Display panels and scripts to get the most from your Bitcoin node
Display panels and scripts to get the most from your Bitcoin node
It can be helpful to use a regtest bitcoin environment that is private for testing. While not going into detail about Regtest, this page will cover installing a new instance of Bitcoin or using existing for regtest with Nodeyez development.
Determine if you have bitcoin
which bitcoin-cli
If you have Bitcoin installed already then you can use that. Otherwise, proceed with the subsection below to install.
If you don’t have Bitcoin installed already, then you can get setup by following these steps. For brevity, this does not perform any verification. If you want to verify, or need other releases based on your architecture, you can follow the guidance on the Bitcoin Core website.
cd /tmp
wget https://bitcoincore.org/bin/bitcoin-core-25.0/bitcoin-25.0-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
tar -xvf bitcoin-25.0-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
sudo install -m 0755 -o root -g root -t /usr/local/bin bitcoin-25.0/bin/*
cd /tmp
wget https://bitcoincore.org/bin/bitcoin-core-25.0/bitcoin-25.0-aarch64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
tar -xvf bitcoin-25.0-aarch64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
sudo install -m 0755 -o root -g root -t /usr/local/bin bitcoin-25.0/bin/*
which bitcoin-cli
bitcoin-cli --version
Now that you have Bitcoin available, lets create configuration files for Regtest environments
We’ll be using the data folder. So lets make a folder for the regtest instance
mkdir -p ~/nodeyez/data/bitcoinregtest1
cp ~/nodeyez/sample-config/bitcoinregtest1.conf ~/nodeyez/config/bitcoinregtest1.conf
REG1RPCUSERNAME=regtestuser1
REG1RPCPASSWORD=regtestpass1
cd /tmp
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/master/share/rpcauth/rpcauth.py
# Removes any existing rpcauth line
sed -i '/^rpcauth=/d' ~/nodeyez/config/bitcoinregtest1.conf
# Generates new rpcauth line and puts it into the bitcoin conf file.
python3 rpcauth.py ${REG1RPCUSERNAME} ${REG1RPCPASSWORD} | grep rpcauth >> ~/nodeyez/config/bitcoinregtest1.conf
# Removes existing data dir line
sed -i '/^datadir=/d' ~/nodeyez/config/bitcoinregtest1.conf
# Add data dir with absolute path
echo "datadir=${HOME}/nodeyez/data/bitcoinregtest1" >> ~/nodeyez/config/bitcoinregtest1.conf
In a terminal window, run the following
bitcoind -conf=${HOME}/nodeyez/config/bitcoinregtest1.conf -regtest
You should see output reporting the Bitcoin version, using the specified data diretory and config file and reading in values. The end of the startup logs should indicate the current UpdateTip, nBestHeight etc.
Next, open another terminal instance and run the following
bitcoin-cli -conf=${HOME}/nodeyez/config/bitcoinregtest1.conf -regtest getbestblockhash
With no blocks yet created, example output
0f9188f13cb7b2c71f2a335e3a4fc328bf5beb436012afca590b1a11466e2206
bitcoin-cli -conf=${HOME}/nodeyez/config/bitcoinregtest1.conf -regtest createwallet regwallet
REGADDRESS=$(bitcoin-cli -conf=${HOME}/nodeyez/config/bitcoinregtest1.conf -regtest getnewaddress)
The output is captured to a variable
Generate a block, mining the subsidy to the address captured previously
bitcoin-cli -conf=${HOME}/nodeyez/config/bitcoinregtest1.conf -regtest generatetoaddress 1 ${REGADDRESS}
The output shows the blockhash of the blocks (1) generated. Repeat the same but for 100 blocks
bitcoin-cli -conf=${HOME}/nodeyez/config/bitcoinregtest1.conf -regtest generatetoaddress 100 ${REGADDRESS}
There will now be 101 blocks total, 1 of which is matured and spendable in a transaction, and the remaining 100 which are not yet matured.
bitcoin-cli -conf=${HOME}/nodeyez/config/bitcoinregtest1.conf -regtest getblockchaininfo
The output shows that 101 blocks have been created
This is handy after restarting the Regtest instance after shutdown
bitcoin-cli -conf=${HOME}/nodeyez/config/bitcoinregtest1.conf -regtest loadwallet regwallet
bitcoin-cli -conf=${HOME}/nodeyez/config/bitcoinregtest1.conf -regtest getbalance
If you closed the terminal window where the variable was set from generating the address previously and you want to reuse the same address, you can use this command to find the address used in the most recent block’s coinbase
REGADDRESS=$(bitcoin-cli -conf=${HOME}/nodeyez/config/bitcoinregtest1.conf -regtest getblock `bitcoin-cli -conf=${HOME}/nodeyez/config/bitcoinregtest1.conf -regtest getbestblockhash` 2 | jq -r .tx[0].vout[0].scriptPubKey.address)
To support Regtest, or alternate environments in general, edit the ~/nodeyez/config/bitcoin-cli.json file, and set the activeProfile value to “regtest1”. The vicariousbitcoin.py helper script will inject the value as command options when making calls to bitcoin-cli.
To force the usage of the CLI, you’ll also need to modify the vicariousbitcoin.py script. Locate the following around line 49, and uncomment it, overriding the mode to be CLI
48: # if you want to force mode for bitcoin, set it here
49: #bitcoinMode="CLI"
Alternatively, you can allow the bitcoinMode to be detected and configure rpc rest access for the regtest instance. The initial sample configuration assumes a username and password of rpctestuser1 and rpctestpass1 respectively. If you changed these when running the script above, run the nodeyez-config tool, and update the regtest1 profile under Bitcoin settings with your new values. Make sure that you specify the activeProfile as regtest1.
With the regtest instance running, and Nodeyez configuration set to use the regtest profile, you should be able to run the bitcoin scripts using standard debugging in the IDE (F5), or running in the terminal (cd ~/nodeyez/scripts && python scriptname.py)
To stop the regtest instance,
Option1: Switch to the terminal window running bitcoind, and CTRL+C to halt it.
Option2: Use the bitcoin-cli command
bitcoin-cli -conf=${HOME}/nodeyez/config/bitcoinregtest1.conf -regtest stop
To clear the regtest environment to start fresh, first Stop the instance, and then run the following
rm -rf ~/nodeyez/data/bitcoinregtest1/regtest
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