Setting up SPS validator

[jef-001]

Hey everybody,

My SPS-Validator Tech-Stack.With this guide i will try to help u in setting up a SPS validator, for hardware i suggest looking at this post from @louis88:

Whatever hardware u end up using, u are going to need a Linux version to run on that, i suggest using Ubuntu 24.04, if u use a GUI version it will look like the image below, if not then u will just have the terminal, which is fine as all we'll use is that.

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From here we're going to follow the readme guide from the validator software Readme SPS-Validator, so to get started we need git installed, we do that with sudo apt install git-all after entering that command u will be asked to enter your password, just type it in, u will not see anything beeing typed, but it will be inputted after u press enter.

Next we need docker and docker compose, this is quite some command so i hope u can copy and paste it, u can copy the entire command and past it like that and press enter:

sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc

After all is installed it should look like the screenshot below.

Then copy and past the following commands followed by enter.

echo \
  "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] \
  https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
  $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update

And lastly for docker we need to run the last command to install the latest version:

sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

To check if docker was installed corectly, u can do sudo docker run hello-world and u will see a download start and end up with what u see in the following screenshot:

To complete the Prerequisites we are going to install wget with the sudo apt install wget command, now we are ready to start to real work.

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To download the software we are going to use git with the following command:

git clone https://github.com/TheSPSDAO/SPS-Validator.git

This will start a download and creates a new folder on your drive in the place u entered the command, if u haven't done any other things that should be in your home directory, we can see this folder by using the ls command, u should now see something like below:

With cd SPS-Validator command we can move in this folder as we need to continue from there, now that we are in the SPS-Validator folder we're going to make a copy of the .env-example file and name it .env, this can be done with cp .env-example .env, to edit this file we now have 2 ways:

1. If u are using a GUI, u can install gedit with sudo apt-get install gedit and when this is done open the .env file with gedit .env
2. If u aren't using a GUI or don't want to install gedit, u can just use nano .env

In both cases u will get something that looks like this:

Scroll down, use down arrow or page down to get to the bottom of the file, for now u don't need to change anything, but u will need to add in your username for VALIDATOR_ACCOUNT and active key for VALIDATOR_KEY, if u don't want to use your main account, u can create a new account for this and set your main account as REWARD_ACCOUNT, u will need to hold the Node License on the REWARD_ACCOUNT if u enter one, else just your main. Use control + S to save for gedit and nano, then control + X to close for nano, with gedit u can just close it with the mouse.

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Now it's time to build this bad boy, i had some issues with that so try with just ./run.sh build and see if u get the following error:

then u need to add your user to the docker group, first we are going to check if the docker group exists with cat /etc/group | grep docker, this should return something like what u see in the screenshot above, docker:x:984:. Now with sudo usermod -aG docker <username> in my case sps-node instead of <username> add your username to the group and to apply these changes use newgrp docker, then run ./run.sh build build again, when asked to replace the snapshot because it allready exists press Y and enter, when this is complete it should look like this:

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Now to start it up we have 2 options again, for the people that are using a GUI the command is ./run.sh start all for those with just terminal use ./run.sh start, now u will see something like this, this is the validator starting up:

When it starts validating u will see text shoot by in your terminal, if u scroll up u should see something like this:

If the blocks to head isn't 0, then the validator is still catching up, for now then u can only wait, when it reaches 0 u can continue from the official readme to register your node and stake your licenses.

I'm not an expert at this so if u are having troubles with this then go ask for help in Discord, if i can help i will do my best, else there are more people there that have better understanding for this.

Guide has been updated thanks to feedback from @kiokizz and sc456(discord name)

Comments

[kiokizz]

Thanks for the tutorial. It is nice to run through these processes with picture guides :) A couple notes on work arounds for anyone else following this when they encounter some issues:

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It looks like you have a couple extra spaces trailing behind your \. In the statement (should be):

echo \
  "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] \
  https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
  $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update

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On building ./run.sh build I found I needed to run the command with sudo to have sufficient permissions sudo ./run.sh build. The same occured when I wanted to start the node (I'm not familiar with the peculiarities of user permissions). Also, running sudo ./run.sh start (using terminal) didn't seem to work. Running sudo ./run.sh start all seemed to do the job.

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Now at the end of your instructions I seem to be a few blocks from the head, but this seems to be working :)

Soon time to check the readme for the final steps.

[jef-001]

Hey, thanks for the reply, i'll be sure to try and clean those extra spaces up, so that it becomes copy/paste like i intended, for the commands i have send u a question in discord, normally that should be helped with what i have in this guide.

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[hivebuzz]

Congratulations @jef-001!
You raised your level and are now a Minnow!

[steemmonsters]

Thanks for sharing! - @isaria