Energi Explorer is an open source block explorer written in node.js. It was forked from Iquidus Explorer 1.6.1. You can see it in action at Energi Blockchain Explorer.
To run the software basically means that you're running four different processes at the same time on your computer, more specifically:
- The
Energi Explorerprogram itself, - a separate node.js script that on a regular basis fetches blockchain data from
- an Energi Core wallet
- and stores it in a database managed by a MongoDB session.
What follows is a step-by-step instructions how to get up and running with the software. Depending on your setup, you might have to run some of the commands specified below with sudo.
Before starting, you need to make sure you have the following software installed and ready to go:
First, we need to set up a database where the blockchain data will be stored. MongoDB defaults to storing everything in /data/db/ so we'll create these folders and give them write permissions.
cd /
mkdir data
chmod +w data
cd data
mkdir db
chmod +w data
Now, start up a MongoDB session by typing.
mongod
Start up a new terminal window (leave the previous terminal session around in order to monitor activity) and enter the MongoDB command line interface by typing the following in the terminal:
mongo
Then, within the MongoDB command line interface, create a database:
use explorerdb
...and create a user with read/write access:
db.createUser( { user: "iquidus", pwd: "3xp!0reR", roles: [ "readWrite" ] } )
Then exit the MongoDB command line interface by typing:
exit
Start up the Energi Core wallet (at least the following flags must be active: -daemon -txindex) and go to Tools > Open Wallet Configuration File. Here, we'll set up the wallet for remote procedure calls (RPC) by adding the following settings (you can of course change the username and password to something of your own):
rpcuser=energirpc
rpcpassword=123gfjk3R3pCCVjHtbRde2s5kzdf233sa
rpcconnect=localhost
rpcport=9796
server=1
Save the file and then restart the wallet.
Navigate to a directory where you want the Energi Explorer to be located and then run:
git clone https://github.com/energicryptocurrency/explorer explorer
Then navigate to the newly created folder:
cd explorer
...and run:
npm install --production
Now copy and rename the settings template file
cp ./settings.json.template ./settings.json
and open the newly created file, settings.json in a text editor. By modifying this file, you'll be able to customize the Energi Explorer to your liking. For now though, make sure that the wallet setting corresponds to the RCP settings you made in the conf file of the Energi Core wallet above.
Now, we can start the Energi Explorer by typing
npm start
If you want to output the log and errors to separate text files, you can instead start Energi Explorer by typing:
npm start > log.txt 2> errors.txt &
sync.js (located in scripts/) is used for updating the local database with information about the blockchain. This script must be called from the Energi Explorer root directory, so navigate there and then type:
node scripts/sync.js index reindex
This will fetch information about the blockchain contained in your running Energi Core instance (make sure it's fully up to date with the network before running the scripts above) and put it in the database that MongoDB is managing.
You can, whenever you want, update the blockchain information by typing:
node scripts/sync.js index update
For more detailed information about how to use sync.js, simply type:
node scripts/sync.js
and if you run into problems, check out the "Known issues" section below.
It is recommended (but not necessary for testing/development) to have sync.js running via cron so that the information about the blockchain always is updated.
This is an example of the content of a crontab file that updates the index every minute and the market data every 2 minutes:
*/1 * * * * cd /path/to/explorer && /usr/bin/nodejs scripts/sync.js index update > /dev/null 2>&1
*/2 * * * * cd /path/to/explorer && /usr/bin/nodejs scripts/sync.js market > /dev/null 2>&1
*/5 * * * * cd /path/to/explorer && /usr/bin/nodejs scripts/peers.js > /dev/null 2>&1
In order to use the Energi Explorer which now is fully running, go to the address specified in the the address entry in the settings.json (defaults to 127.0.0.1:3001) in your browser.
As of version 1.4.0 the explorer defaults to cluster mode, forking an instance of its process to each cpu core. This results in increased performance and stability. Load balancing gets automatically taken care of and any instances that for some reason die, will be restarted automatically. For testing/development (or if you just wish to) a single instance can be launched with
node --stack-size=10000 bin/instance
To stop the cluster you can use
npm stop
If you receive this message when launching the sync script either a) a sync is currently in progress, or b) a previous sync was killed before it completed. If you are certain a sync is not in progress, you can remove the index.pid from the tmp/ folder in the Energi Explorer root directory.
Nodes default stack size may be too small to index addresses with many tx's. If you experience the above error while running sync.js, the stack size needs to be increased.
To determine the default setting run:
node --v8-options | grep -B0 -A1 stack_size
To run sync.js with a larger stack size launch with:
node --stack-size=[SIZE] scripts/sync.js index update
where [SIZE] is an integer higher than the default.
Copyright (c) 2015, Iquidus Technology
Copyright (c) 2015, Luke Williams
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