A Docker configuration with sane defaults for running a fully-validating Bitcoin node. Binaries are retrieved from bitcoincore.org and verified for integrity based on the process described here.
References on the Docker registry (https://hub.docker.com) are mutable. A malicious actor could change any images hosted there without you realizing it.
If you use an image served by the Docker registry, ensure that you retrieve it by its content hash, as detailed here. Or just build these images yourself.
With most software this doesn't matter too much, but running an authentic copy of Bitcoin Core is really important!
- 0.13.0
- 0.13.1
- 0.13.2
- 0.14.3
- 0.15.2
- 0.16.3
- 0.17.0
- 0.17.0.1
- 0.17.1
- 0.17.2
- 0.18.0
- 0.18.1
- 0.19.0
- 0.19.1
- 0.20.0
- 0.20.1 (latest)
Requires that Docker be installed on the host machine.
# Create some directory where your bitcoin data will be stored.
$ mkdir /home/youruser/bitcoin_data
$ $EDITOR envfile
BTC_RPCPASSWORD=your_password
$ docker run --name bitcoind -d \
-e 'BTC_RPCUSER=foo' \
-e 'BTC_TXINDEX=1' \
--env-file envfile \
-v /home/youruser/bitcoin_data:/bitcoin/data \
-p 127.0.0.1:8332:8332 \
-p 8333:8333 \
jamesob/bitcoind:0.20.1
$ docker logs -f bitcoind
[ ... ]Warning: if you specify your RPC password without using an envfile, it may
be captured in your shell history. Use an envfile if you are going to use
BTC_RPCPASSWORD.
If you want the RPC port to be accessible to remote hosts, remove the 127.0.0.1 from
the -p ...8332 line.
If you want to use a preexisting data directory and your own config file, run
$ docker run --name jamesob/bitcoind:0.20.1 -d \
-v /home/youruser/bitcoin_data:/bitcoin/data \
-v /home/youruser/bitcoin.conf:/bitcoin/bitcoin.conf \
-p 127.0.0.1:8332:8332 \
-p 8333:8333 \
jamesob/bitcoind:0.20.1By default, the container runs under UID,GID=1000 to avoid executing as a privileged user. If you want to rebuild the container with different settings, you can do so:
$ git clone https://github.com/jamesob/docker-bitcoind
$ cd docker-bitcoind
$ docker build -t $YOUR_USER/bitcoind:$SOME_VERSION \
--build-arg UID=$(id -u) \
--build-arg GID=$(id -g) \
--build-arg VERSION=$SOME_VERSION \
.
| Path | Description |
|---|---|
/bitcoin/data |
Bitcoin's data directory |
/bitcoin/bitcoin.conf |
Bitcoin's configuration file |
A custom bitcoin.conf file can be placed at /bitcoin.conf.
Otherwise, a default will be automatically generated based
on environment variables passed to the container:
| name | default |
|---|---|
| BTC_RPCUSER | btc |
| BTC_RPCPASSWORD | |
| BTC_RPCPORT | 8332 |
| BTC_RPCALLOWIP | ::/0 |
| BTC_RPCCLIENTTIMEOUT | 30 |
| BTC_DISABLEWALLET | 1 |
| BTC_TXINDEX | 0 |
| BTC_TESTNET | 0 |
| BTC_DBCACHE | 0 |
| BTC_ZMQPUBHASHTX | tcp://0.0.0.0:28333 |
| BTC_ZMQPUBHASHBLOCK | tcp://0.0.0.0:28333 |
| BTC_ZMQPUBRAWTX | tcp://0.0.0.0:28333 |
| BTC_ZMQPUBRAWBLOCK | tcp://0.0.0.0:28333 |
The smart thing to do if you're daemonizing is to use Docker's builtin restart
policies
(i.e. docker run --restart unless-stopped ...), but if you're insistent on using
systemd, you could do something like
$ cat /etc/systemd/system/bitcoind.service
# bitcoind.service #######################################################################
[Unit]
Description=Bitcoind
After=docker.service
Requires=docker.service
[Service]
ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/docker kill bitcoind
ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/docker rm bitcoind
ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/docker pull jamesob/bitcoind
ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker run \
--name bitcoind \
-p 8333:8333 \
-p 127.0.0.1:8332:8332 \
-v /data/bitcoind:/root/.bitcoin \
jamesob/bitcoind
ExecStop=/usr/bin/docker stop bitcoindto ensure that bitcoind continues to run.