Install Official Bitcoin Wallet On AWS EC2 Linux AMI (or RedHat / CentOS)

This article is now obsolete.

Please refer to the newer version:

http://blog.domenech.org/2016/04/how-to-install-bitcoin-classic-on-amazon-linux-aws-ec2.html

Update 2014-04-09: Using bitcoin-0.9.1 with Heartbleed patch.

You should know that RedHat, CentOS or Amazon Linux AMI are not the best choice when it comes to use Bitcoin wallet or other Bitcoin related activities. If you are looking for the easy path you should use Ubuntu Linux or Microsoft Windows as platform. The community is much bigger there.

But if you are determined like me to have your Bitcoin Wallet in the Cloud here you have some instructions. They apply to RedHat and its branches like AWS Linux AMI and CentOS.

Launch a EC2 Instance using Amazon Linux AMI HVM. In this example is ami-b521dfc2 (Ireland). I suggest to use the HVM version to maintain compatibility among different EC2 Instance Types.

All command are executed using ec2-user


Update & Reboot

sudo yum update sudo reboot

PU_IAS6 Repository & Berkeley DB4.8

We will need Berkeley DB 4.8 but our OS comes with 4.7. Let's use PUIAS repository to get the RPMs with need.
Create the repository config file /etc/yum.repos.d/puias-computational.repo and paste into it the repository definition.

sudo vim /etc/yum.repos.d/puias-computational.repo

[puias-computational] name=PUIAS Computational baseurl=http://puias.math.ias.edu/data/puias/computational/6/x86_64/ enabled=1 gpgcheck=0

sudo yum install db48 db48-devel

Boost-Devel

sudo yum install boost-devel

OpenSSL

We need Elliptic Curve Encryption for Bitcoin to work. For some reason it is missing in RHEL distributions. We have to patch around that.

Download & Install OpenSSL source

wget https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.0.1f.tar.gz tar xvfz openssl-1.0.1f.tar.gz cd openssl-1.0.1f export CFLAGS="-fPIC" ./config shared

Disable man pages

vim Makefile

Locate a line with this content "install: all install_docs install_sw" (Line #543) and remove "install_docs" command from it.
The final result should look like this:

... ... ...         @$(MAKE) TAR='$(TAR)' TARFLAGS='$(TARFLAGS)' tar dist_pem_h:         (cd crypto/pem; $(MAKE) -e $(BUILDENV) pem.h; $(MAKE) clean) install: all install_sw install_sw:         @$(PERL) $(TOP)/util/mkdir-p.pl $(INSTALL_PREFIX)$(INSTALLTOP)/bin \                 $(INSTALL_PREFIX)$(INSTALLTOP)/$(LIBDIR) \ ... ... ...

Make & Install

make depend make all sudo -E make install

If we are errors free, continue copying the following files:

sudo cp /usr/local/ssl/lib/pkgconfig/libssl.pc /usr/lib64/pkgconfig/ sudo cp /usr/local/ssl/lib/pkgconfig/libcrypto.pc /usr/lib64/pkgconfig/ sudo cp /usr/local/ssl/lib/libssl.so.1.0.0 /usr/lib64/ sudo cp /usr/local/ssl/lib/libcrypto.so.1.0.0 /usr/lib64/ cd

Bitcoin

Official Bitcoin download source & Install

cd wget https://bitcoin.org/bin/0.9.1/bitcoin-0.9.1-linux.tar.gz tar xvfz bitcoin-0.9.0-linux.tar.gz cd bitcoin-0.9.0-linux/src/ tar xvfz bitcoin-0.9.0.tar.gz cd bitcoin-0.9.0/ ./configure

If everything goes well you should have and output like this one:

