Skip to main content

Run Besu from a Docker image

Hyperledger Besu provides a Docker image to run a Besu node in a Docker container.

Use this Docker image to run a single Besu node without installing Besu.

Prerequisites​

  • Docker

  • MacOS or Linux

    info

    The Docker image doesn't run on Windows.

Default node for Mainnet​

To run a Besu node in a container connected to the Ethereum Mainnet:

docker run hyperledger/besu:latest
note

https://hub.docker.com/r/hyperledger/besu/tags lists the available tags for the image.

If you previously pulled latest, Docker runs the cached version.

To ensure your image is up to date, pull the latest version again using docker pull hyperledger/besu:latest.

Expose ports​

Expose ports for P2P discovery, GraphQL, metrics, and HTTP and WebSocket JSON-RPC. You need to expose the ports to use the default ports or the ports specified using --rpc-http-port, --p2p-port, --rpc-ws-port, --metrics-port, --graphql-http-port, and --metrics-push-port options.

To run Besu exposing local ports for access:

docker run -p <localportJSON-RPC>:8545 -p <localportWS>:8546 -p <localportP2P>:30303 hyperledger/besu:latest --rpc-http-enabled --rpc-ws-enabled
note

The examples on this page expose TCP ports only. To expose UDP ports, specify /udp at the end of the argument for the -p Docker subcommand option:

docker run -p <port>:<port>/udp

See the docker run -p documentation.

To enable JSON-RPC HTTP calls to 127.0.0.1:8545 and P2P discovery on 127.0.0.1:13001:

docker run -p 8545:8545 -p 13001:30303 hyperledger/besu:latest --rpc-http-enabled

Start Besu​

danger

Don't mount a volume at the default data path (/opt/besu). Mounting a volume at the default data path interferes with the operation of Besu and prevents Besu from safely launching.

To run a node that maintains the node state (key and database), --data-path must be set to a location other than /opt/besu and a storage volume mounted at that location.

When running in a Docker container, --nat-method must be set to DOCKER or AUTO (default). Don't set --nat-method to NONE or UPNP.

You can specify Besu environment variables with the Docker image instead of the command line options.

Example
docker run -p 30303:30303 -p 8545:8545 -e BESU_RPC_HTTP_ENABLED=true -e BESU_NETWORK=holesky hyperledger/besu:latest
Unsupported address type exception

When running Besu from a Docker image, you might get the following exception:

Unsupported address type exception when connecting to peer {}, this is likely due to ipv6 not being enabled at runtime.

This happens when the IPv6 support in Docker is disabled while connecting to an IPv6 peer, preventing outbound communication. IPv6 is disabled by default in Docker.

Enable IPv6 support in Docker to allow outbound IPv6 traffic and allow connection with IPv6 peers.

Run a node for testing​

To run a node that mines blocks at a rate suitable for testing purposes with WebSocket enabled:

docker run -p 8546:8546 --mount type=bind,source=/<myvolume/besu/testnode>,target=/var/lib/besu hyperledger/besu:latest --miner-enabled --miner-coinbase fe3b557e8fb62b89f4916b721be55ceb828dbd73 --rpc-ws-enabled --network=dev --data-path=/var/lib/besu

Run a node on Holesky testnet​

To run a node on Holesky:

docker run -p 30303:30303 --mount type=bind,source=/<myvolume/besu/holesky>,target=/var/lib/besu hyperledger/besu:latest --network=holesky --data-path=/var/lib/besu

Run a node on Ethereum Mainnet​

To run a node on Ethereum Mainnet with the HTTP JSON-RPC service enabled:

docker run -p 8545:8545 --mount type=bind,source=/<myvolume/besu/mainnet>,target=/var/lib/besu  -p 30303:30303 hyperledger/besu:latest --rpc-http-enabled --data-path=/var/lib/besu

Stop Besu and clean up resources​

When done running nodes, you can shut down the node container without deleting resources or you can delete the container after stopping it. Run docker container ls and docker volume ls to get the container and volume names.

To stop a container:

docker stop <container-name>

To delete a container:

docker rm <container-name>