How to install and run a Geth node

• Geth is the official client software provided by the Ethereum foundation.
• Comes with a JavaScript console (run it with `geth console`).
• Has an interoperable JavaScript client (web3js).
• Built-in access to the Rinkeby test net (or build your own private Ethereum network).
• It is generally considered to be the reference implementation for other Ethereum nodes.

Note: You can use a mounted drive, but may suffer strange performance issues such as dropped blocks or slow syncing.

Storage requirement keeps on increasing everyday as the blockchain increases, the most expensive storage requirement at the time when this guide was written is to run a n archive node with Fat DB enabled which is more than 4TB.

$ brew tap ethereum/ethereum
$ brew install ethereum

$ brew tap ethereum/ethereum
$ brew install ethereum

$ brew install ethereum --devel

$ brew install ethereum --devel

$ geth --help.

$ geth --help.

$ sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ethereum/ethereum

$ sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ethereum/ethereum

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install ethereum

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install ethereum

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install ethereum-unstable

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install ethereum-unstable

$ geth --help.

$ geth --help.

• ethereum/client-go:latest is the latest development version of Geth
• ethereum/client-go:stable is the latest stable version of Geth
• ethereum/client-go:{version} is the stable version of Geth at a specific version number
• ethereum/client-go:release-{version} is the latest stable version of Geth at a particular version family

$ docker pull ethereum/client-go:latest

$ docker run ethereum/client-go:latest

$ docker pull ethereum/client-go:latest

$ docker run ethereum/client-go:latest

• 8545 TCP, used by the HTTP based JSON RPC API
• 8546 TCP, used by the WebSocket based JSON RPC API
• 30303 TCP and UDP, used by the P2P protocol running the network
• 30304 UDP, used by the P2P protocol's new peer discovery overlay

Note: if you are running an Ethereum client inside a docker container, you might want to mount in a data volume as the client’s data directory (located at /root/.ethereum inside the container) to ensure that downloaded data is preserved between restarts and/or container life-cycles.

• For seeing all other flags and general help:

$ geth --help

$ geth --help

• To enable the HTTP server

$ geth --http

$ geth --http

• To configure the location of the data directory

--datadir={pathtodirectory}

--datadir={pathtodirectory}

• To enable mining

--mine 

--mine 

• To enable the WS-RPC server.

--ws 

--ws 

• To treat accounts as local (comma-separated accounts as value)

--txpool.locals value    

--txpool.locals value    

• To set a cap on transaction fee (in ether) that can be sent via the RPC APIs (0 = no cap) (default: 1)

--rpc.txfeecap value 

--rpc.txfeecap value 

• To set a cap on gas that can be used in eth_call/estimateGas (0=infinite) (default: 50000000)

--rpc.gascap value

--rpc.gascap value

• To set the number of recent blocks to maintain transactions index for (default = about one year, 0 = entire chain) (default: 2350000)

--txlookuplimit value    

--txlookuplimit value    

• If there is no local wallet activity, we can disable the txpool journal:

--txpool.journal ""        # Disk journal for local transaction to survive node restarts (default: "transactions.rlp")

--txpool.journal ""        # Disk journal for local transaction to survive node restarts (default: "transactions.rlp")

• If there is sufficient available memory, increasing the cache can speed up the sync

--cache 2048               # Megabytes of memory allocated to internal caching (default: 1024)

--cache 2048               # Megabytes of memory allocated to internal caching (default: 1024)

• To unlock accounts (comma separated accounts as value)

--unlock value 

--unlock value 

• To disable the IPC-RPC server.

--ipcdisable

--ipcdisable

• To setup Blockchain sync mode ("fast", "full", or "light") (default: fast)

--syncmode value

--syncmode value

• To enable metrics collection and reporting.

--metrics

--metrics

• Other things that can be bumped up for performance:

--txpool.accountslots 32   # Minimum number of executable transaction slots guaranteed per account (default: 16)
--txpool.globalslots 8192  # Maximum number of executable transaction slots for all accounts (default: 4096)
--txpool.accountqueue 128  # Maximum number of non-executable transaction slots permitted per account (default: 64)
--txpool.globalqueue 2048  # Maximum number of non-executable transaction slots for all accounts (default: 1024)

--txpool.accountslots 32   # Minimum number of executable transaction slots guaranteed per account (default: 16)
--txpool.globalslots 8192  # Maximum number of executable transaction slots for all accounts (default: 4096)
--txpool.accountqueue 128  # Maximum number of non-executable transaction slots permitted per account (default: 64)
--txpool.globalqueue 2048  # Maximum number of non-executable transaction slots for all accounts (default: 1024)