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Connect to an Existing Gno Chain

Overview​

In this tutorial, you will learn how to start a local Gno node and connect to an existing Gno chain (like a testnet).

Prerequisites​

1. Initialize the node directory​

To initialize a new Gno.land node working directory (configuration and secrets), make sure to follow Step 1 from the chain setup tutorial.

2. Obtain the genesis.json of the remote chain​

The genesis file of target chain is required in order to initialize the local node.

info

The genesis file will be easily downloadable from GitHub in the future.

For now, obtain the file by

  1. Sharing via scp or ftp
  2. Fetching it from {chain_rpc:26657}/genesis (might result in time-out error due to large file sizes)

3. Confirm the validator information of the first node.​

gnoland secrets get node_id

{
    "id": "g17h5t86vrztm6vuesx0xsyrg90wplj9mt9nsxng",
    "p2p_address": "g17h5t86vrztm6vuesx0xsyrg90wplj9mt9nsxng@0.0.0.0:26656"
}

Public IP of the Node​

You need the IP information about the network interface that you wish to connect from external nodes.

If you wish to only connect from nodes in the same network, using a private IP should suffice.

However, if you wish to connect from all nodes without any specific limitations, use your public IP.

curl ifconfig.me/ip # GET PUBLIC IP

# 1.2.3.4 # USE YOUR OWN PUBLIC IP

4. Configure the persistent_peers list​

We need to configure a list of nodes that your validators will always retain a connection with. To get the local P2P address of the current node (these values should be obtained from remote peers):

gnoland secrets get node_id.p2p_address

"g17h5t86vrztm6vuesx0xsyrg90wplj9mt9nsxng@0.0.0.0:26656"

We can use this P2P address value to configure the persistent_peers configuration value

gnoland config set p2p.persistent_peers "g19d8x6tcr2eyup9e2zwp9ydprm98l76gp66tmd6@1.2.3.4:26656"

5. Configure the seeds​

We should configure the list of seed nodes. Seed nodes provide information about other nodes for the validator to connect with the chain, enabling a fast and stable initial connection. These seed nodes are also called bootnodes.

danger

The option to activate the Seed Mode from the node is currently missing.

gnoland config set p2p.seeds "g19d8x6tcr2eyup9e2zwp9ydprm98l76gp66tmd6@1.2.3.4:26656"

6. Start the node​

Now that we've set up the local node configuration, and added peering info, we can start the Gno.land node:

gnoland start \
--genesis ./genesis.json \
--data-dir ./gnoland-data

That's it! 🎉

Your new Gno node should be up and running, and syncing block data from the remote chain.