Electrum server

We set up Electrs to serve as a full Electrum server for use with your Bitcoin software or hardware wallets.

Bitcoin with hardware wallets
Preparations
1. Install dependencies
2. Firewall & reverse proxy
Electrs
For the future: Electrs upgrade

Bitcoin with hardware wallets

The best way to safekeep your bitcoin (meaning the best combination of security and usability) is to use a hardware wallet (like BitBox, Coldcard , Ledger or Trezor) in combination with your own Bitcoin node. This gives you security, privacy and eliminates the need to trust a third party to verify transactions.

Bitcoin Core on the RaspiBolt itself is not meant to hold funds.

One possibility to use Bitcoin Core with your Bitcoin wallets is to use an Electrum server as middleware. It imports data from Bitcoin Core and provides it to software wallets supporting the Electrum protocol. Desktop wallets like Sparrow, the BitBoxApp, Electrum or Specter Desktop that support hardware wallets can then be used with your own sovereign Bitcoin node.

Preparations

Make sure that you have reduced the database cache of Bitcoin Core after full sync.

Install dependencies

Install build tools needed to compile Electrs from the source code
```
$ sudo apt install cargo clang cmake
```

Firewall & reverse proxy

In the Security section, we already set up NGINX as a reverse proxy. Now we can add the Electrs configuration.

Enable NGINX reverse proxy to add SSL/TLS encryption to the Electrs communication. Create the configuration file and paste the following content

$ sudo nano /etc/nginx/streams-enabled/electrs-reverse-proxy.conf

upstream electrs {
  server 127.0.0.1:50001;
}

server {
  listen 50002 ssl;
  proxy_pass electrs;
}

Test and reload NGINX configuration

$ sudo nginx -t
$ sudo systemctl reload nginx

Configure the firewall to allow incoming requests

$ sudo ufw allow 50002/tcp comment 'allow Electrum SSL'

Electrs

An easy and performant way to run an Electrum server is to use Electrs, the Electrum Server in Rust. There are no binaries available, so we will compile the application ourselves.

Build from source code

We get the latest release of the Electrs source code, verify it, compile it to an executable binary and install it.

Download the source code for the latest Electrs release. You can check the release page to see if a newer release is available. Other releases might not have been properly tested with the rest of the RaspiBolt configuration, though.
```
$ VERSION="0.9.14"
$ mkdir /home/admin/rust
$ cd /home/admin/rust
$ git clone --branch v$VERSION https://github.com/romanz/electrs.git
$ cd electrs
```

To avoid using bad source code, verify that the release has been properly signed by the main developer Roman Zeyde.

$ curl https://romanzey.de/pgp.txt | gpg --import
$ git verify-tag v$VERSION
> gpg: Good signature from "Roman Zeyde <me@romanzey.de>" [unknown]
> gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
> gpg:          There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
> Primary key fingerprint: 15C8 C357 4AE4 F1E2 5F3F  35C5 87CA E5FA 4691 7CBB

Now compile the source code into an executable binary and install it. The compilation process can take up to one hour.

$ cargo build --locked --release
$ sudo install -m 0755 -o root -g root -t /usr/local/bin ./target/release/electrs

Configuration

Create the “electrs” service user, and make it a member of the “bitcoin” group

$ sudo adduser --disabled-password --gecos "" electrs
$ sudo adduser electrs bitcoin

Create the Electrs data directory

$ sudo mkdir /data/electrs
$ sudo chown -R electrs:electrs /data/electrs

Switch to the “electrs” user and create the config file with the following content

$ sudo su - electrs
$ nano /data/electrs/electrs.conf

# RaspiBolt: electrs configuration
# /data/electrs/electrs.conf

# Bitcoin Core settings
network = "bitcoin"
daemon_dir= "/home/bitcoin/.bitcoin"
daemon_rpc_addr = "127.0.0.1:8332"
daemon_p2p_addr = "127.0.0.1:8333"

# Electrs settings
electrum_rpc_addr = "127.0.0.1:50001"
db_dir = "/data/electrs/db"

# Logging
log_filters = "INFO"
timestamp = true

Let’s start Electrs manually first to check if everything runs as expected. It will immediately start with the initial indexing of the Bitcoin blocks.