$ ./configure  checking build system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu checking host system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c checking whether build environment is sane... yes checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /bin/mkdir -p checking for gawk... gawk checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes checking whether to enable maintainer-specific portions of Makefiles... yes checking whether make supports nested variables... yes checking for g++... g++ checking whether the C++ compiler works... yes checking for C++ compiler default output file name... a.out checking for suffix of executables...  checking whether we are cross compiling... no checking for suffix of object files... o checking whether we are using the GNU C++ compiler... yes checking whether g++ accepts -g... yes checking for style of include used by make... GNU checking dependency style of g++... gcc3 checking for gcc... gcc checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes checking for gcc option to accept ISO C89... none needed checking dependency style of gcc... gcc3 checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E checking how to run the C++ preprocessor... g++ -E checking for gcc... gcc checking whether we are using the GNU Objective C compiler... no checking whether gcc accepts -g... no checking dependency style of gcc... gcc3 checking for g++... g++ checking whether we are using the GNU Objective C++ compiler... no checking whether g++ accepts -g... no checking for a sed that does not truncate output... /bin/sed checking for ar... /usr/bin/ar checking for ranlib... /usr/bin/ranlib checking for strip... /usr/bin/strip checking for gcov... /usr/bin/gcov checking for lcov... no checking for java... /usr/bin/java checking for genhtml... no checking for git... no checking for ccache... no checking for xgettext... no checking for hexdump... /usr/bin/hexdump checking for pkg-config... /usr/bin/pkg-config checking pkg-config is at least version 0.9.0... yes checking for grep that handles long lines and -e... /bin/grep checking for egrep... /bin/grep -E checking for ANSI C header files... yes checking for sys/types.h... yes checking for sys/stat.h... yes checking for stdlib.h... yes checking for string.h... yes checking for memory.h... yes checking for strings.h... yes checking for inttypes.h... yes checking for stdint.h... yes checking for unistd.h... yes checking whether byte ordering is bigendian... no checking if compiler needs -Werror to reject unknown flags... no checking for the pthreads library -lpthreads... no checking whether pthreads work without any flags... no checking whether pthreads work with -Kthread... no checking whether pthreads work with -kthread... no checking for the pthreads library -llthread... no checking whether pthreads work with -pthread... yes checking for joinable pthread attribute... PTHREAD_CREATE_JOINABLE checking if more special flags are required for pthreads... no checking for PTHREAD_PRIO_INHERIT... yes checking for special C compiler options needed for large files... no checking for _FILE_OFFSET_BITS value needed for large files... no checking whether the linker accepts -Wl,--large-address-aware... no checking whether C++ compiler accepts -Wstack-protector... yes checking whether C++ compiler accepts -fstack-protector-all... yes checking whether C++ compiler accepts -fPIE... yes checking whether C++ preprocessor accepts -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2... yes checking whether C++ preprocessor accepts -U_FORTIFY_SOURCE... yes checking whether the linker accepts -Wl,--dynamicbase... no checking whether the linker accepts -Wl,--nxcompat... no checking whether the linker accepts -Wl,-z,relro... yes checking whether the linker accepts -Wl,-z,now... yes checking whether the linker accepts -pie... yes checking stdio.h usability... yes checking stdio.h presence... yes checking for stdio.h... yes checking for stdlib.h... (cached) yes checking for unistd.h... (cached) yes checking for strings.h... (cached) yes checking for sys/types.h... (cached) yes checking for sys/stat.h... (cached) yes checking for MSG_NOSIGNAL... yes checking for Berkeley DB C++ headers... /usr/include/db4/ checking for main in -ldb_cxx-4.8... yes checking miniupnpc/miniwget.h usability... no checking miniupnpc/miniwget.h presence... no checking for miniupnpc/miniwget.h... no checking miniupnpc/miniupnpc.h usability... no checking miniupnpc/miniupnpc.h presence... no checking for miniupnpc/miniupnpc.h... no checking miniupnpc/upnpcommands.h usability... no checking miniupnpc/upnpcommands.h presence... no checking for miniupnpc/upnpcommands.h... no checking miniupnpc/upnperrors.h usability... no checking miniupnpc/upnperrors.h presence... no checking for miniupnpc/upnperrors.h... no checking for boostlib >= 1.20.0... yes checking whether the Boost::System library is available... yes checking for exit in -lboost_system... yes checking whether the Boost::Filesystem library is available... yes checking for exit in -lboost_filesystem... yes checking whether the Boost::Program_Options library is available... yes checking for exit in -lboost_program_options-mt... yes checking whether the Boost::Thread library is available... yes checking for exit in -lboost_thread... yes checking whether the Boost::Chrono library is available... yes checking for exit in -lboost_chrono-mt... yes checking whether the Boost::Unit_Test_Framework library is available... yes checking for dynamic linked boost test... yes checking for SSL... yes checking for CRYPTO... yes checking for PROTOBUF... no configure: WARNING: libprotobuf not found; bitcoin-qt frontend will not be built checking whether to build bitcoind... yes checking whether to build bitcoin-cli... yes checking whether to build Bitcoin Core GUI... no (Qt) checking for operating system IPv6 support... yes checking if ccache should be used... no checking if wallet should be enabled... yes checking whether to build with support for IPv6... yes checking whether to build with support for UPnP... no checking whether to build test_bitcoin... yes configure: creating ./config.status config.status: creating Makefile config.status: creating src/Makefile config.status: creating src/test/Makefile config.status: creating src/qt/Makefile config.status: creating src/qt/test/Makefile config.status: creating share/setup.nsi config.status: creating share/qt/Info.plist config.status: creating qa/pull-tester/run-bitcoind-for-test.sh config.status: creating qa/pull-tester/build-tests.sh config.status: creating src/bitcoin-config.h config.status: executing depfiles commands $

