Run an RPC Node with nearup

Heads up

The README for `nearup` (linked above) may be **all you need to get a node up and running** in `testnet` and `localnet`. `nearup` is exclusively used to launch NEAR `testnet` and `localnet` nodes. `nearup` is not used to launch `mainnet` nodes.

Prerequisites

• Git
• Nearup: Make sure nearup is installed. You can install nearup by following the instructions at https://github.com/near/nearup.

Steps to Run an RPC Node using nearup

Running a RPC node is very similar to running a validator node as both types of node use the same nearcore release. The main difference for running a validator node is requiring validator_key.json to be used by the validator node to support its work of validating blocks and chunks on the network.

First, clone the nearcore repo:

git clone https://github.com/near/nearcore.git
cd nearcore

Checkout the version you wish to build:

git checkout <version>

You can then run:

make neard

This will compile the neard binary for the version you have checked out, it will be available under target/release/neard.

Note that compilation will need over 1 GB of memory per virtual core
the machine has. If the build fails with processes being killed, you
might want to try reducing number of parallel jobs, for example:
CARGO_BUILD_JOBS=8 make neard.

NB. Please ensure you build releases through make rather than cargo build --release. The latter skips some optimizations (most notably
link-time optimisation) and thus produces a less efficient executable.

nearup run testnet --binary-path path/to/nearcore/target/release

You will then be prompted for an Account ID below. You should leave this empty as you are running an RPC node, not a validator node.

Enter your account ID (leave empty if not going to be a validator):

Wait until initialization finishes, use the following command to follow logs:

  $ nearup logs --follow

Then run:

  $ nearup stop

Retrieve a copy of the latest RPC snapshot from S3:

  $ wget -b https://near-protocol-public.s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/backups/testnet/rpc/data.tar
  $ tar -xvf data.tar -C ~/.near/testnet/data

Finally, run the following command and the node should start syncing headers:

  $ nearup run testnet

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