As a storage provider

If you are already running a standalone markets process, follow the guide at Migrate a Lotus markets service process to Boost

If you are already running a monolith lotus-miner instance, follow the guide at Migrate a monolith lotus-miner to Boost

Initialization and Running

1. Make sure you have a Lotus node and miner running

2. Create and send funds to two new wallets on the lotus node to be used for Boost

Boost currently uses two wallets for storage deals:

• The publish storage deals wallet - This wallet pays the gas cost when Boost sends the PublishStorageDeals message.

• The deal collateral wallet - When the Storage Provider accepts a deal, they must put collateral for the deal into escrow. Boost moves funds from this wallet into escrow with the StorageMarketActor.

export PUBLISH_STORAGE_DEALS_WALLET=`lotus wallet new bls`
export COLLAT_WALLET=`lotus wallet new bls`
lotus send --from mywallet $PUBLISH_STORAGE_DEALS_WALLET 10
lotus send --from mywallet $COLLAT_WALLET 10

3. Set the publish storage deals wallet as a control wallet.

lotus-miner actor control set --really-do-it $PUBLISH_STORAGE_DEALS_WALLET

4. Create and initialize the Boost repository

If you are already running a Lotus markets service process, you should run boostd migrate instead of boostd init

See section Migrate a Lotus markets service process to Boost for more details.

Boost keeps all data in a directory called the repository. By default the repository is at ~/.boost. To use a different location pass the --boost-repo parameter (must precede any particular command verb, e.g. boostd --boost-repo=/path init).

Export the environment variables needed for boostd init to connect to the lotus daemon and lotus miner.

export $(lotus auth api-info --perm=admin)
export $(lotus-miner auth api-info --perm=admin)

Export environment variables that point to the API endpoints for the sealing and mining processes. They will be used by the boost node to make JSON-RPC calls to the mining/sealing/proving node.

export APISEALER=`echo $MINER_API_INFO`
export APISECTORINDEX=`echo $MINER_API_INFO`

Run boostd init to create and initialize the repository:

boostd --vv init \
       --api-sealer=$APISEALER \
       --api-sector-index=$APISECTORINDEX \
       --wallet-publish-storage-deals=$PUBLISH_STORAGE_DEALS_WALLET \
       --wallet-deal-collateral=$COLLAT_WALLET \
       --max-staging-deals-bytes=50000000000

• --api-sealer is the API info for the lotus-miner instance that does sealing

• --api-sector-index is the API info for the lotus-miner instance that provides storage

• --max-staging-deals-bytes is the maximum amount of storage to be used for downloaded files (once the limit is reached Boost will reject subsequent incoming deals)

5. Update ulimit file descriptor limit if necessary. Boost deals will fail if the file descriptor limit for the process is not set high enough. This limit can be raised temporarily before starting the Boost process by running the command ulimit -n 1048576. We recommend setting it permanently by following the Permanently Setting Your ULIMIT System Value guide.

6. Make sure that the correct <PEER_ID> and <MULTIADDR> for your SP is set on chain, given that boost init generates a new identity. Use the following commands to update the values on chain:

lotus-miner actor set-addrs <MULTIADDR>
lotus-miner actor set-peer-id <PEER_ID>

<MULTIADDR> should be the same as the ListenAddresses you set in the Libp2p section of the config.toml of Boost <PEER_ID> can be found in the output of boostd net id command

7. Run the boostd service, which will start:

• libp2p listeners for storage and retrieval

• the JSON RPC API

• the graphql interface (used by the react front-end)

• the web server for the react front-end

boostd --vv run

In your firewall you will need to open the ports that libp2p listens on, so that Boost can receive storage and retrieval deals.

See the Libp2p section of config.toml in the Repository

Web UI

When you build boostd using make build the react app is also part of the process. You can skip this section.

Following steps are to be used only in case you are building binary and react app separately.

1. Build the React frontend

cd react

# Download and install npm packages needed by the React frontend
npm install --legacy-peer-deps

# Build the optimized JavaScript and CSS in boost/react/build
npm run build

1. Open the Web UI

Open http://localhost:8080 in your browser.

To access a web UI running on a remote server, you can open an SSH tunnel from your local machine:

ssh -L 8080:localhost:8080 myserver

API Access

Boost API can be accessed by setting the environment variable BOOST_API_INFO same as LOTUS_MARKET_INFO.

boostd auth api-info --perm=admin

export BOOST_API_INFO=<TOKEN>:<API Address>

You can also directly evaluate the boostd auth command with:

export $(boostd auth api-info --perm=admin)