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Installing Shoestring⚓︎

This page explains how to install the Shoestring tool and verify that it is working correctly.

Shoestring is distributed as a Python package and can be installed using pip.

Requirements⚓︎

Software⚓︎

Before installing Shoestring, ensure the following software is available on the system:

  • Python 3.10 or newer.
  • pip (Python package manager).

  • Docker with Docker Compose support (v2).

    Installing Docker Compose

    Installation as a plugin is preferred. For example, on Ubuntu and Debian, run:

    sudo apt install docker-compose-v2

    If the plugin version is not available on your system, you can install the older docker-compose package and replace docker compose with docker-compose in the commands below (note the hyphen).

  • OpenSSL command-line tools.

    Installing OpenSSL

    The OpenSSL command-line tools are required to generate the cryptographic keys used by the node. On many systems they are already installed or available through the operating system's package manager. If they are not present, they can be downloaded from https://openssl-library.org/source/.

    To check whether OpenSSL is available on the system, run openssl version. If the command prints the installed version, the tools are correctly installed and available in the system path.

Hardware⚓︎

Running a blockchain node is very demanding in terms of disk space, memory and CPU resources. Failure to meet the following minimum requirements will produce a node that will struggle to keep up with the rest of the network. The global blockchain will not be affected but the node will rarely be eligible to collect any node rewards.

It is strongly recommended to use dedicated CPU and RAM. When they are shared (as is the case on some Virtual Server providers) performance is heavily impacted.

Requirement Peer node API node Dual / Voting node
CPU 2 cores 4 cores 4 cores
RAM 8 GB 16 GB 16 GB
Disk size 500 GB 750 GB 750 GB
Disk speed 1500 IOPS SSD 1500 IOPS SSD 1500 IOPS SSD
Requirement Peer node API node Dual / Voting node
CPU 4 cores 8 cores 8 cores
RAM 16 GB 32 GB 32 GB
Disk size 500 GB 750 GB 750 GB
Disk speed 1500 IOPS SSD 1500 IOPS SSD 1500 IOPS SSD

Installing with pip⚓︎

Install Shoestring using the Python package manager:

python3 -m pip install symbol-shoestring

This command installs the Shoestring tool and its dependencies.

Troubleshooting

On some systems, installing Shoestring may require additional system packages, because some Python dependencies are built from source.

If installation fails with errors related to missing headers, libraries, or compiler tools, install the required development packages for your system and run the installation again.

Common symptoms include errors mentioning pyconfig.h, OpenSSL headers, or missing build toolchains.

On Ubuntu and Debian, it is typically enough to install:

sudo apt install python3-dev libssl-dev

Then run the Shoestring installation again.

Verifying the Installation⚓︎

After installation, verify that the tool is available by running:

python3 -m shoestring --help

If the installation succeeded, the command prints a list of available Shoestring commands

To see the options available for a specific command, use:

python3 -m shoestring <command> --help

Updating Shoestring⚓︎

To upgrade Shoestring to the latest version, run:

python3 -m pip install --upgrade symbol-shoestring

Next Steps⚓︎

After installing Shoestring, the next step is to create and start a node or migrate an existing one.