This guide will walk you through starting an entire Subsocial stack with just one shell script.

To learn more about Subsocial, please visit us at Subsocial.Network.

Subsocial is the recipient of a technical grant from Web3 Foundation - official announcement. We have successfully delivered on all three milestones submitted in our grant application.

Linux environment or macOS with Docker and Docker Compose installed.

Test that Docker was installed correctly, try to run the following commands: NOTE: none of the commands should fail.

docker images
docker ps
docker run --rm -it alpine cat /etc/os-release

If you are using Linux and having a permission issue with Docker, try running the following commands:

sudo systemctl enable docker
sudo systemctl disable docker

After running the commands, logout and log back in. The Docker commands should now run without sudo.

If you're new to Subsocial, it is best to start with the defaults.

git clone https://github.com/dappforce/dappforce-subsocial-starter.git
cd dappforce-subsocial-starter

./start.sh --substrate-mode rpc --substrate-extra-opts "--dev"

By default two nodes will be started: RPC and validator.

We will use --only-substrate option to run only Substrate nodes:

./start.sh --only-substrate

​If you would like to start archive RPC. The command below is the only available method (for now) which is connected to Subsocial network:

./start.sh --only-substrate --substrate-mode-rpc --substrate-extra-opts "--name MyNodeName --pruning archive"

However, you will have no ability to manage anything inside of them. To do this, you may want to launch Substrate node with extra option --dev.

For example:

./start.sh --only-substrate --substrate-mode rpc --substrate-extra-opts "--dev"

Here we also used the --substrate-mode rpc option. That is because running in development mode we do not need any validators.

To stop Substrate nodes:

./start.sh --only-substrate --stop

If you want not only stop containers, but also clean data, go with:

./start.sh --only-substrate --stop --clean-data

By default, three containers will be started:

• Subsocial Offchain – responsible for Substrate events handling and Subsocial REST API.
• ElasticSearch – responsible for full-text search.
• PostgreSQL – responsible personal news feeds and notifications.

We will use --only-offchain to run Offchain only:

./start.sh --only-offchain

In most cases you will want to launch Offchain on a separate server. If so, you will want to use next command:

./start.sh --global --only-substrate --substrate-url <Websocket endpoint> --offchain-cors "<UI URL>"

You can start Offchain without IPFS node by following the next steps:

1. Run IPFS on external server
2. Run Offchain with next options:

./start.sh --only-offchain --no-ipfs --ipfs-ip all <IP of IPFS server>

By default it will start two containers: IPFS Cluster and IPFS Node (gateway).

We use --only-ipfs to run IPFS only:

./start.sh --only-ipfs --offchain-url <Offchain URL>

--offchain-url is mandatory here, because of CORS are used for IPFS cluster access.

You can specify initial IPFS cluster bootnodes in order to connect to Subsocial as a cluster peer. Example:

./start.sh --only-ipfs --cluster-bootstrap '"/ip4/172.15.0.9/tcp/9096/p2p/12D3KooWRRyJpS847KJQCEXqWC3AFjaweTBtVvA8DmLz9RxA7yQW","/ip4/174.100.4.101/tcp/9096/p2p/12D3KooWGsddM5p5M2HMF6egoR28mCwnKg75UE6K29BMvzux3WdY"'

NOTE: --cluster-bootstrap value should be provided as a single string with URIs wrapped in double-quotes (") each and separated by commas.

If you want to add, remove or entirely override trusted peers (ones that are able to pin/unpin content on IPFS), you might want to use --cluster-peers option:

To add a peer:

./start.sh --only-ipfs --cluster-peers add '"PeerURI-1", "PeerURI-2"'

To remove a peer:

./start.sh --only-ipfs --cluster-peers remove '"PeerURI-1", "PeerURI-2"'

To entirely override trusted peers:

./start.sh --only-ipfs --cluster-peers override '["*"]'

NOTE: that when you override, you should provide JSON like array of peers.

NOTE: all - add, remove and override should have every Peer URI wrapped by double quotes.

To get Peer URI (e.g /ip4/172.15.0.9/tcp/9096/p2p/12D3KooWD8YVcSx6ERnEDXZpXzJ9ctkTFDhDu8d1eQqdDsLgPz7V) use --cluster-id option:

./start.sh --cluster-id

The start.sh script comes with a set of options for customizing project startup.

Subsocial is GPL 3.0 licensed.