If it does not, review all the previous steps and repeat.

Make, Install & Execute (Note "d" after bitcoin. We use Bitcoin wallet as daemon)

make sudo make install bitcoind

Expected output:

$ bitcoind Error: To use the "-server" option, you must set a rpcpassword in the configuration file: /home/ec2-user/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf It is recommended you use the following random password: rpcuser=bitcoinrpc rpcpassword=abcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcd (you do not need to remember this password) The username and password MUST NOT be the same. If the file does not exist, create it with owner-readable-only file permissions. It is also recommended to set alertnotify so you are notified of problems; for example: alertnotify=echo %s | mail -s "Bitcoin Alert" admin@foo.com $

Bitcoind is telling us that we need a minimal configuration file to start with. With the first execution the .bitcoin folder is automatically created under our user directory.

cd cd .bitcoin vim bitcoin.conf

You can begin with this basic configuration file (Manual page).

server=1 daemon=1 rpcuser=<A LONG & UNIQUE USERNAME HERE> rpcpassword=<A VERY GOOD PASSWORD HERE>

Let's try again:

bitcoind

And the expected result on console:

Bitcoin server starting

and now the debug.log file should be moving. We can see the initialization process and messages like these:

2014-04-08 18:34:33 Pre-allocating up to position 0x100000 in rev00000.dat 2014-04-08 18:34:33 UpdateTip: new best=00000000839a8e6886ab5951d76f411475428afc90947ee320161bbf18eb6048  height=1  log2_work=33.000022  tx=2  da te=2009-01-09 02:54:25 progress=0.000000 2014-04-08 18:34:33 ProcessBlock: ACCEPTED 2014-04-08 18:34:33 UpdateTip: new best=000000006a625f06636b8bb6ac7b960a8d03705d1ace08b1a19da3fdcc99ddbd  height=2  log2_work=33.584985  tx=3  da te=2009-01-09 02:55:44 progress=0.000000 2014-04-08 18:34:33 ProcessBlock: ACCEPTED 2014-04-08 18:34:33 UpdateTip: new best=0000000082b5015589a3fdf2d4baff403e6f0be035a5d9742c1cae6295464449  height=3  log2_work=34.000022  tx=4  da te=2009-01-09 03:02:53 progress=0.000000 2014-04-08 18:34:33 ProcessBlock: ACCEPTED

This is our wallet loading and verifying all the Bitcoin blockchain. When the process is complete your wallet will become a node of the Bitcoin network and will help validating Bitcoin transactions. It could take more than 24 hours for the process to complete. You can learn more about this here.
There is a way to speed up this process by downloading a Torrent file. More details at the end of this post.

You can issue commands to interact with the daemon. For instance:

bitcoind getblockcount

to get the number of blocks imported so far. Type bitcoind help for the whole list.


Initializing Blockchain database using Torrent

bitcoind stop sudo yum install transmission-cli cd ~/.bitcoin transmission-cli https://bitcoin.org/bin/blockchain/bootstrap.dat.torrent bitcoind -loadblock=~/.bitcoin/bootstrap.dat

Torrent File ReadMe.txt

This article is now obsolete.

Please refer to the newer version:

http://blog.domenech.org/2016/04/how-to-install-bitcoin-classic-on-amazon-linux-aws-ec2.html