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Getting Started

Before deploying HomestakerOS, you need to have a machine running Linux already. This will serve as the underlying fallback operating system. Any flavour of Linux will do, preferably a headless, minimal one like CoreOS.

In addition to the configuration via the frontend, we are going to need to format the drives manually and set up the necessary files. These files include things like the WireGuard interface configuration and the secret token that ensures a safe connection between the consensus client and the execution client.

The default user for the hosts built through HomeStakerOS is core.

Localization

Theoretically, this is the only configuration required to build a working system via the HomestakerOS Web UI. It includes setting the system's hostname and timezone.

For the hostname, ensure it contains only alphanumeric characters, hyphens, or underscores, with a length ranging from 1 to 63 characters.

You can find a list of valid timezone (TZ) identifiers here.

Mounts

To begin, we will format the drives to store the secrets and blockchain using the Btrfs filesystem. We prefer Btrfs due to its Copy-on-Write (COW) resource management technique, allowing efficient snapshot creation. For more information, you can check out this introduction to Btrfs.

Let's proceed with creating a Btrfs filesystem with subvolumes for secrets, Erigon and Lighthouse on a single hard drive or SSD. If you are unsure about whether your drive space is enough, you can check the current size of the mainnet Ethereum blockchain on ycharts.

  1. Check the available drives and partitions

    lsblk -e7

    This command displays information about the drives and partitions. Locate your target drive (e.g. nvme0n1). The '-e7' option filters out virtual block devices.

  2. Format the target drive with Btrfs

    mkfs.btrfs -l homestaker /dev/nvme0n1

    This command will format /dev/nvme0n1 as a partitionless Btrfs disk with the label "homestaker". Using a label simplifies referencing it in the frontend.

  3. Create the subvolumes

    mount /dev/nvme0n1 /mnt

    This command mounts the Btrfs filesystem located at /dev/nvme0n1 to the /mnt directory, enabling subvolume creation.

    btrfs subvolume create /mnt/addons
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/secrets
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/erigon
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/lighthouse

    These commands create three subvolumes named "addons", "secrets", "erigon" and "lighthouse" within the mounted Btrfs filesystem.

    umount /mnt

    This command unmounts the Btrfs filesystem mounted at /mnt.

  4. Mount the subvolumes

    mkdir /mnt/addons /mnt/secrets /mnt/erigon /mnt/lighthouse

    This command create mountpoints for each subvolume within the /mnt directory.

    mount -o subvol=addons /dev/nvme0n1 /mnt/addons
mount -o subvol=secrets /dev/nvme0n1 /mnt/secrets
mount -o subvol=erigon /dev/nvme0n1 /mnt/erigon
mount -o subvol=lighthouse /dev/nvme0n1 /mnt/lighthouse

    These commands mount each subvolume under the corresponding subdirectory. Once mounted, you can access the contents of each subvolume in their respective directories.

Frontend Configuration

Now that we have set up the drive as needed, we can define them as systemd mount units on the frontend at the mounts section.

To reference the formatted drive, we simply use the label we set. In this case, we can refer to it with /dev/disk/by-label/homestaker. Please note that we also need to add subvol options to the mount entries.

Create mount entry like this for each subvolume:

options -> subvol=<subvolumeName>
type    -> btrfs
what    -> /dev/disk/by-label/homestaker
where   -> /mnt/<subvolumeName>

Secrets

WireGuard

WireGuard is a free and open-source communication protocol. It allows us to connect each machine in our infrastructure via an encrypted virtual private network (VPN).

Note: This guide does not provide instructions on setting up the WireGuard server itself at the moment.

  1. Install the wireguard-tools

    apt-get install wireguard-tools

  2. Create a new key pair

    wg genkey | tee clientPrivateKey | wg pubkey > clientPublicKey

    This command will generate a new private key and derive a corresponding public key for it. These keys will be saved as clientPrivateKey and clientPublicKey.

  3. Create the configuration

    mkdir /mnt/secrets/wireguard
touch /mnt/secrets/wireguard/wg0.conf

    These commands will create a directory and the configuration file in the subvolume we created earlier.

Configuration File

Now that we have the keys and an empty configuration file, it is time to set the WireGuard configuration. Your configuration should look something like this:

[Interface]
Address = 192.168.1.120/32
PrivateKey = 0F3OWcop34EQOW+UpJnPkPCb3FKZbCY73U9T8ovo70s=

[Peer]
PublicKey = r4JYV53tLdbS/Yp50jgZpLQ0/snMtqBaFftN/Vcseh8=
AllowedIPs = 192.168.1.0/24
Endpoint = ponkila.com:51820
PersistentKeepalive = 25
Let's brake the configuration down..

[Interface]

  • Address = <serverIP>/32: This is the IP address of the WireGuard server. This is the IP address assigned to the server in the VPN network.
  • PrivateKey = <clientPrivateKey>: This is the private key we just generated for the WireGuard client. This key is used to authenticate the client.

