Various¶

Activate fundraiser account¶

Participants in the fundraiser you can activate their account at https://check.tezos.com/. This feature is also included in some of the various wallets.

If you have any question or issue refer to that page or to the Tezos foundation for support.

Command line activation¶

It is possible to utilize tezos-client to activate your account,

As these transactions involve live XTZs ,you should have a very good understanding of key management in Tezos and be familiar with the command-line as mistakes can be very costly.

The first step is to recover your private key using the following command which will ask for:

the email address used during the fundraiser
the 14 word mnemonic of your paper wallet
the password used to protect the paper wallet

tezos-client import fundraiser key alice

After the required information is entered, the tezos-client computes the secret key and asks you to create a new password in order to store your store your key on the encrypted disk.

If your fundraiser account was not activated via the website, you can use the following command with the activation code obtained from the Tezos foundation.

tezos-client activate fundraiser account alice with <code>

Like explained above, your keys are stored under ~/.tezos-client. We strongly advice you to first make a backup and then transfer your tokens to a new pair of keys imported from a ledger (see ledger).

Check the balance with:

tezos-client get balance for alice

Admin Client¶

The admin client gives access to more commands to interact with the peer-to-peer layer in order to:

check the status of the connections
force connections to known peers
ban/unban peers

A useful command to debug a node that is not syncing is:

tezos-admin-client p2p stat

Ledger Support¶

Disclaimer: Ledger support is still in development,Check frequently for updates.

It is possible and advised to use a hardware wallet to manage your keys, Tezos’ client supports the Ledger Nano S provided that you have the Tezos app installed. The app is developed by Obsidian Systems and they provide a comprehensive `tutorial on how to install it.

<https://github.com/obsidiansystems/ledger-app-tezos>`_

Ledger Manager¶

The preferred way to set up your Ledger is to install the Ledger Manager extension on a Chrome browser. On Linux makes sure you correctly set up your udev rules as explained here. Connect your ledger, unlock it and go the dashboard. In the Ledger Manager enable developer items in the bottom right, install Tezos Wallet from the applications list and open it on the device.

Tezos Wallet app¶

Now on the client we can import the keys (make sure the device is in the Tezos Wallet app):

./tezos-client list connected ledgers

You can follow the instructions to import the ledger private key and you can choose between the root or a derived address. We can confirm the addition by listing known addresses.

./tezos-client import secret key my_ledger ledger://tz1XXXXXXXXXX
./tezos-client list known addresses

Optional: we can check that our ledger signs correctly using the following command and confirming on the device:

tezos-client show ledger path ledger://tz1XXXXXXXXXX

The address can now be used as any other with the exception that during an operation the device will prompt you to confirm when it’s time to sign an operation.

Tezos Baking app¶

In Ledger Manager there is also a Tezos Baking app which allows a delegate to sign non-interactively e.g. there is no need to manually sign every block or endorsement. The application however is restricted to sign exclusively blocks and endorsement operations; it is not possible to sign for example a transfer. Furthermore the application keeps track of the last level baked and allows only to bake for increasing levels. This prevents signing blocks at levels below the latest block signed.

If you have tried the app on Alphanet or Zeronet and want to change network you might need to reset this level with the command:

tezos-client set ledger high watermark for ledger://tz1XXXXXXXXXX to 0

Private node¶

The node can be set in private mode with the option --private-mode so that:

it doesn’t connects to any peer other than those provided with --peer or in bootstrap-peers
the peers connected to a private node don’t include it in the list of peers sent to their neighborhood

This feature is especially useful to hide a sensitive node that signs operations.

For example we could have a set up with two nodes, a private one connected uniquely with a public one. The public node runs on a VPS, connects normally to the network and keeps a up to date state of the network while the private node runs at your home and is in charge of injecting and signing operations with a hardware wallet.

tezos-node run --rpc-addr [::] --private-mode \
                               --no-bootstrap-peers \
                               --bootstrap-threshold=1 \
                               --connections 1 \
                               --peer <public-node-ip>

Signer¶

Another solution to decouple the node from the signing process is to use the remote signer. Among the signing scheme supported by the client, that we can list with tezos-client list signing schemes, there are unix, tcp, http and https. These schemes send signing requests over their respective communication channel towards the tezos-signer, which can run on a different machine that stores the secret key.

In our home server we can generate a new key pair (or import one from a Ledger) and launch a signer that signs operations using these keys. The new keys are store in $HOME/.tezos-signer in the same format as tezos-client. On our internet facing vps we can then import a key with the address of the signer.

home~$ tezos-signer gen keys alice
home~$ cat ~/.tezos-signer/public_key_hashs
[ { "name": "alice", "value": "tz1abc..." } ]
home~$ tezos-signer launch socket signer -a home-ip

vps~$ tezos-client import secret key alice tcp://home-ip:7732/tz1abc...

