Once I wanted to run a Bitcoin node inside a docker container. To configure a computer to run a Bitcoin is not an easy task. There are many dependencies you have to install & there are several configurations to setup. I have been going through those troubles few times & decided to move Bitcoin node into a Docker environment. So everything I have to do is build the docker image & run it.

If you want to have a look, the repository is here bitcoin-rb.

To make things easier & clear I am going to use a docker-compose.yml file.

version: '2'

services:
  app:
    build: ./app
    volumes:
      - ./app:/app
    command:
      -printtoconsole
      -testnet=1
      -rest
      -rpcallowip=0.0.0.0/0
      -rpcpassword=bar
      -rpcport=18333
      -rpcuser=foo
      -server
    ports:
      - 18333:18333

So basically I have a directory called app & I include my Dockerfile inside that app folder and also I am using a volume otherwise the blocks I already synced will be gone once I stop my docker container. And there are several commands you can pass when you start the Bitcoin node.

printtoconsole - Send trace/debug info to console instead of debug.log file

testnet = 1 - Use the test chain instead of main network

rest - Accept public REST requests (default: 0)

rpcallowip - Allow JSON-RPC connections from specified source. Valid for are a single IP (e.g. 1.2.3.4), a network/netmask (e.g. 1.2.3.4/255.255.255.0) or a network/CIDR (e.g. 1.2.3.4/24). This option can be specified multiple times

rpcpassword - Password for JSON-RPC connections

rpcport - Listen for JSON-RPC connections on (default: 8332 or testnet: 18332)

rpcuser - Username for JSON-RPC connections

server - Accept command line and JSON-RPC commands

Here is the full list of commands you can use - Commands

This is the Dockerfile with everything installed

FROM ubuntu:16.04

# Install bitcoind from PPA
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install --yes software-properties-common
RUN add-apt-repository --yes ppa:bitcoin/bitcoin
RUN apt-get update

# install bitcoind (from PPA) and make
RUN apt-get install --yes bitcoind

# copy bitcoin.conf
ADD . /home/bitcoind-testnet

# WORKDIR sets the working directory for any RUN, CMD, ENTRYPOINT, COPY and ADD instructions that follow
WORKDIR /home/bitcoind-testnet

ENTRYPOINT ["bitcoind"]

This Dockerfile is installing bitcoind on a ubuntu image & will make the directory to run the node.

After you create the docker-compose.yml file & Dockerfile inside /app directory, you are good to run the Bitcoin node. In the root directory run,

docker-compose build
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml up

That’s it. You will see the Bitcoin node is starting up & start syncing the blocks.

But you will face not enough space inside docker VM if you run Bitcoin live node inside a docker container. Because Bitcoin live is more than 200GB. But you can easily use this way to run Bitcoin testnet for testing purposes.

Cheers,

DilumN