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Battery Station

Zeitgeist Battery Station is a test network in beta phase.

You can follow this guide to connect to it but some things might not work yet. If you would like to report a bug please open an issue on our GitHub repository. Also note that the chain is liable to be reset at any time without any warning.

If you want to support and strengthen Battery Station by running your own network node, head over to the section Get Connected. If you want to interact with Battery Station, head over to the section Accessing the User Interface

Get connected​

The minimum system requirements are:

  • CPU: AMD EPYC 7601 (or another CPU with equivalent single core performance)
  • RAM: 8 GB
  • Hard drive: SSD

There are two ways that you can run a node and connect to the Battery Station testnet. One way is to build the code from source. On recent hardware this should take about 15 minutes. The other way is to use Docker which doesn't need to build and can get you started right away.

Building from source​

Note for Windows users: Although it should be possible to build this project on Windows, it is not well supported. Instead it is recommended to build this project inside WSL in Windows. If you want to build this on Windows anyways, you can follow this tutorial to setup your build environment and continue with this tutorial afterwards. We have not tested building on Windows and cannot guarantee that it will work.

Note for Ubuntu >= 16 users: Building from source is not necessary, since we offer a pre-built binary. You can use it instead of building from source and skip this tutorial to the part that describes how to fetch the Zeitgeist relay chain specification. Feel free to use the following command to download the binary under the name "zeitgeist" into the current folder (and don't forget to replace "/target/release/zeitgeist" with "zeitgeist" during the tutorial):

curl -o zeitgeist https://github.com/zeitgeistpm/zeitgeist/releases/download/v0.3.0/zeitgeist_parachain
chmod +x zeitgeist

The source code is hosted in the zeitgeistpm/zeitgeist repository on GitHub.

To be able to compile the project, Rust must be installed on your system. We recommend using rustup to manage your rust build environments. This instructions will assume that you have rustup installed.

You will need to clone the code locally, and make sure that you have the dependencies installed. Execute the following commands to fetch the project:

# clone the code locally and checkout latest version
git clone https://github.com/zeitgeistpm/zeitgeist.git --depth 1 --branch latest
# change directory
cd zeitgeist

Next configure rustup, on Unix you can execute the following script:

# use the initializer script
./scripts/init.sh

After initializing you can then start building by using the cargo command:

cargo build --release --features parachain --bin zeitgeist

Note: A system with at least 16GB of RAM is required to build the node.

Once the build has finished you will have the zeitgeist binary available in the target/release folder.

You can start a full-node (non-authoring) for Battery Station from the root of the directory like this:

./target/release/zeitgeist --chain=battery_station --pruning=archive

You should see your node begin to sync blocks.

Feel free to play around with the other available options, which you can inspect by executing:

./target/release/zeitgeist --help

If you plan to continuously run your node, jump to the next section.

Automatically running the Zeitgeist parachain as a systemd service (Linux)​

To automatically start and restart the zeitgeist chain, you can use a systemd service. It is not recommended to do this with a docker image.

We will create a non-privileged user to execute the Zeitgeist node, setup the folder structure, create a systemd service file, launch the service and inspect the output.

Create a new user (without a home folder) and disable login for that user:

sudo useradd -M -r -s /sbin/nologin zeitgeist

Create a folder that will contain the Zeitgeist data and the previously compiled binary file. Note where your zeitgeist binary lies (by default it is within the source folder at target/release) and replace the path after the cp command that is shown below. In this example we will use /services/zeitgeist as the base folder for our service, /services/zeitgeist/bin will contain the zeitgeist binary and the whole /services/zeitgeist folder structure will be owned by the unprivileged zeitgeist user we created during the previous step:

sudo mkdir -p /services/zeitgeist/bin
sudo cp /path/to/your/target/release/zeitgeist /services/zeitgeist/bin
sudo chown -R zeitgeist:zeitgeist /services/zeitgeist
sudo chmod -R go=-rwx /services/zeitgeist

Create a systemd service file. You can use your favorite editor, in this example we will use nano though, because it is well supported.

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/zeitgeist-node.service

You can just use the following template or adjust it to your needs:

Note: The arguments after the double dash (--) apply to the relay chain, which is required by the parachain

[Unit]
Description=Zeitgeist Battery Station parachain full node
After=network.target
Requires=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=zeitgeist
Group=zeitgeist
RestartSec=5
Restart=always
Nice=0
ExecStart=/services/zeitgeist/bin/zeitgeist \
    --base-path=/services/zeitgeist/battery_station \
    --chain=battery_station \
    --name=zeitgeist-support-$RANDOM \
    --port=30333 \
    --rpc-port=9933 \
    --ws-port=9944 \
    --rpc-external \
    --ws-external \
    --rpc-cors=all \
    --pruning=archive \
    -- \
    --port=30334 \
    --rpc-port=9934 \
    --ws-port=9945


[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Replace zeitgeist-support-$RANDOM with the name your node should have. Set --port, --rpc-port and --ws-port to some ports that are not occupied yet. Ensure that incoming traffic on those ports is allowed. The node will listen to RPCs over HTTP and WS, to make the node eligible for potential load-balancing. You can adjust the Nice value to configure the priority of the process the service spawns. 20 is the lowest, -20 the highest priority.

