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Setup a new host on Linux

This guide will walk you through setting up hostd on Linux. At the end of this guide, you should have the following:

  • Installed Sia hostd software

  • Functional hostd Node

  • Created a hostd wallet

Pre-requisites

  • Network Access: hostd interacts with the Sia network, so you need a stable internet connection and open network access to connect to the Sia blockchain.

  • Operating System Compatibility: Ensure your Linux version is compatible with the hostd software. To do this, run uname -m in your Terminal Emulator.

    • x86_64 - Linux AMD64

    • aarch64 - Linux ARM64

  • System Updates: Ensure that your Linux is up to date with the latest system updates, as these updates can contain important security fixes and improvements.

  • Hardware Requirements: Your machine must meet the minimum requirements for hosting on Sia. Not meeting these requirements may result in not receiving contracts from renters or risk losing Siacoins as a penalty. Hosting on Sia is a commitment that requires some technical knowledge and a stable setup, such as:

    • A Linux distro (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch, etc)

    • A quad-core CPU

    • 8GB of RAM

    • An SSD with at least 128GB of free space.

    • Additional storage space to rent out

Install hostd

Download the latest version of hostd for your operating system from the official website. For this guide, we'll be downloading the Linux version of hostd.

  1. Open a terminal and download the latest version of hostd for your operating system.

wget https://sia.tech/downloads/latest/hostd_linux_amd64.zip

  1. Now that we have downloaded hostd, we can unzip and extract the hostd binary to our /usr/local/bin directory

unzip -j hostd_linux_amd64.zip hostd &&\
sudo mv -t /usr/local/bin hostd &&\
rm -rf hostd_linux_amd64.zip

  1. Create a new folder called hostd. This will hold all the runtime files hostd generates and uses.

    mkdir /path/to/hostd/folder

Configuring hostd

hostd uses BIP-39 12-word recovery phrases. It does not support legacy 28/29-word siad seeds.

  1. Before running the hostd configuration wizard, make sure to cd into the hostd runtime folder you created in the last section. Then run the hostd configuration wizard. This will generate a hostd.yml file that is used by hostd on start-up.

    cd /path/to/hostd/folder
hostd config

Start hostd

  1. Once you have completed the configuration wizard, you can now start hostd.

    cd /path/to/hostd/folder
hostd

Accessing the UI

For users with a desktop environment, you can open a browser to http://localhost:9980 to access the hostd UI.

If you do not have a desktop environment:

  1. Find your server's LAN IP using ip addr, ifconfig, etc.

  2. Switch to another computer in your LAN and open the browser

  3. Type your LAN IP followed by :9980 in the address bar (e.g. http://192.168.1.50:9980)

Updating

It is very important to keep your host up to date. New versions of hostd are released regularly and contain bug fixes and performance improvements.

To update:

  1. Stop hostd.

  2. Download the latest version of hostd.

wget https://sia.tech/downloads/latest/hostd_linux_amd64.zip

  1. Unzip and replace hostd with the new version.

unzip -j hostd_linux_amd64.zip hostd &&\
sudo mv -t /usr/local/bin hostd &&\
rm -rf hostd_linux_amd64.zip

  1. Start hostd.

    cd /path/to/hostd/folder
hostd

Congratulations, you have successfully updated your version of hostd!

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