How to setup a Litecoin node

Note: Setting up Litecoin and Bitcoin nodes is very similar, you can check my previous post on how to setup a Bitcoin node. This tutorial describes how to setup a new Litecoin relay node on Linux server - this node will be used as relay node in the Litecoin network and it’s not recommended to store anything in it’s wallet.

Download Litecoin from official website: https://litecoin.org/">https://litecoin.org/ At the moment the most recent version can be downloaded using this direct link: https://download.litecoin.org/litecoin-0.8.7.1/linux/litecoin-0.8.7.1-linux.tar.xz">https://download.litecoin.org/litecoin-0.8.7.1/linux/litecoin-0.8.7.1-linux.tar.xz

Extract archive:

tar xf litecoin-0.8.7.1-linux.tar.xz

Create litecoin configuration file:

mkdir ~/.litecoin

Create new file in ~/.litecoin called litecoin.conf with following contents (you should setup different password):

server=1
rpcuser=litecoinrpc
rpcpassword=8Yqs73jcGdio29hdnTd3PnodSfeZHqDnD367NzJzAcuaBV
rpcconnect=127.0.0.1

Start litecoin daemon

From this moment initial node bootstrapping begins - you’ll see a lot of server resources being used, especially disk and CPU

After few moments you can check if your node is downloading blocks from the network (bootstrapping), use this command:

~/litecoin-0.8.7.1-linux/bin/64/litecoind getinfo

You should see similar output:

{
    "version" : 80701,
    "protocolversion" : 70002,
    "walletversion" : 60000,
    "balance" : 0.00000000,
    "blocks" : 90918,
    "timeoffset" : 5,
    "connections" : 8,
    "proxy" : "",
    "difficulty" : 1.74216445,
    "testnet" : false,
    "keypoololdest" : 1400613146,
    "keypoolsize" : 101,
    "paytxfee" : 0.00000000,
    "mininput" : 0.00001000,
    "errors" : ""
}

This is how fully synchronized node looks at the moment:

{
    "version" : 80701,
    "protocolversion" : 70002,
    "walletversion" : 60000,
    "balance" : 0.00000000,
    "blocks" : 572743,
    "timeoffset" : 4,
    "connections" : 38,
    "proxy" : "",
    "difficulty" : 7455.65003645,
    "testnet" : false,
    "keypoololdest" : 1400613146,
    "keypoolsize" : 101,
    "paytxfee" : 0.00000000,
    "mininput" : 0.00001000,
    "errors" : ""
}

Additional step: Depending on your firewall configuration you might need to add following exceptions to the iptables:

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 9333 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p udp --dport 9333 -j ACCEPT