Every time the client on vps needs to sing an operation for alice, it sends a signature request to the remote signer on home. Note that this setup alone is not secure, the signer accepts requests from anybody and happily signs any transaction!

Secure the connection¶

Improving the security of the communication channel can be done at the system level, setting up a tunnel with ssh or wireguard between home and vps, otherwise the signer already provides an additional protection.

With the option --require-authentication the signer requires the client to authenticate before signing any operation. First we create a new key on the vps and then import it as an authorized key on home where it is stored under .tezos-signer/authorized_keys (similarly to ssh). Note that this key is only used to authenticate the client to the signer and it is not used as a Tezos account.

vps~$ tezos-client gen keys vps
vps~$ cat ~/.tezos-client/public_keys
[ { "name": "vps",
    "value":
       "unencrypted:edpk123456789" } ]

home~$ tezos-signer add authorized key edpk123456789 --name vps
home~$ tezos-signer --require-authentication launch socket signer -a home-ip

All request are now signed with the vps key thus you are guaranteed authenticity and integrity. This set up does not guarantee confidentiality, an evesdropper can see the transactions that you sign but on a public blockchain this is less of a concern. You can still use the https scheme or the tunnel to encrypt you traffic.

Use sandboxed mode¶

To run a ‘localhost-only’ instance of a Tezos network, we provide two helper scripts:

./src/bin_node/tezos-sandboxed-node.sh
./src/bin_client/tezos-init-sandboxed-client.sh

Run a sandboxed node¶

For instance, if you want to run local network with two nodes, in a first terminal, the following command will initialize a node listening for peers on port 19731 and listening for RPC on port 18731.

./src/bin_node/tezos-sandboxed-node.sh 1 --connections 1

This node will store its data in a temporary directory /tmp/tezos-node.xxxxxxxx which will be removed when the node is stopped. The option --connections is just to remove the spurious “Too few connections” warnings by lowering the number of expected connection.

To launch the second node, just run the following command, it will listen on port 19739 and 18739:

./src/bin_node/tezos-sandboxed-node.sh 9 --connections 1

You might replace 1 or 9 by any number in between if you want to run more than two nodes.

Use the sandboxed client¶

Once your node is running, open a new terminal and initialize the “sandboxed” client data in a temporary directory:

eval `./src/bin_client/tezos-init-sandboxed-client.sh 1`

It also define in the current shell session an alias tezos-client preconfigured for communicating with the same-numbered node.

When you bootstrap a new network, the network is initialized with a dummy economic protocol, called genesis. If you want to run the same protocol than the alphanet, init-sandboxed-client also defines an alias tezos-activate-alpha, that you need to execute once for activating the whole network. For instance:

$ tezos-client rpc get /chains/main/blocks/head/metadata
  "next_protocol": "Ps9mPmXaRzmzk35gbAYNCAw6UXdE2qoABTHbN2oEEc1qM7CwT9P"
$ tezos-activate-alpha
  Injected BMV9KnSPE1yw
$ tezos-client rpc get /chains/main/blocks/head/metadata/next_protocol_hash
  "protocol": "Ps9mPmXaRzmzk35gbAYNCAw6UXdE2qoABTHbN2oEEc1qM7CwT9P"

Tune protocol alpha parameters¶

The tezos-active-alpha alias use parameters from scripts/protocol_parameters.json to activate protocol alpha. It can be useful to tune these parameters when you need to debug something, for example, change the number of blocks per cycle, the time between blocks, etc.

Configuration options for the node¶

./tezos-node config init

This will initialize a configuration file for the node in $HOME/.tezos-node/config.json, using default values. It only specifies that the node will listen to incoming connections on socket address [::]:9732.

The easiest way to amend this default configuration is to use

# Update the config file
./tezos-node config update <…>
# Start from an empty cfg file
./tezos-node config reset <…>

All blockchain data is stored under $HOME/.tezos-node/. You can change this by doing ./tezos-node config update –data-dir </somewhere/in/your/disk>.

To run multiple nodes on the same machine, you can duplicate and edit $HOME/.tezos-node/config.json while making sure they don’t share the same data-dir. Then run your node with ./tezos-node run –config-file=</path/to/alternate_cfg>.

Here is an example configuration file with all parameters specified. Most of the time it uses default values, except for cases where the default is not explanatory enough (i.e. “bootstrap-peers” is an empty list by default). Comments are not allowed in JSON, so this configuration file would not parse. They are just provided here to help writing your own configuration file if needed.

