Skip to content

instructions.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
38 lines (23 loc) · 3.71 KB

instructions.md

File metadata and controls

38 lines (23 loc) · 3.71 KB
Raw

Electrs

Electrs needs a fully-synced Bitcoin archival node to do anything useful. Install Bitcoin first and let it finish its initial block download before expecting Electrs to come online — until then, Electrs will sit in a waiting state.

Documentation

  • Start9 Bitcoin Guides — pointing a wallet at your own Electrum server — certificates, SSL and Tor — which wallets work, and archival versus pruned Bitcoin nodes.
  • Electrs upstream README — the upstream project's documentation, including configuration reference and protocol notes.

What you get on StartOS

  • An Electrum protocol server that indexes the Bitcoin blockchain and answers wallet queries.
  • An Electrum (SSL) interface exposing the Electrum protocol, reachable over LAN, .local, Tor, and any custom domains you've configured. Every address StartOS shows for it is an ssl:// one — StartOS terminates TLS with the device's certificate — so your wallet needs SSL turned on.
  • Automatic wiring to your StartOS Bitcoin node — RPC, P2P, and cookie authentication are all configured for you. You do not point Electrs at Bitcoin yourself.
  • A RocksDB address index stored under the main volume (excluded from backups; it rebuilds itself if you restore).

Getting set up

  1. Install Bitcoin first if it isn't already installed.
  2. Start Electrs. On first run it will report Electrum server is starting until it has bound its port, and it will not begin indexing until your Bitcoin node has completed its initial block download. This can take a long time on a fresh node.
  3. Once Bitcoin is fully synced, Electrs will switch to Electrs is building its address index while it builds its own index. This typically takes several hours on first run.
  4. When the Sync Progress health check reports Fully synced, point your wallet at the Electrum (SSL) interface — copy the address from the Interfaces page rather than typing a port from memory.

Once that first Fully synced appears, the index is built and is never rebuilt. If Sync Progress later reports Electrs is not responding. It is likely busy indexing; this usually clears on its own., that is a busy moment — Electrs answers wallet queries only between indexing batches — and it clears by itself, normally within a minute or two. It does not mean the index is being rebuilt, and it is not a reason to reindex.

Using Electrs

Electrum (SSL) interface

Copy an address from the Interfaces page into your wallet's server settings. It is shown as an ssl:// URL, and the host and port in it are what your wallet needs — take the port from that address rather than assuming one, since StartOS assigns it and it is not always the same number on every server.

Only the encrypted endpoint is reachable from off this server, so your wallet's SSL option has to be on, and it has to be told to trust the certificate StartOS serves. The one exception is a Tor address you add with its SSL toggle turned off: that address alone is plain TCP, so turn SSL off in your wallet when you connect over it. Both steps, and where the settings live in each wallet, are in the Start9 guide to connecting a wallet. The Electrum desktop wallet needs a file placed by hand and is covered there too.

Once connected, Electrs serves all standard Electrum protocol queries: balances, history, transaction lookups, mempool tracking.

Actions

  • Configure — adjust the log verbosity and two indexer tuning knobs (batch size and per-address lookup limit). Defaults are sensible; only touch these if you have a specific reason.