Paste your copy buffer into nano by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+V and save the changes by pressing CTRL+X, y and ENTER

Enable the service and start it:

sudo systemctl enable zeitgeist-node
sudo systemctl start zeitgeist-node

Check if it is up and running and syncing with the rest of the network:

systemctl status zeitgeist-node

If it shows Active: active (running), your service works as expected. Use the following command to retrieve your node id (from Zeitgeist Parachain):

journalctl -u zeitgeist-node.service | grep "node id"

Otherwise enter the following command and inspect what went wrong:

journalctl -u zeitgeist-node

If you are stuck with an error you can ask for assistance in our node-operators Discord channel.

We recommend backing up the node secret file, which is used to derive your node's id. The id might be required in future programs. If you want to restore a previous node id, jump to the node id restoration section.

Using Docker​

We publish the latest version to the Docker Hub that can be pulled and ran locally to connect to the Battery Station network. In order to do this first make sure that you have Docker installed locally.

Downloading the docker image​

docker pull zeitgeistpm/zeitgeist-node-parachain:latest

Running a Zeitgeist parachain full node within docker​

You can run the docker image using the following command, but the node id and the chain data are lost after you shut down the docker container.

docker run \
    -p 30333:30333 \
    -p 9933:9933 \
    -p 9944:9944 \
    --name=zeitgeist-parachain \
    --restart=always \
    zeitgeistpm/zeitgeist-node-parachain:latest \
    --base-path=/zeitgeist/data \
    --chain=battery_station \
    --name=zeitgeist-support-$RANDOM \
    --pruning=archive

To keep the chain data, you will have to select a folder on your system that docker will use to store its files in. Ensure that the folder does exist and that you have write permission for that folder. Assuming the path you want to use locally is /services/zeitgeist (and that docker has write permissions in this folder), the previous command should be appended by one more -v option:

docker run \
    -p 30333:30333 \
    -p 9933:9933 \
    -p 9944:9944 \
    -v /services/zeitgeist:/zeitgeist/data/ \
    --name=zeitgeist-parachain \
    --restart=always \
    zeitgeistpm/zeitgeist-node-parachain:latest \
    --base-path=/zeitgeist/data \
    --chain=battery_station \
    --name=zeitgeist-support-$RANDOM \
    --pruning=archive

That's it, your node should be running and syncing with other nodes, while using a persistent chain storage and node id. If you plan to continuously run your node, jump to the next section.

Running a Zeitgeist parachain full node in a persistent docker container​

To automatically start a docker container at any occasion (including after reboots and errors), except when it was explicitly stopped by a docker command, append the -d and --restart flag to the docker run command from above. The following command includes those options. In addition to that, the node parameters are extended in a way that makes the node listen to RPCs over HTTP and WS, to make the node eligible for potential future load-balancing. Ensure that you adjust -v /services/zeitgeist to use a folder you desire for chain data and that docker has write permissions for it. Replace zeitgeist-support-$RANDOM with the name your node should have.

docker run \
    --restart unless-stopped \
    -d \
    -p 30333:30333 \
    -p 9933:9933 \
    -p 9944:9944 \
    -v /services/zeitgeist:/zeitgeist/data/ \
    --name=zeitgeist-parachain \
    zeitgeistpm/zeitgeist-node-parachain:latest \
    --base-path=/zeitgeist/data \
    --chain=battery_station \
    --name=zeitgeist-support-$RANDOM \
    --rpc-external \
    --ws-external \
    --rpc-cors=all \
    --pruning=archive

After the command was executed, one line is printed in the terminal that represents the container id. It has this format:

1e501c25e43be3f2cecc3bade11b22f60f17839d41b37cdac9139cb8ebc8700b

To retrieve your node id, execute the following command (replace container_id with the container id that was printed to your terminal):

docker logs container_id

The previous command shows the outputs of the node. It should include one line containing your node id, that looks like:

Local node identity is: 12D3KooWKzzeu1thnWQv8CCWaugFfpeCXnq7jmp6GENSdXqG5xX9

You can also retrieve the container id by using the following command:

docker ps --filter ancestor=zeitgeistpm/zeitgeist-node-parachain:latest

We recommend backing up the node secret file, which is used to derive your node's id. The id might be required in future programs. If you want to restore a previous node id, jump to the node id restoration section.

