Setting up your node as a background process with SystemD

SystemD is a daemon service useful for running applications as background processes.

Consensus nodes

If you are running a validator or consensus node, here are the steps to setting up celestia-appd as a background process.

Start the celestia-app with SystemD

SystemD is a daemon service useful for running applications as background processes.

Create Celestia-App systemd file:

sudo tee <<EOF >/dev/null /etc/systemd/system/celestia-appd.service
[Unit]
Description=celestia-appd Cosmos daemon
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=$USER
ExecStart=$(which celestia-appd) start
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=3
LimitNOFILE=65535

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

If the file was created successfully you will be able to see its content:

cat /etc/systemd/system/celestia-appd.service

Enable and start celestia-appd daemon:

sudo systemctl enable celestia-appd
sudo systemctl start celestia-appd

Check if daemon has been started correctly:

sudo systemctl status celestia-appd

Check daemon logs in real time:

sudo journalctl -u celestia-appd.service -f

To check if your node is in sync before going forward:

curl -s localhost:26657/status | jq .result | jq .sync_info

Make sure that you have "catching_up": false, otherwise leave it running until it is in sync.

Data availability nodes

Celestia bridge node

Create Celestia Bridge systemd file:

sudo tee <<EOF >/dev/null /etc/systemd/system/celestia-bridge.service
[Unit]
Description=celestia-bridge Cosmos daemon
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=$USER
ExecStart=$(which celestia) bridge start
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=3
LimitNOFILE=1400000

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

If the file was created successfully you will be able to see its content:

cat /etc/systemd/system/celestia-bridge.service

Enable and start celestia-bridge daemon:

sudo systemctl enable celestia-bridge
sudo systemctl start celestia-bridge && sudo journalctl -u \
celestia-bridge.service -f

Now, the Celestia bridge node will start syncing headers and storing blocks from celestia-app.

Note: At startup, you can see the multiaddress from the Celestia bridge node. This is needed for future light node connections and communication between Celestia bridge nodes.

Example:

NODE_IP=<URI>]
/ip4/$NODE_IP/tcp/2121/p2p/12D3KooWD5wCBJXKQuDjhXFjTFMrZoysGVLtVht5hMoVbSLCbV22

You should be seeing logs coming through of the bridge node syncing.

Celestia light node

Start the light node as daemon process in the background

sudo tee <<EOF >/dev/null /etc/systemd/system/celestia-lightd.service
[Unit]
Description=celestia-lightd light node
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=$USER
ExecStart=$(which celestia) light start --core.ip <URI> --core.port <port>
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=3

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

If the file was created successfully you will be able to see its content:

cat /etc/systemd/system/celestia-lightd.service

Enable and start celestia-lightd daemon:

sudo systemctl enable celestia-lightd
sudo systemctl start celestia-lightd

Check if daemon has been started correctly:

sudo systemctl status celestia-lightd

Check daemon logs in real time:

sudo journalctl -u celestia-lightd.service -f

Now, the Celestia light node will start syncing headers. After sync is finished, light node will do Data Availability Sampling (DAS) from the bridge node.

How to export logs with SystemD

You can export your logs if you are running a SystemD service with the following command:

sudo journalctl -u <your systemd service> -S yesterday > node_logs.txt
sudo journalctl -u <your systemd service> -S today > node_logs.txt
# This command outputs the last 1 million lines!
sudo journalctl -u <your systemd service> -n 1000000 > node_logs.txt