one config file in any of specific version and you want to make it compatible with other version of the Lisk, this scripts will do it for you.

Usage: update_config [options] <input_file> <from_version> [to_version]

Options:

-h, --help               output usage information
-V, --version            output the version number
-n, --network [network]  specify the network or use LISK_NETWORK
-o, --output [output]    output file path

As you can see from the usage guide, input_file and from_version are required. If you skip to_version argument changes in config.json will be applied up to the latest version of Lisk Core. If you do not specify --output path the final config.json will be printed to stdout. If you do not specify --network argument you will have to load it from LISK_NETWORK env variable.

This script is really useful in development. It will initialize the components of Lisk and load these into Node.js REPL.

node scripts/console.js

initApplication: Application initialization inside test environment started...
initApplication: Target database - lisk_dev
initApplication: Rewired modules available
initApplication: Fake onBlockchainReady event called
initApplication: Loading delegates...
initApplication: Delegates loaded from config file - 101
initApplication: Done
lisk-core [lisk_dev] >

Once you get the prompt, you can use modules, helpers, logic, db and config objects and play with these in REPL.

We used newrelic to monitor the activities inside application. It enables to have detail insight of the system and keep track of performance of each activity. e.g. An HTTP API call or a background job from queue.

To enable the performance monitoring on your node make sure you have an environment variable NEW_RELIC_LICENSE_KEY available and set and then start the node normally. The monitoring data will be visible to your newrelic account with the name of the network you started. e.g. lisk-mainnet, lisk-testnet.

https://github.com/LiskHQ/lisk/graphs/contributors

Copyright © 2016-2018 Lisk Foundation

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

This program also incorporates work previously released with lisk 0.9.11 (and earlier) versions under the MIT License. To comply with the requirements of that license, the following permission notice, applicable to those parts of the code only, is included below:

Copyright © 2016-2018 Lisk Foundation Copyright © 2015 Crypti

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.