lncm/bitcoind

This repo builds bitcoind in an auditable way, and packages it into a minimal Docker containers provided for various CPU architectures.

The work here was initially based on ruimarinho/docker-bitcoin-core, but has significantly diverged since.

Details

All git-tags (and most commits) are signed by D8CA1776EB9265491D07CE67F546ECBEA809CB18
All git-tags (and most commits) are opentimestamps-ed
All builds aim to be maximally auditable. After git tag push, the entire process is automated, with each step printed, and the code aiming to be easy to follow
All builds are based on Alpine
Cross-compiled builds are done using our (also auditable) qemu
To fit build and complete make check test suite, BerkeleyDB is build separately here
Each build produces binaries for: amd64, arm64v8, and arm32v7
All architectures are aggregated under an easy-to-use Docker Manifest
All git-tags are build automatically, and with an auditable trace
Each successful build of a git tag pushes result Docker image to Docker Hub
Images pushed to Docker Hub are never deleted (even if lnd version gets overridden, previous one is preserved)
All final images are based on Alpine for minimum base size
All binaries are stripped
Each git-tag build is tagged with a unique tag number
Each minor version is stored in a separate directory (for the ease of backporting patches)

NOTE: ZMQ block and tx ports are set to 28332 and 28333 respectively.

Usage

Pull

First pull the image from Docker Hub:

docker pull lncm/bitcoind:v25.0

NOTE: Running above will automatically choose native architecture of your CPU.

Or, to pull a specific CPU architecture:

docker pull lncm/bitcoind:v25.0-arm64v8

Start

First of all, create a directory in your home directory called .bitcoin

Next, create a config file. You can take a look at the following sample: thebox-compose-system (1).

Some guides on how to configure bitcoin can be found here (bitcoin git repo)

Then to start bitcoind, run:

docker run  -it  --rm  --detach \
    -v ~/.bitcoin:/data/.bitcoin \
    -p 8332:8332 \
    -p 8333:8333 \
    -p 28332:28332 \
    -p 28333:28333 \
    --name bitcoind \
    lncm/bitcoind:v25.0

That will run bitcoind such that:

all data generated by the container is stored in ~/.bitcoin on your host machine,
port 8332 will be reachable for the RPC communication,
port 8333 will be reachable for the peer-to-peer communication,
port 28332 will be reachable for ZMQ block notifications,
port 28333 will be reachable for ZMQ transaction notifications,
created container will get named bitcoind,
within the container, bitcoind binary is run as unprivileged user bitcoind (UID=1000),
that command will run the container in the background and print the ID of the container being run.

Interact

To issue any commands to a running container, do:

docker exec -it bitcoind BINARY COMMAND

Where:

BINARY is either bitcoind, bitcoin-cli, bitcoin-tx, (or bitcoin-wallet on v0.18+) and
COMMAND is something you'd normally pass to the binary

Examples:

docker exec -it bitcoind bitcoind --help
docker exec -it bitcoind bitcoind --version
docker exec -it bitcoind bitcoin-cli --help
docker exec -it bitcoind bitcoin-cli -getinfo
docker exec -it bitcoind bitcoin-cli getblockcount

Docker Compose

Here is a docker-compose.yml for mainnet

version: '3'
services:
  bitcoin:
    container_name: bitcoind
    user: 1000:1000
    image: lncm/bitcoind:v25.0
    volumes:
      - ./bitcoin:/data/.bitcoin
    restart: on-failure
    stop_grace_period: 15m30s
    ports:
      - "8333:8333"
      - "8332:8332"
      - "28332:28332"
      - "28333:28333"

First, ensure that the bitcoin/ folder is in the directory containing docker-compose.yml. Then, Docker Compose will mount the bitcoin/ folder to /data/.bitcoin.

Troubleshooting

Bitcoind isn't starting

Here are some possible reasons why.

Permissions for the bitcoin data directory is not correct

The permissions for the bitcoin data direct is assumed to be UID 1000 (first user).

If you have a different setup, please do the following

# where ".bitcoin" is the data directory
sudo chown -R 1000.1000 $HOME/.bitcoin

fanquake / lncm-docker-bitcoind