Production Settings

This document explains how to set up a node for production. For the moment, this guide only covers RPM-based Linux distributions.

terrad does not require the super user account. We strongly recommend using a normal user to run terrad. However, during the setup process you'll need super user permission to create and modify some files.

This guide is for general purpose only. We recommend to read the Validator Handbook section for specifics on operating a validator node.

Firewall configuration

terrad uses several TCP ports for different purposes.

• 26656 is the default port for the P2P protocol. This port is opened in order to communicate with other nodes, and must be open to join a network. However, it does not have to be open to the public. For validator nodes, we recommend configuring persistent_peers and closing this port to the public.

• 26657 is the default port for the RPC protocol. This port is used for querying / sending transactions. In other words, this port needs to be opened for serving queries from terracli. It is safe to NOT to open this port to the public unless you are planning to run a public node.

• 1317 is the default port for Lite Client Daemon (LCD), which can be executed by terracli rest-server. LCD provides HTTP RESTful API layer to allow applications and services to interact with your terrad instance through RPC. Check https://lcd.terra.dev/swagger-ui/ for usage examples. You don't need to open this port unless you have use of it.

• 26660 is the default port for interacting with the Prometheus database which can be used for monitoring the environment. This port is not opened in the default configuration.

Increase maximum opened files

terrad can open more than 1024 files (which is default maximum) concurrently. You wil want to increase this limit.

Modify /etc/security/limits.conf to raise the nofile capability.

*                soft    nofile          65535
*                hard    nofile          65535

Running server as a daemon

There are several ways to run a node, and we recommend registering terrad as a systemd service.

Register terrad service

We have to make a service definition file in /etc/systemd/system directory.

Sample file: /etc/systemd/system/terrad.service

[Unit]
Description=Terra Daemon
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=terra
ExecStart=/data/terra/go/bin/terrad start
Restart=on-abort

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

[Service]
LimitNOFILE=65535

Modify the Service Section from the above given sample to suit your settings. Note that even if we raised the number of open files for a process, we still need the LimitNOFILE section.

After creating a service definition file, you need to execute systemctl daemon-reload.

Controlling the service

Use systemctl to control (start, stop, restart)

• Start: systemctl start terrad
• Stop: systemctl stop terrad
• Restart: systemctl restart terrad

Accessing logs

• Entire log: journalctl -t terrad
• Entire log reversed: journalctl -t terrad -r
• Latest and continuous: journalctl -t terrad -f