$ electrs --conf /data/electrs/electrs.conf

Starting electrs 0.9.14 on aarch64 linux with Config { network: Bitcoin, db_path: "/data/electrs/db/bitcoin", daemon_dir: "/home/bitcoin/.bitcoin", daemon_auth: CookieFile("/home/bitcoin/.bitcoin/.cookie"), daemon_rpc_addr: 127.0.0.1:8332, daemon_p2p_addr: 127.0.0.1:8333, electrum_rpc_addr: 127.0.0.1:50001, monitoring_addr: 127.0.0.1:4224, wait_duration: 10s, jsonrpc_timeout: 15s, index_batch_size: 10, index_lookup_limit: Some(1000), reindex_last_blocks: 0, auto_reindex: true, ignore_mempool: false, sync_once: false, disable_electrum_rpc: false, server_banner: "Welcome to electrs 0.9.14 (Electrum Rust Server)!", args: [] }
[2021-11-09T07:09:42.744Z INFO  electrs::metrics::metrics_impl] serving Prometheus metrics on 127.0.0.1:4224
[2021-11-09T07:09:42.744Z INFO  electrs::server] serving Electrum RPC on 127.0.0.1:50001
[2021-11-09T07:09:42.812Z INFO  electrs::db] "/data/electrs/db/bitcoin": 0 SST files, 0 GB, 0 Grows
[2021-11-09T07:09:43.174Z INFO  electrs::index] indexing 2000 blocks: [1..2000]
[2021-11-09T07:09:44.665Z INFO  electrs::chain] chain updated: tip=00000000dfd5d65c9d8561b4b8f60a63018fe3933ecb131fb37f905f87da951a, height=2000
[2021-11-09T07:09:44.986Z INFO  electrs::index] indexing 2000 blocks: [2001..4000]
[2021-11-09T07:09:46.191Z INFO  electrs::chain] chain updated: tip=00000000922e2aa9e84a474350a3555f49f06061fd49df50a9352f156692a842, height=4000
[2021-11-09T07:09:46.481Z INFO  electrs::index] indexing 2000 blocks: [4001..6000]
[2021-11-09T07:09:47.581Z INFO  electrs::chain] chain updated: tip=00000000dbbb79792303bdd1c6c4d7ab9c21bba0667213c2eca955e11230c5a5, height=6000
...

Stop Electrs with Ctrl-C and exit the “electrs” user session.
```
$ exit
```

Autostart on boot

Electrs needs to start automatically on system boot.

As user “admin”, create the Electrs systemd unit and copy/paste the following configuration. Save and exit.

$ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/electrs.service

# RaspiBolt: systemd unit for electrs
# /etc/systemd/system/electrs.service

[Unit]
Description=Electrs daemon
Wants=bitcoind.service
After=bitcoind.service

[Service]

# Service execution
###################
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/electrs --conf /data/electrs/electrs.conf

# Process management
####################
Type=simple
Restart=always
TimeoutSec=120
RestartSec=30
KillMode=process

# Directory creation and permissions
####################################
User=electrs

# /run/electrs
RuntimeDirectory=electrs
RuntimeDirectoryMode=0710

# Hardening measures
####################
# Provide a private /tmp and /var/tmp.
PrivateTmp=true

# Use a new /dev namespace only populated with API pseudo devices
# such as /dev/null, /dev/zero and /dev/random.
PrivateDevices=true

# Deny the creation of writable and executable memory mappings.
MemoryDenyWriteExecute=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable and start Electrs.

$ sudo systemctl enable electrs
$ sudo systemctl start electrs

Check the systemd journal to see Electrs’ log output.
```
$ sudo journalctl -f -u electrs
```
Electrs will now index the whole Bitcoin blockchain so that it can provide all necessary information to wallets. With this, the wallets you use no longer need to connect to any third-party server to communicate with the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network.
Exit the log output with Ctrl-C

Remote access over Tor (optional)

To use your Electrum server when you’re on the go, you can easily create a Tor hidden service. This way, you can connect the BitBoxApp or Electrum wallet also remotely, or even share the connection details with friends and family. Note that the remote device needs to have Tor installed as well.

Add the following three lines in the section for “location-hidden services” in the torrc file.

$ sudo nano /etc/tor/torrc

############### This section is just for location-hidden services ###
HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/hidden_service_electrs/
HiddenServiceVersion 3
HiddenServicePort 50002 127.0.0.1:50002

Reload Tor configuration and get your connection address.

$ sudo systemctl reload tor
$ sudo cat /var/lib/tor/hidden_service_electrs/hostname
> abcdefg..............xyz.onion

💡 Electrs must first fully index the blockchain and compact its database before you can connect to it with your wallets. This can take a few hours. Only proceed with the next section once Electrs is ready.

To check if Electrs is still indexing, you can follow the log output
```
$ sudo journalctl -f -u electrs
```

For the future: Electrs upgrade

Updating Electrs is straight-forward. You can display the current version with the command below and check the Electrs release page to see if a newer version is available.

🚨 Check the release notes! Make sure to check the release notes first to understand if there have been any breaking changes or special upgrade procedures.

Check current Electrs version
```
$ electrs --version
```

If a newer release is available, you can upgrade by executing the following commands with user “admin”

$ cd /home/admin/rust/electrs

# Clean and update the local source code and show the latest release tag (example: v0.9.14)
$ git clean -xfd
$ git fetch
$ git tag | sort --version-sort | tail -n 1
> v0.9.14
  
# Set the VERSION variable as number from latest release tag and verify developer signature
$ VERSION="0.9.14"
$ git verify-tag v$VERSION
> gpg: Good signature from "Roman Zeyde <me@romanzey.de>" [unknown]
> [...]

# Check out the release
# Should you encounter an error about files that would be overwritten use the -f argument to force the checkout
$ git checkout v$VERSION

# Compile the source code
$ cargo clean
$ cargo build --locked --release

# Back up the old version and update
$ sudo cp /usr/local/bin/electrs /usr/local/bin/electrs-old
$ sudo install -m 0755 -o root -g root -t /usr/local/bin ./target/release/electrs

# Update the Electrs configuration if necessary (see release notes)
$ nano /data/electrs/electrs.conf

# Restart Electrs
$ sudo systemctl restart electrs

Next: Desktop wallet »