Last update: November 20, 2020

Running Hyperledger Besu from a Docker image

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

Important

The Docker image does not 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.

Exposing ports

Expose ports for P2P discovery, GraphQL, metrics, and HTTP and WebSockets 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

Example

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

Starting Besu

Important

Do not 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). Do not 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=goerli hyperledger/besu:latest

Run a node for testing

To run a node that mines blocks at a rate suitable for testing purposes with WebSockets 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 Rinkeby Testnet

To run a node on Rinkeby:

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

Stopping Besu and cleaning 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>