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Installing Nethermind

Nethermind can be installed in several ways:

Prerequisites​

info

Does not apply to Docker distributions.

Before installing Nethermind, your specific platform might need the following prerequisites.

None

Package managers​

Package managers are the easiest and fastest way of installing Nethermind.

On Ubuntu and other Linux distros supporting PPA, Nethermind can be installed via Launchpad PPA.

First, add the Nethermind repository:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nethermindeth/nethermind

# If the command is not found, run
# sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

Then, install Nethermind as follows:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nethermind

For further instructions, see Running a node.

Standalone downloads​

Standalone downloads give users more flexibility by allowing them to install a specific version of Nethermind, choose the installation location, and prevent automatic updates.

Standalone downloads are available on GitHub Releases and at downloads.nethermind.io as ZIP archives for x64 and AArch64 (ARM64) CPU architectures for Linux, Windows, and macOS.

Configuring as a Linux service​

Installing Nethermind as a Linux systemd service takes just a few simple steps:

  1. Create a separate user and group for Nethermind and configure them as follows:

    # Create a new user and group
    sudo useradd -m -s /bin/bash nethermind

    # Increase the maximum number of open files
    sudo bash -c 'echo "nethermind soft nofile 100000" > /etc/security/limits.d/nethermind.conf'
    sudo bash -c 'echo "nethermind hard nofile 100000" >> /etc/security/limits.d/nethermind.conf'

    # Switch to the nethermind user
    sudo su -l nethermind

    # Create required directories
    # Note that the home directory (~) is now /home/nethermind
    mkdir ~/bin
    mkdir ~/data

  2. Download Nethermind and extract the package contents to the ~/bin directory created in the previous step.

  3. Configure Nethermind options in the ~/.env file:

    ~/.env
    # Required
    NETHERMIND_CONFIG="mainnet"

    # Optional
    NETHERMIND_HEALTHCHECKSCONFIG_ENABLED="true"

    For available options, see Configuration.

  4. Create the ~/nethermind.service unit file:

    ~/nethermind.service
    [Unit]
    Description=Nethermind node
    Documentation=https://docs.nethermind.io
    After=network.target

    [Service]
    User=nethermind
    Group=nethermind
    EnvironmentFile=/home/nethermind/.env
    WorkingDirectory=/home/nethermind
    ExecStart=/home/nethermind/bin/nethermind --data-dir /home/nethermind/data
    Restart=on-failure
    LimitNOFILE=1000000

    [Install]
    WantedBy=default.target

  5. Finally, set up the Linux service:

    # Move the unit file to the systemd directory
    sudo mv nethermind.service /etc/systemd/system

    # Reload the systemd daemon
    sudo systemctl daemon-reload

    # Start the service
    sudo systemctl start nethermind

    # Optionally, enable the service to start on boot
    sudo systemctl enable nethermind

Done! To ensure the service is up and running, check its status as follows:

sudo systemctl status nethermind

To monitor the Nethermind output, run:

journalctl -u nethermind -f

For further instructions, see Running a node.

Docker container​

The Docker images of Nethermind are available on Docker Hub.

The Docker images are based on Ubuntu 24.04 and support x64 and AArch64 (ARM64) CPU architectures. They are tagged as follows:

  • latest: the latest version of Nethermind (the default tag).
  • latest-chiseled: a rootless and chiseled image of the latest version of Nethermind.
    For security reasons, this image contains only the absolutely necessary components and is intended to run as a non-root app user with UID/GID of 64198.
  • x.x.x: a specific version of Nethermind. For instance, 1.27.0.
  • x.x.x-chiseled: a rootless and chiseled image of the specific version of Nethermind. For instance, 1.27.0-chiseled.

For example, to download the latest chiseled image from the registry, run:

docker pull nethermind/nethermind:latest-chiseled

Starting the container is achieved by:

docker run -it nethermind/nethermind:latest-chiseled

The following ports are exposed by default:

  • 8545: TCP, for the JSON-RPC interface
  • 8551: TCP, for the consensus client JSON-RPC interface
  • 30303: TCP and UDP, for P2P networking
tip

It's highly recommended to mount data volumes as the Nethermind's data directories to ensure the synced data is preserved between the container restarts.

The following volume mount points are available by default:

  • /nethermind/nethermind_db: used to store the database
  • /nethermind/logs: used to store the logs
  • /nethermind/keystore: used to store the keys

To mount separate volumes for each directory listed above, run:

docker run -it \
  --mount type=bind,source=path/to/db,target=/nethermind/nethermind_db \
  --mount type=bind,source=path/to/logs,target=/nethermind/logs \
  --mount type=bind,source=path/to/keystore,target=/nethermind/keystore \
  nethermind/nethermind

Alternatively, a single volume can be specified as the Nethermind data directory as follows:

docker run -it \
  --mount type=bind,source=path/to/data_dir,target=/nethermind/data_dir \
  nethermind/nethermind --data-dir /nethermind/data_dir

Note that any Nethermind-specific configuration option can be specified at the end. For instance, the --data-dir option in this case. For further instructions, see Running a node.

To build the Docker image yourself, see Building Docker image.