Geth

Overview

🛑Strongly discouraged 🛑: GETH can be hazardous to your all YOUR STAKE.

Select a minority client.

Recommendation: Besu or Nethermind.

Geth - Go Ethereum is one of the three original implementations (along with C++ and Python) of the Ethereum protocol. It is written in Go, fully open source and licensed under the GNU LGPL v3.

Official Links

Subject	Link
Releases	https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/releases
Documentation	https://geth.ethereum.org/docs
Website	https://geth.ethereum.org

1. Create service account and data directory

Create a service user for the execution service, create data directory and assign ownership.

sudo adduser --system --no-create-home --group execution
sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/geth
sudo chown -R execution:execution /var/lib/geth

2. Install binaries

• Downloading binaries is often faster and more convenient.

• Building from source code can offer better compatibility and is more aligned with the spirit of FOSS (free open source software).

Option 1 - Download binaries

RELEASE_URL="https://geth.ethereum.org/downloads"
FILE="https://gethstore.blob.core.windows.net/builds/geth-linux-amd64[a-zA-Z0-9./?=_%:-]*.tar.gz"
BINARIES_URL="$(curl -s $RELEASE_URL | grep -Eo $FILE | head -1)"

echo Downloading URL: $BINARIES_URL

cd $HOME
wget -O geth.tar.gz $BINARIES_URL
tar -xzvf geth.tar.gz -C $HOME
rm geth.tar.gz
sudo mv $HOME/geth-* geth

Install the binaries.

sudo mv $HOME/geth/geth /usr/local/bin

Option 2 - Build from source code

Install Go dependencies

wget -O go.tar.gz https://go.dev/dl/go1.19.6.linux-amd64.tar.gz
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/go && sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf go.tar.gz
echo export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin >> $HOME/.bashrc
source $HOME/.bashrc

Verify Go is properly installed by checking the version and cleanup files.

go version
rm go.tar.gz

Install build dependencies.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install build-essential git

Build the binary.

mkdir -p ~/git
cd ~/git
git clone -b master https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum.git
cd go-ethereum
# Get new tags
git fetch --tags
# Get latest tag name
latestTag=$(git describe --tags `git rev-list --tags --max-count=1`)
# Checkout latest tag
git checkout $latestTag
# Build
make geth

Install the binary.

sudo cp $HOME/git/go-ethereum/build/bin/geth /usr/local/bin

3. Setup and configure systemd

Create a systemd unit file to define your execution.service configuration.

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/execution.service

Paste the following configuration into the file.

[Unit]
Description=Geth Execution Layer Client service for Mainnet
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target
Documentation=https://www.nodebridgeafrica.com

[Service]
Type=simple
User=execution
Group=execution
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=3
KillSignal=SIGINT
TimeoutStopSec=900
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/geth \
    --mainnet \
    --port 30303 \
    --http.port 8545 \
    --authrpc.port 8551 \
    --maxpeers 50 \
    --metrics \
    --http \
    --datadir=/var/lib/geth \
    --pprof \
    --state.scheme=path \
    --authrpc.jwtsecret=/secrets/jwtsecret
   
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

To exit and save, press Ctrl + X, then Y, then Enter.

Run the following to enable auto-start at boot time.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable execution

Finally, start your execution layer client and check it's status.

sudo systemctl start execution
sudo systemctl status execution

Press Ctrl + C to exit the status.

4. Helpful execution client commands

View Logs

sudo journalctl -fu execution | ccze

A properly functioning Geth execution client will indicate "Imported new potential chain segment". For example,

geth[4531]: INFO [02-04|01:20:48.280] Chain head was updated    number=16000 hash=2317ae..c41107
geth[4531]: INFO [02-04|01:20:49.648] Imported new potential chain segment       number=16000 hash=ab173f..33a21b

Stop

sudo systemctl stop execution

Start

sudo systemctl start execution

View Status

sudo systemctl status execution

Reset Database

Common reasons to reset the database can include:

• Recovering from a corrupted database due to power outage or hardware failure

• Re-syncing to reduce disk space usage

• Upgrading to a new storage format

sudo systemctl stop execution
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/geth/*
sudo systemctl restart execution

Time to re-sync the execution client can take a few hours up to a day.

Now that your execution client is configured and started, proceed to the next step on setting up your consensus client.

If you're checking the logs and see any warnings or errors, please be patient as these will normally resolve once both your execution and consensus clients are fully synced to the Ethereum network.