Docker

Included in this repo are docker images for the Bitcoin SV Node implementation. Thanks to Josh Ellithorpe and his repository, which provided the base for this repo.

This Docker image provides bitcoind, bitcoin-cli and bitcoin-tx which can be used to run and interact with a Bitcoin server.

To see the available versions/tags, please visit the Docker Hub page.

To run the latest version of Bitcoin SV:

docker run bitcoinsv/bitcoin-sv

To run a container in the background, pass the -d option to docker run, and give your container a name for easy reference later:

docker run -d --rm --name bitcoind bitcoinsv/bitcoin-sv

Once you have the bitcoind service running in the background, you can show running containers:

docker ps

Or view the logs of a service:

docker logs -f bitcoind

To stop and restart a running container:

docker stop bitcoind
docker start bitcoind

The best method to configure the server is to pass arguments to the bitcoind command. For example, to run Bitcoin SV on the testnet:

docker run --name bitcoind-testnet bitcoinsv/bitcoin-sv bitcoind -testnet

Alternatively, you can edit the bitcoin.conf file which is generated in your data directory (see below).

By default, Docker will create ephemeral containers. That is, the blockchain data will not be persisted, and you will need to sync the blockchain from scratch each time you launch a container.

To keep your blockchain data between container restarts or upgrades, simply add the -v option to create a data volume:

docker run -d --rm --name bitcoind -v bitcoin-data:/data bitcoinsv/bitcoin-sv
docker ps
docker inspect bitcoin-data

Alternatively, you can map the data volume to a location on your host:

docker run -d --rm --name bitcoind -v "$PWD/data:/data" bitcoinsv/bitcoin-sv
ls -alh ./data

By default, Docker runs all containers on a private bridge network. This means that you are unable to access the RPC port (8332) necessary to run bitcoin-cli commands.

There are several methods to run bitcoin-cli against a running bitcoind container. The easiest is to simply let your bitcoin-cli container share networking with your bitcoind container:

docker run -d --rm --name bitcoind -v bitcoin-data:/data bitcoinsv/bitcoin-sv
docker run --rm --network container:bitcoind bitcoinsv/bitcoin-sv bitcoin-cli getinfo

If you plan on exposing the RPC port to multiple containers (for example, if you are developing an application which communicates with the RPC port directly), you probably want to consider creating a user-defined network. You can then use this network for both your bitcoind and bitclin-cli containers, passing -rpcconnect to specify the hostname of your bitcoind container:

docker network create bitcoin
docker run -d --rm --name bitcoind -v bitcoin-data:/data --network bitcoin bitcoinsv/bitcoin-sv
docker run --rm --network bitcoin bitcoinsv/bitcoin-sv bitcoin-cli -rpcconnect=bitcoind getinfo