How to Install Forge on Ubuntu

The following sections will show you how to install the Forge on a machine running Ubuntu (or a containerized environment running Ubuntu).

Prerequisites

• Ubuntu 16.04 (or later)

Step 1: Create a Sudo User

If you don't already have a sudo user, create one. In this tutorial, the user will be called arcblock, but you can use any name you'd like.

adduser arcblock

Add the user to the sudo group and remove its password:

usermod -aG sudo arcblock
sudo passwd -d arcblock

Finally, use visudo so that you're never prompted for a password from this user:

%sudo   ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL

Your new arcblock sudo user is ready and should be used to SSH to the host and install assets whenever necessary. If you've previously used the root account, you can switch to using the sudo user as follows:

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh root@host "mkdir -p ~arcblock/.ssh && touch ~arcblock/.ssh/authorized_keys && chown -R arcblock ~arcblock/.ssh && chmod -R go= ~arcblock/.ssh && cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"

Step 2: Install Node.js

The Forge CLI requires Node.js, so we recommend installing the latest distribution:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_11.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

You can verify the version of Node.js you've installed by running node -v.

Install Yarn

While Node.js ships with the npm package manager, we recommend that you install the yarn package manager as well:

curl -sL https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y yarn

Step 3: Install OpenSSL

While OpenSSL ships with Ubuntu, the version included may not be sufficiently up-to-date. Update OpenSSL as follows:

cd /tmp
wget https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.1.1.tar.gz
tar xvf openssl-1.1.1.tar.gz
cd openssl-1.1.1
./config -Wl,--enable-new-dtags,-rpath,'$(LIBRPATH)'
make
sudo make install

Add the OpenSSL path to your $PATH variable:

sudo vim /etc/environment

You'll also need to append /usr/local/ssl/bin to /usr/local/bin:

PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/ssl/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games"

At this point, you'll need to logout and login for the changes you've made to take affect. After doing so, you can check your OpenSSL configuration:

$ openssl version
OpenSSL 1.1.1  11 Sep 2018

Step 4: Install Erlang crypto (Optional)

If you are using Ubuntu 16.04, you'll need to install Erlang crypto so that the Erlang releases work with OpenSSL:

sudo apt-get install -y erlang-crypto

Step 5: Install the Forge CLI

Using Yarn, install the Forge CLI:

sudo yarn global add @arcblock/forge-cli

Add a Non-Privileged User

We don't recommend running Forge using a sudo user, so create a new non-Privileged user (in this case, we'll call it forge) and remove its password:

sudo adduser forge
sudo passwd -d forge

Switch to this user with sudo su forgeand check if Forge CLI is installed successfully with forge -h:

🎉 Forge CLI has been installed successfully! Checkout Quickstart to launch your chain！