Grin explorer

Explorer for cryptocurrency Grin.

Prerequisites

• ensure you have docker and docker compose installed
• grin-node (rust) version must be >= 5.2.0 (node to which explorer connects to)
• make sure that the host running grin-node accepts TCP on port where your foreign api is listening (for testnet default port is 13413, for mainnet it's 3413) NOTE: example with iptables for testnet: sudo iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 13413 -j ACCEPT

Run explorer on localhost

1. fill out the missing ENV variables in .env file (secretkey + user's info)
2. go to project's main folder
3. run docker build -t grinnixos -f docker/nixos/Dockerfile .
4. run docker run -it -v ${PWD}:/code grinnixos ./docker/nixos/init.sh
5. run docker compose up
6. run docker compose exec -it django pipenv run python manage.py createsuperuser --no-input to create user
7. go to localhost:8080
8. create a blockchain and link it to created node (read Setting up a blockchain)

Run explorer in production

1. fill out the missing ENV variables in .env.prod file (secretkey + user's info)

2. set VUE_APP_BACKEND_URL in .env.production file to backend api url eg. https://explorer.com/api/

3. change data in docker/nginx/conf.d/local.conf (at least domain info)

4. place certificates in docker/nginx/certs/ folder and name them whatever they're named in docker/nginx/conf.d/local.conf

5. insert ip/domain in ALLOWED_HOSTS variable in file backend/settings/prod.py

6. go to project's main folder

7. run docker build -t grinnixos -f docker/nixos/Dockerfile .

8. run docker run -it -v ${PWD}:/code grinnixos ./docker/nixos/init.sh

9. run docker compose -f docker-compose.production.yml run --rm django pipenv run python manage.py migrate

10. run docker compose -f docker-compose.production.yml run --rm django pipenv run python manage.py collectstatic --noinput

11. run docker compose -f docker-compose.production.yml up

12. run docker compose exec -it django pipenv run python manage.py createsuperuser --no-input to create user

13. run nix-shell to get in environment where you have build dependencies

14. inside nix-shell run yarn install to install needed things to build gui part

15. inside nix-shell run yarn run build which creates dist_gui folder

16. close nix-shell (ctrl+d)

17. edit .env.production to point to django location, eg. 'http://django:8000'

18. run docker compose -f docker-compose.production.yml up

Setting up a blockchain

Blockchain is connected to a node, which is a part of a specific node-group. Node-groups are planned to be used in the future. Steps to add a blockchain:

1. Create a node-group
2. Create a node inside of a node-group. If node is on the same pc then set these values for node:

• Foreign API URL: + mainnet: http://host.docker.internal:3413/v2/foreign + testnet: http://host.docker.internal:13413/v2/foreign
• Foreign API username: if you don't know it then it's most likely grin
• Foreign API password: + mainnet: located in ~/.grin/main/.foreign_api_secret + testnet: located in ~/.grin/test/.foreign_api_secret Note that if the node is running on the same server then you can't reach it through localhost. Instead use host.docker.internal. example of localhost grin-node url: http://host.docker.internal:3413/v2/foreign

3. Create a blockchain which is connected to the created node
4. go to your node's config file and set:

• block_accepted_url to http://localhost:8000/api/blockchains/testnet/accepted/ (if your node runs locally, otherwise change domain and protocol)
• api_http_addr to 0.0.0.0:3413" (or limit connections more if you wish)

5. click bootstrap to start syncing explorer's db with node's db

The latest block, supply and price updates when new data is be fetched by the backend. Currently price is fetched only for the blockchain which is marked as default and it fetches btc value from tradeogre. You can change this by modifying backend.api.helpers.default_fetch_price_fn function.

Logs

Logs (in json format) are kept in explorer.log file. If you have jq installed you can get more readable logs, eg: cat explorer.log | jq '.' > formatted.log and work with formatted.log file.

Problems

• When running docker compose up redis container fails with error: Bad file format reading the append only file: make a backup of your AOF file, then use ./redis-check-aof --fix Run command docker compose run redis redis-check-aof --fix appendonly.aof (or whatever file it complains about) and then try again. If it says that there's no such file then try prefixing file destination with appendonlydir/, so docker compose run redis redis-check-aof --fix appendonlydir/appendonly.aof.
• Bootstraping will fail if node becomes unreachable, if you start it again it will continue where it left. If the node has been offline for some time then after it starts syncing it will spam explorer with new blocks which will cause "too many connections" problem (block fetching is currently not implemented through queue). To avoid spamming you can comment out block_accepted_url in node's config file, run the node, wait for it to sync, uncomment block_accepted_url, restart the node and then manually bootstrap it. If you don't want to do that then just wait until the spamming ends, but be aware that the spam might cause explorer response issues.