[Peer]

  • PublicKey = <serverPublicKey>: This is the public key of the WireGuard tunnel. This key is used to authenticate the tunnel.
  • AllowedIPs = <AllowedIPs>: This field specifies the IP addresses or IP ranges that are allowed to be accessed through the WireGuard tunnel.
  • Endpoint = <serverEndpoint>:51820: This is the IP address or hostname of the WireGuard server endpoint. The 51820 is the default WireGuard port.
  • PersistentKeepalive = 25: This option ensures that the connection stays active by sending a keepalive signal every 25 seconds.

For more information: https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/wg.8.html

Frontend Configuration

All we need to do at the frontend is enable the WireGuard and specify the path to the configuration file we created earlier. In this case, the value should be set to /mnt/secrets/wireguard/wg0.conf.

JWT

The HTTP connection between your beacon node and execution node needs to be authenticated using a JSON Web Token (JWT). There are several ways to generate this token, but let's keep it simple and create it using the OpenSSL command line tool.

  1. Generate the JWT

    openssl rand -hex 32 | tr -d "\n" > "jwt.hex"

    This command generates a random 32-byte hexadecimal string and saves it to a file named jwt.hex.

  2. Copy the JWT to the subvolumes of the nodes

    cp jwt.hex /mnt/erigon
cp jwt.hex /mnt/lighthouse
rm jwt.hex

    These commands will copy the generated JWT to both the "erigon" and "lighthouse" subvolumes we created earlier and then remove the original file.

Frontend Configuration

To enable communication between the clients, you need to specify the path to the jwt.hex file we generated earlier. Any clients that you want to be able to communicate with each other should share the same JWT secret.

In this case, we would set the jwtSecretFile option to /mnt/erigon/jwt.hex for the Erigon client and /mnt/lighthouse/jwt.hex for the Lighthouse client.

SSH

OpenSSH is a network protocol that offers a secure method for accessing and managing remote computers and servers over an unsecured network, such as the internet. Since we are dealing with a headless system, we communicate with it through SSH (Secure Shell). To do this, our machine needs its own SSH key pair.

Let's create a directory to store the SSH keys at /mnt/secrets/ssh:

mkdir /mnt/secrets/ssh

The keys can be manually created and placed there, but if absent, NixOS will generate the keys automatically. If you choose to place it manually, please note that the keys should be in Ed25519 format.

You can generate the keys manually by running the following command:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f /mnt/secrets/ssh/id_ed25519 -N ""

Frontend Configuration

Regardless of the key creation method, make sure to configure the privateKeyFile option under the SSH section in the frontend configuration. This should be set to the path of the private SSH key file. In this case, it should be set to /mnt/secrets/ssh/id_ed25519.

The configured hosts allow only passwordless SSH login. Therefore, you should set the authorizedKeys, which is a list of the public SSH keys you want to authorize for SSH access to the system. This option corresponds to the /etc/ssh/authorized_keys file in a traditional Linux system.

Addons

SSV-node

The ssv.network is a fully decentralized, open-source, and trustless DVT Network that provides a reusable infrastructure solution for decentralizing Ethereum validators.

  1. Generate a key pair

    nix run .#init-ssv -- <hostname>

  2. Transfer the private key securely to the target machine to the path you have configured at the frontend

  3. Register an SSV operator

    You can register an operator on the HomestakerOS Web UI or alternatively by following the instructions by ssv.network.

  4. Kernel execute to activate

Web UI

Now that the target machine is pre-configured, we can proceed to create the NixOS boot media using the Web UI frontend. For running the Web UI, prefer a machine within the same network as your nodes, since the frontend has capability to interact with your nodes.

  1. Install Nix: nixos.org

  2. Create a template out of HomestakerOS repository

  3. Clone your new repository

    git clone [email protected]:<username>/HomestakerOS.git && cd HomestakerOS

  4. Enter in a development environment

    • With Nix: nix develop
    • With direnv: direnv allow

  5. Start the Web UI

    , server

  6. Open a command runner in a new terminal

    tail -f pipe | sh

    The frontend runs its commands through this, leave it open for functionality.

  7. Check it out

    Go to http://localhost:8081 to start using the Web UI.

After you have configured your target machine, hit the #BUIDL button to build the host. Your host will appear under "Nodes" tab where you can edit and download the boot media files. Please upstream the Nix files to your GitHub repository after you are done with creating and editing your nodes, the Web UI will automatically stage them for you.

Deployment

For deployment, we will use the kexec (kernel execute) method, which allows loading and booting into another kernel without a power cycle.

It's important to note that HomestakerOS is running entirely on RAM. Therefore, any user-generated directories and files will not persist across reboots or power cycles.

Obtain the boot media files for the target machine created via the Web UI and then proceed with the following steps:

  1. Install the kexec-tools

    apt-get install kexec-tools

  2. Kernel execute

    sudo ./kexec-boot

    This command will execute the kexec-boot script, which will "reboot" the machine into HomestakerOS.

At this point, we should not need to access the underlying operating system again unless serious problems occur. To update the system, obtain the boot media files to the HomestakerOS and execute the kexec-boot script again to kexec the machine into a up-to-date version.