Docker¶

Preparation¶

Before running the image, you should pull the latest version and prepare the data directories:

# get the lastest version from dockerhub (redo for updates).
docker pull ethereum/client-cpp
# create mountable datadirs; blockchain/account data will be stored there
mkdir -p ~/.ethereum ~/.web3

These steps need to be done only once. For upgrading to a new version do the docker pull ... again.

Execution¶

The simplest version is to run:

docker run --rm -it \
    -p 127.0.0.1:8545:8545 \
    -p 0.0.0.0:30303:30303 \
    -v ~/.ethereum:/.ethereum \
    -v ~/.web3:/.web3 \
    -e HOME=/ \
    --user $(id -u):$(id -g) \
    ethereum/client-cpp

This will write data to ~/.ethereum and ~/.web3/ on your host and run the client with your user’s permissions. For most cases this should be sufficient and the client should behave exactly as if run from a local build.

If you want the rpc port reachable from the network (not recommended, never do this if you have valuable data or private keys on your machine), replace -p 127.0.0.1:8545:8545 by -p 0.0.0.0:8545:8545.

For convenience, you can create the file /usr/local/bin/docker-eth with the following content:

#!/usr/bin/env sh
mkdir -p ~/.ethereum ~/.web3
if ! id -nG $(whoami)|grep -qw "docker"; then SUDO='sudo'; else SUDO=''; fi
$SUDO docker run --rm -it \
    -p 127.0.0.1:8545:8545 \
    -p 0.0.0.0:30303:30303 \
    -v ~/.ethereum:/.ethereum \
    -v ~/.web3:/.web3 \
    -e HOME=/ \
    --user $(id -u):$(id -g) \
    ethereum/client-cpp $@

And make it executable with chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-eth. Now you can start the client with:

docker-eth

Note: The docker-eth command will accept the same flags as the raw eth command.

If you want to attach to the node, you can either just use mist (it will detect the node automatically), use geth attach ipc:/$HOME/.ethereum/geth.ipc or ethereum-console as described in Running cpp-ethereum.

Advanced usage:¶

Due to https://github.com/docker/libnetwork/issues/552 multicast is not working yet without --net=host. You can still run the client with network isolation and use -p 127.0.0.1:8545:8545 -p 30303:30303 -p 30303:30303/udp for publishing the rpc, discovery and p2p ports. If you want to be discoverable from the outside, you will need to

• add your public ip address with the --public-ip flag,
• create a port forwarding with your NAT

(syncing will still work without it).