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Install Node Operator Service on Linux

SubQuery TeamAbout 2 min

Install Node Operator Service on Linux

Let's see how to run the Node Operator Service on a cloud provider.

Run Node Operator Services on Cloud Linux Instance

We will use a Linux EC2 instance from AWS in the following examples.

Note

Note: You can use any other cloud providers, we will try our best to provide support and troubleshooting help.

Step 1 - Launch a Virtual Machine

There are plenty of online guides on how to launch a compute engine on various cloud providers, including AWS, GCP, Azure, Digital Ocean etc. You can follow this tutorial to launch a new EC2 on AWS (we recommend a compute engine equivalent to a t3.medium linux EC2)

Step 2 - Install Docker and Docker-Compose

  • SSH access to the EC2 instance:
 ssh -i key_file.pem ec2-user@ec2-34-204-200-76.compute-1.amazonaws.com

Important

Please change the default PostgreSQL password in the POSTGRES_PASSWORD field and in the coordinator-service's postgres-password field. Replace it with your own one.

Pay attention to the postgres version. The latest version is postgres:17-alpine. You should not change the postgres version when it is running stable, changing will cause errors. Upgrading the version requires some advanced techniques such as postgres upgrade or backup, restore.

  • Then, install Docker and set auto start:
sudo yum install docker
sudo systemctl enable docker
sudo systemctl start docker
  • Note that you need to install the docker-compose command tool in EC2, in order to use the docker-compose features:
# get the latest version for docker-compose
sudo curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/latest/download/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m) -o /usr/bin/docker-compose

# fix permissions after download:
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/docker-compose

# verify the installation
sudo docker-compose version

Step 3 - Download the Docker Compose File for Node Operator Services

Run the following command:

mkdir subquery-indexer && cd subquery-indexer
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/subquery/network-indexer-services/main/deploy/docker-compose.yml -o docker-compose.yml

Important

Please change the POSTGRES_PASSWORD in postgres and postgres-password in coordinator-service to your own one

Step 4 - Start Node Operator Services

Run the service using the following command:

sudo docker-compose up -d

It will start the following services:

  • indexer_db
  • indexer_coordinator
  • indexer_proxy
  • indexer_cache

Note

Each project you start indexing will create 2 extra containers node_qm---------- and query_qm---------- that has the 15 first characters of the project's Qm-hash.

Now, check the service status:

docker compose-up command line

Step 5 - Set Up Auto Start

Create /etc/systemd/system/subquery.service.

[Unit]
Description="SubQuery systemd service"
After=network.target
StartLimitIntervalSec=0

[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=10
User=root
SyslogIdentifier=subquery
SyslogFacility=local7
KillSignal=SIGHUP
WorkingDirectory=/home/ec2-user/subquery-indexer
ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker-compose up -d

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Register and start the service by running:

systemctl enable subquery.service
systemctl start subquery.service

After that, verify that the service is running:

systemctl status subquery.service

Advanced Settings

Docker Log Rotating

If you've done the above setup, you surely see everything is running in docker, both Node Operator services and subquery jobs. With the time going, log will swallow a huge of your local disk and you may have to stop the service to clean it up.

To avoid running into this situation, you can do the following settings.

1. Change log driver to journald

Depends how you install docker on your server, you may find your docker config in /etc/docker/daemon.json or /var/snap/docker/<version>/config/daemon.json

Open it and add log-driver settings

{
    ...
    "log-driver": "journald"
}

then restart docker.

2. setup journald log rotate

Add space limit to journald by set up SystemMaxUse and RuntimeMaxUse

see here for details

Next Steps

You have successfully installed and started the Node Operator Service on Linux, please return to the previous page

Tip

Having trouble running a command or setting up the service? Got stuck in the process? Find your solutions here.