Ensuring that you can restore your node's id​

For anybody who has entered a node id in any of our forms, it is essential that you backup the corresponding node secret after you have set up the node to ensure, that you always can restore the node id that you have entered and consequently are always able to continue gathering rewards based on that node id.

Your node's id is derived from a secret seed. If you lose access to the data of your node, it is impossible to restore your node id, unless you have created a backup as long as you had access to the data.

Backing up the node secret file from a docker container​

The following sections will explain how to retrieve the path to the node secret on Unix and Windows based systems. After retrieving the path, copy the file located at the path to a safe location that is not on the same machine where you copied the file from.

On Unix​
echo "$(CONTAINER_ROW=`docker ps | grep zeitgeistpm/zeitgeist-node-parachain` && docker inspect --format '{{range .Mounts}}{{println .Destination}}{{end}}' ${CONTAINER_ROW%% *} | sed -n '2p')/chains/battery_station/network/secret_ed25519"
On Windows​

First get the container id:

docker ps | findstr "zeitgeist"

The container ID is the leftmost number in the row. Then get the volume it's mounted to (replace container_id with the id you extracted during the previous step):

docker inspect --format '{{range .Mounts}}{{println .Destination}}{{end}}' container_id

Last, append the following string to the last path in the output: \chains\battery_station\network\secret_ed25519 The resulting string is the location of the secret file.

Backing up the node secret file from a systemd service​

The following command will print the location of your node's secret file (you might have to replace zeitgeist-node with the name of your Zeitgeist node service):

SECRET_LOCATION=`journalctl -u zeitgeist-node | grep "Database: RocksDb at"` && echo ${SECRET_LOCATION##* RocksDb at } | sed 's/\/db/\/network\/secret_ed25519/'

Copy the file to a safe location that is not on the same machine you copied the file from.

Restoring the node id​

Before the node is started, the node secret file backup has to be put in the data folder of the Zeitgeist node. The steps to restore the node id differ a bit between docker and systemd and are described in the following sections.

Restoring the node id within a docker container​

First copy the node secret backup file secret_ed25519 into the docker folder that was mounted using the -v command. If that folder does not exist yet, create it and ensure docker has the permissions to read from and write into it.

After that, append the following option to the docker run command right after the docker image (zeitgeist-node-parachain-TAG):

--node-key-file /zeitgeist/data/secret_ed25519

Don't forget to replace /services/zeitgeist/ with the directory you copied the backup into. Running the docker container will log the node id. Use it to verify that the Zeitgeist node does indeed use your old node's id.

docker logs container_id
Restoring the node id within systemd​

First copy the node secret backup file secret_ed25519 into the data folder of your Zeitgeist node. You can use the following command to retrieve the data folder (replace zeitgeist-node.service with the name of your Zeitgeist systemd file):

cat /etc/systemd/system/zeitgeist-node.service | grep -- "-d \|-d=\|--base-path"

After copying the node secret file backup to this location, append the following line to the line starting with ExecStart within your Zeitgeist systemd file (replace /services/zeitgeist with the data folder, in which you placed your backup): --node-key-file /services/zeitgeist/secret_ed25519

Stop any running node, update the daemon and start the node again (replace zeitgeist-node):

sudo systemctl stop zeitgeist-node; sudo systemctl daemon-reload && sudo systemctl start zeitgeist-node

Finally, verify that the Zeitgeist node does indeed use your old node's id (replace zeitgeist-node):

journalctl -u zeitgeist-node.service | grep "node id"

Connecting to Telemetry​

By default, your node will connect to Parity's telemetry endpoint that is accessible at https://telemetry.polkadot.io. You can ensure your node is up and running by visiting this page, selecting the "Battery Station" network and searching for your node's name (search can be started by simply typing while on the telemetry page).

Accessing the user interface​

You can access the beta application at: https://beta.zeitgeist.pm. Note that to gain access to the beta application, an NFT from one of the Zeitgeist Tarot collections is required.

You can follow our beta app tutorial to learn how to interact with it.

You can also access the polkadot.js-based (advanced) UI at: https://polkadot.js.org/apps/?rpc=wss://bsr.zeitgeist.pm

See Zeitgeist Beta for details.

Faucet​

We operate a faucet, that can be used to receive the native Zeitgeist currency for the Battery Station testnet, ZBS (Zeitgeist Battery Station), which is required for numerous interactions with Battery Station. You will need an account to retrieve ZBS.

There are numerous ways to generate an account, we suggest to use Polkadot{.js} extension though, because it is simple and straightforward to use. You can get it at:

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Last updated on by Jørn Andre Tangen @gorillatron