Lisk

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.

Index

• 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

Pre-Installation

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

System Install

Create new user lisk

• Ubuntu:

sudo adduser lisk

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

Tool chain components

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

Git

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

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

Install System wide via package manager:

• Ubuntu:

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_6.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

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

brew install node@6.14.1

Check correct version

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.

nvm (recommended)

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 6.14.1

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

PM2 (recommended)

PM2 manages the node process for Lisk.

npm install -g pm2

PostgreSQL:

• 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 postgresql@9.6
initdb /usr/local/var/postgres --encoding utf8 --locale=en_US.UTF-8
brew services start postgresql@9.6
createdb lisk_test
createdb lisk_main

Redis (optional)

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

Installation

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

Managing Lisk

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

Configuring Lisk

Structure

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.

Command Line Options

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.

Option	ENV Variable	Config Option	Description
--network -n	LISK_NETWORK		Which configurations set to use, associated to lisk networks. Any of this option can be used devnet, alphanet, betanet, testnet and mainnet. Default value is devnet.
--config -c	LISK_CONFIG_FILE		Path the custom configuration file, which will override values of config/default/config.json
--port -p	LISK_WS_PORT	wsPort	TCP port for P2P layer
--http-port -h	LISK_HTTP_PORT	httpPort	TCP port for HTTP API
--address -a		address	Listening host name or ip
--database -d		db.database	PostgreSQL database name to connect
--peers -p	LISK_PEERS	peers.list	Comma separated list of peers to connect in the format 192.168.99.100:5000,172.169.99.77:5000
--log -l	LISK_CONSOLE_LOG_LEVEL	consoleLogLevel	Log level for lisk for console output
--snapshot -s			Number of round for which take the snapshot. If none specified it will use the highest round available.

For more detail understanding of configuration read this online documentation

Examples

Change Redis Port

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

Tests

Preparing Node

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

Running Tests

Tests are run using the following command:

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

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

Examples:

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

Individual test files can be run using the following command:

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

Contributors

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

License

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/.

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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.