How to setup a Dogecoin node

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

mkdir ~/dogecoin
mv dogecoin-core-1.7.0-linux64.zip ~/dogecoin
unzip dogecoin-core-1.7.0-linux64.zip

Create dogecoin configuration file:

mkdir ~/.dogecoin

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

server=1
rpcuser=dogecoinrpc
rpcpassword=3389fejf893cjde93jg0dJd3Md673NDSioEmdsldsjFoiqwe
rpcconnect=127.0.0.1

Start dogecoin daemon

~/doge/dogecoind -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:

~/doge/dogecoin-cli getinfo

You should see similar output:

{
    "version" : 1070000,
    "protocolversion" : 70002,
    "walletversion" : 60000,
    "balance" : 0.00000000,
    "blocks" : 11426,
    "timeoffset" : 5,
    "connections" : 8,
    "proxy" : "",   
    "difficulty" : 22.48322498,
    "testnet" : false,
    "keypoololdest" : 1401119564,
    "keypoolsize" : 101,
    "paytxfee" : 0.00000000,
    "errors" : ""   
}

This is how fully synchronized node looks at the moment:

{
    "version" : 1070000,
    "protocolversion" : 70002,
    "walletversion" : 60000,
    "balance" : 0.00000000,
    "blocks" : 22719,
    "timeoffset" : 5,
    "connections" : 13,
    "proxy" : "",
    "difficulty" : 367.69001490,
    "testnet" : false,
    "keypoololdest" : 1401119564,
    "keypoolsize" : 101,
    "paytxfee" : 0.00000000,
    "errors" : ""
}

Additional step: Depending on your firewall configuration you might need to add following exceptions to the iptables - dogecoin uses port 22556:

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22556 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p udp --dport 22556 -j ACCEPT