Grin - Build, Configuration, and Running

Supported Platforms

Longer term, most platforms will likely be supported to some extent. Grin's programming language rust has build targets for most platforms.

What's working so far?

Linux x86_64 and MacOS [grin + mining + development]
Not Windows 10 yet [grin kind-of builds. No mining yet. Help wanted!]

Requirements

But basically:

rust 1.24+ (use rustup- i.e. curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh; source $HOME/.cargo/env)
cmake 3.2+ (for Cuckoo mining plugins)
rocksdb + libs for compiling rocksdb:
- clang (clanglib or clang-devel or libclang-dev)
- llvm (Fedora llvm-devel, Debian llvm-dev)
ncurses and libs (ncurses, ncursesw5)
zlib libs (zlib1g-dev or zlib-devel)
linux-headers (reported needed on Alpine linux)

Build steps

git clone https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin.git
cd grin
cargo build

Cross-platform builds

Rust (cargo) can build grin for many platforms, so in theory running grin as a validating node on your low powered device might be possible. To cross-compile grin on a x86 Linux platform and produce ARM binaries, say, for a Raspberry Pi.

Building the Cuckoo-Miner plugins

Building grin_pow might fail if you're not on a x86_64 system, because that crate also builds external Cuckoo mining plugins.

To avoid building mining plugins, ensure your pow/Cargo.toml has a line in section [dependencies.cuckoo_miner]

features=["no-plugin-build"]

and that it's not commented out.

Build errors

See Troubleshooting

What was built?

A successful build gets you:

target/debug/grin - the main grin binary
target/debug/plugins/* - mining plugins (optional)

Grin is still sensitive to the directory from which it's run. Make sure you always run it within a directory that contains a grin.toml configuration and stay consistent as to where it's run from.

With the included grin.toml unchanged, if you execute cargo run you get a .grin subfolder that grin starts filling up with blockchain data.

While testing, put the grin binary on your path like this:

export PATH=/path/to/grin/dir/target/debug:$PATH

You can then run grin directly (try grin help for more options).

Important Note: if you used Grin in testnet1, running the wallet listener manually isn't requred anymore. Grin will create a seed file and run the listener automatically on start.

Configuration

Grin attempts to run with sensible defaults, and can be further configured via the grin.toml file. You should always ensure that this file is available to grin. The supplied grin.toml contains inline documentation on all configuration options, and should be the first point of reference for all options.

The grin.toml file can placed in one of several locations, using the first one it finds:

The current working directory
In the directory that holds the grin executable
{USER_HOME}/.grin

While it's recommended that you perform all grin server configuration via grin.toml, it's also possible to supply command line switches to grin that override any settings in the grin.toml file.

For help on grin commands and their switches, try:

grin help
grin wallet help
grin client help

Using grin

The wiki page How to use grin and linked pages have more information on what features we have, troubleshooting, etc.

3.5 KiB Raw Blame History