{

  /* Location of the data dir on disk. */

  "data-dir": "/home/tezos/my_data_dir"

  /* Configuration of net parameters */

  "net": {

    /* Floating point number between 0 and 256 that represents a
    difficulty, 24 signifies for example that at least 24 leading
    zeroes are expected in the hash. */

    "expected-proof-of-work": 24.5,

    /* List of hosts. Tezos can connect to both IPv6 and IPv4
    hosts. If the port is not specified, default port 9732 will be
    assumed. */

    "bootstrap-peers": ["::1:10732", "::ffff:192.168.1.3:9733", "mynode.tezos.com"],

    /* Specify if the node is in private mode or not. A node in
    private mode only opens outgoing connections to peers whose
    addresses are in [trusted_peers] and only accepts incoming
    connections from trusted peers. In addition, it informs these
    peers that the identity of the node should not be revealed to
    the rest of the network. */

    "private-mode": false,

    /* Network limits */

    "limits": {

      /* Delay granted to a peer to perform authentication, in
      seconds. */

      "authentication-timeout": 5,

      /* Strict minimum number of connections (triggers an urgent
      maintenance). */

      "min-connections": 50,

      /* Targeted number of connections to reach when bootstrapping /
      maintaining. */

      "expected-connections": 100,

      /* Maximum number of connections (exceeding peers are
      disconnected). */

      "max-connections": 200,

      /* Number above which pending incoming connections are
      immediately rejected. */

      "backlog": 20,

      /* Maximum allowed number of incoming connections that are
      pending authentication. */

      "max-incoming-connections": 20,

      /* Max download and upload speeds in KiB/s. */

      "max-download-speed": 1024,
      "max-upload-speed": 1024,

      /* Size of the buffer passed to read(2). */

      "read-buffer-size": 16384,
    }
  },

  /* Configuration of rpc parameters */

  "rpc": {

    /* Host to listen to. If the port is not specified, the default
    port 8732 will be assumed. */

    "listen-addr": "localhost:8733",

    /* Cross Origin Resource Sharing parameters, see
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-origin_resource_sharing. */

    "cors-origin": [],
    "cors-headers": [],

    /* Certificate and key files (necessary when TLS is used). */

    "crt": "tezos-node.crt",
    "key": "tezos-node.key"
  },

  /* Configuration of log parameters */

  "log": {

    /* Output for the logging function. Either "stdout", "stderr" or
    the name of a log file . */

    "output": "tezos-node.log",

    /* Verbosity level: one of 'fatal', 'error', 'warn', 'notice',
    'info', 'debug'. */

    "level": "info",

    /* Fine-grained logging instructions. Same format as described in
    `tezos-node run --help`, DEBUG section. In the example below,
    sections "net" and all sections starting by "client" will have
    their messages logged up to the debug level, whereas the rest of
    log sections will be logged up to the notice level. */

    "rules": "client* -> debug, net -> debug, * -> notice",

    /* Format for the log file, see
    http://ocsigen.org/lwt/dev/api/Lwt_log_core#2_Logtemplates. */

    "template": "$(date) - $(section): $(message)"
  },

  /* Configuration for the validator and mempool parameters */

  "shell": {

     /* The number of peers to synchronize with
        before declaring the node 'bootstrapped'. */

     "bootstrap_threshold": 4

  }
}

Environment for writing Michelson contracts¶

Here is how to setup a practical environment for writing, editing and debugging Michelson programs.

Install Emacs with the deferred and exec-path-from-shell packages. The packages can be installed from within Emacs with M-x package-install. The last package imports the shell path in Emacs and it is needed because we will run a sandboxed node.

Set up the Michelson mode by adding in your .emacs :

(load "~/tezos/tezos/emacs/michelson-mode.el" nil t)
(setq michelson-client-command "tezos-client")
(setq michelson-alphanet nil)

Note that the Michelson mode will be chosen automatically by Emacs for files with a .tz or .tez extension.

Run a sandboxed node (and activate the alphanet protocol with tezos-activate-alpha) so that useful information about the program can be displayed. We can now open our favourite contract emacs ./src/bin_client/test/contracts/id.tz and, when moving the cursor on a Michelson instruction, in the bottom of the windows Emacs should display the state of the stack before (left) and after (right) the application of the instruction. The Emacs mode automatically type-checks your program and reports errors; once you are happy with the result you can ask the client to run it locally:

tezos-client run script ./src/bin_client/test/contracts/id.tz \
             on storage '"hello"' and input '"world"'

Debugging¶

It is possible to set independent log levels for different logging sections in Tezos, as well as specifying an output file for logging. See the description of log parameters above as well as documentation under the DEBUG section displayed by tezos-node run –-help.