Microsoft OS addict turns to Linux votary with the discovery of Elrond
This saying “change is the only permanent thing in life” reminds me of another saying “the only thing that you can expect ALL THE TIME is unexpected circumstances”.
I have been using Windows Operating system nearly close to two decades with all the spoiled of friendly user’s interface and with a click of a button to perform herculean tasks, hence my first node was installed in a Window’s 10 Operating System when we are still less than 30 in the Validator’s group and our primary means of providing feedback was through the riot channel. The first version installed on my Windows OS is v1.0.12 as shown below through the help of Sorin which guided me relentlessly during my admission into Elrond Validator node runners and there is no battle of any kind at that moment. His nickname then was “master of nodes”.
After some weeks, there was an announcement that the testnet will be made public for any interested members of the public to run the Elrond testnet and rewards will be on ensuring the nodes are up and running and completing some certain missions that will come from time to time. Fully aware that my present setup will not be able to catch up with the bandwidth, I started searching for alternatives and I came across one man in the group by name Alwin which makes me abandon all my research when I was introduced to Contabo VPS. I settled for VPS M SSD series immediately with these configurations (6 CPU cores, 16 GB of RAM, 400 GB SSD space and a 400 Mbit/s network uplink) which has low latency and fast transfer rate even at high traffic.
Being a newbie, I and Alwin resolve issues together during installation and knowing fully well that nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm, in a granular process, I began to explore what is special about Linux OS distributions. Since I love using CLI in the Windows OS environment, most things look similar with the exception of command that is used to execute some actions. One of my findings revealed that Windows operating system has a higher hardware requirement, so no wonder most of the servers across the world prefer to run on Linux than on a Windows hosting environment. Besides, Linux users have access to the source code of kernel and can be altered according to a specific need. To be honest, Linux is complicated to install in comparison to the simple system provided by Microsoft operating system but has the ability to complete complex tasks easier. With all doubts left behind and a focus at sight -
I began to feel like a veteran in a short time frame with superb support from family-like Elrond Validator Telegram Community. Infact, our popular slogan by the jester (Sever) is nobody gets left behind!
With superb Alwin Script which makes running a node less cumbersome and will auto-restart nodes in case, they are offline after the preset time frame before the official script in conjunction with our own Dr Delphi Bot Monitor which notify about the status of your node(s).
I thought all was well until the disaster knock and gained entrance to my VPS through an attack by one of our white-hat hackers (Sebler) by not securing my server ports from outside with a firewall and running with a user root with the default port. Don’t blame me please, I am still a dummy. That was corrected with just these commands:
sudo apt install ufw; sudo ufw enable; sudo ufw allow ssh
Having that a horrible experience from the above makes me look nowhere than to turn my VPS into a fortress by following this medium article. I created a new superuser with Ed25519 SSH key pair and a passphrase for extra security. I modified my sshd_config by changing the default port from 22 to a 5 digits figure, change PermitRootLogin from YES to NO, and also ChallengeResponseAuthentication from YES to NO. To enable me to have access to my VPS on the go, I installed Termius app, where I saved my private key file locally on my mobile phone. I did not stop there, I installed fail2ban all with the perception of ensuring that my VPS is not vulnerable to attacks and to prevent unwanted logins.
Elrond has such experience and a dedicated team that resolves issues as they evolve. I really appreciated the release of the new official script with an automatic update of every new version. This easy the job of validators and make running a node fun to do. Presently, there is no option to add an extra node, you must state the number of nodes you intend to run in advance, there is no dashboard that displayed at a glance the synchronization status, present shard, synchronization block nonce, consensus round etc. I am aware that every energy is pushing towards having a successfully mainnet launch, it will be more fun if, at an appropriate time, we have something sort of this.
About Elrond
Elrond is a new blockchain architecture, designed from scratch to bring a 1000-fold cumulative improvement in throughput and execution speed. To achieve this, Elrond introduces two key innovations: a novel Adaptive State Sharding mechanism, and a Secure Proof of Stake (PoS) algorithm, enabling linear scalability with a fast, efficient, and secure consensus mechanism. Thus, Elrond can process upwards of 10,000 transactions per second (TPS), with 5-second latency, and negligible cost, attempting to become the backbone of a permissionless, borderless, globally accessible internet economy.
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