Guide to setting up your very own ILP Kit. Estimated time: a couple of hours.
- On DigitalOcean, click
Create Droplet. - Select the option with 2 Gb of RAM (the $20 one).
- For the operating system, go to
One-Click Appsand selectNode 6.9.1. - Select your ssh keys, and then confirm the purchase.
I've named my server instance 'Niles', so that's the name I'll be using for the rest of the instructions.
- Edit ~/.ssh/config
- Add the lines:
Host niles
Hostname 45.55.4.124 # IP from DigitalOcean
User root
Port 22
$ ssh nilesroot$ apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
root$ apt-get install libssl-dev python build-essential libpq-dev postgresql postgresql-contrib# you don't want to stay logged in as root
root$ adduser sharafian
root$ usermod -aG sudo sharafian
Do the rest of this guide while logged in as your new user.
# now do some of the postgresql setup
$ sudo su - postgres
postgres$ createuser sharafian
postgres$ psql
# postgres prompt
postgres=# ALTER USER sharafian WITH PASSWORD 'PASSWORD';
ALTER ROLE
postgres=# \q
postgres$ createdb ilpkit
postgres$ exit
$ cd
# clone the ilp kit repository and install dependencies.
$ git clone https://github.com/interledgerjs/ilp-kit
$ npm install # this fails on the `node-gyp rebuild` step, due to a known error
$ npm rebuild node-sass # but running this will remedy any problems
$ npm run build
- Go to your name server provider of choice. I'm using cloudflare on my domain.
- Go to the DNS settings, and add an A record.
- I want my ilp kit on
niles.sharafian.com, so I'll create an A record pointingnilesto my DigitalOcean machine's IP,45.55.4.124
Before you get SSL enabled, you'll want to have an actual webserver running.
Because we're on Ubuntu, letsencrypt provides a package that does most of the set up for us on nginx.
$ sudo apt-get install nginx letsencrypt
Now follow DigitalOcean's letsencrypt instructions, here in order to get SSL set up.
After following these instructions, you should go to your site (eg. niles.sharafian.com), and it should show the
nginx example page over an https connection.
In your /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default, remove the location / block, and add these two blocks in its place:
# point the root to the ILP Kit UI
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:3010;
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
}
# allow webfinger and letsencrypt to coexist
location ~ /.well-known/webfinger {
proxy_pass http://localhost:3010;
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
}- Now run
sudo nginx -tto make sure you didn't mess anything up. - If that ran OK, run
sudo systemctl restart nginx.
This is all the domain setup that you have to do. Nothing will appear on the site until you're running your ILP Kit.
Before you do anything on your own ILP Kit, you're going to want to register an account on
someone else's. Go to the ILP Kit of a friend, and create an account with them. For example, I'll create the
account niles on nexus.justmoon.com. I'll refer to my password as PASSWORD.
This means that my identifier for my account on Nexus is niles@nexus.justmoon.com. We'll use that identifier later.
Run npm run configure. It provides example values, and I'll also put the configuration I'm using.
- Posgres DB URI:
postgres://sharafian:PASSWORD@localhost/ilpkit - Hostname:
niles.sharafian.com - Ledger name:
niles - Currency code:
USD - Country code:
US - Configure GitHub:
n(we don't need that just yet; you can always go back and change it) - Configure Mailgun:
n(same deal) - ILP Peers:
us.usd.nexus.stefan(this means I send my routes tostefan@nexus.justmoon.com. If you want to peer with somebody, ask them for their connector's ILP address. You have to have an account on their ledger in order to peer). - Username:
niles - Password: (use the randomly generated default)
Now this will prompt for Plugins. A plugin connects to a ledger, using your credentials. The configuration tool will automatically make to connect to my own ledger. I'm also going to create a plugin for our account on Nexus, though.
- Webfinger identifier:
niles@nexus.justmoon.com(this is the same identifier from earlier) - Currency code:
USD - Country code:
us - Password:
PASSWORD - Enter another plugin:
n(we only made one account to connect to)
You can create a systemd config for ILP Kit, but I'm just going to use nohup to
run ILP Kit independent of our SSH session.
$ nohup npm start &
$ tail -f nohup.out -n 1000
Your connector will fail to launch, because this its account doesn't exist yet. Just go to your site
(eg. https://niles.sharafian.com), and register a new user with the exact same username/password you
entered for your ledger during npm run configure, (eg. user: niles pass: PASSWORD).
Run killall -9 node, and then launch the ilp kit again with:
$ nohup npm start &
$ tail -f nohup.out -n 1000
You'll see your connector connect successfully.
So you've got a ledger all set up, with a UI and a connector to another ILP kit. But nobody on your ledger has any money. To remedy this, you can make an issuer account.
Just go to your site and register a new account called issuer (that name is just a convention, it can be
whatever you want). Now open ~/ilp-kit/env.list on your remote machine, and note down the admin username
and password. Use httpie on any machine to run:
curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -X PUT https://niles.sharafian.com/ledger/accounts/issuer --user admin:PASSWORD -d '{"minimum_allowed_balance":"-infinity","balance":"0","is_disabled":false, "id":"https://niles.sharafian.com/ledger/accounts/issuer","name":"issuer"}'Replace niles.sharafian.com with your domain, and replace PASSWORD with your own admin password. Now if you log in
as issuer, you can send money to your primary account to have some cash.
