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Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish

0. Introduction

For production using official Debian packages.

1. Requirements

In order to run an official Aleph.im Compute Resource Node (CRN), you will also need the following resources:

  • CPU (2 options):
  • Min. 8 cores / 16 threads, 3.0 ghz+ CPU (gaming CPU for fast boot-up of microVMs)
  • Min. 12 core / 24 threads, 2.4ghz+ CPU (datacenter CPU for multiple concurrent loads)
  • RAM: 64GB
  • STORAGE: 1TB (NVMe SSD preferred, datacenter fast HDD possible under conditions, you’ll want a big and fast cache)
  • BANDWIDTH: Minimum of 500 MB/s

You will need a public domain name with access to add TXT and wildcard records.

💡 This documentation will use the invalid vm.example.org domain name. Replace it when needed.

2. Installation

Run the following commands:

First install the VM-Connector using Docker: 

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install -y docker.io
docker run -d -p 127.0.0.1:4021:4021/tcp --restart=always --name vm-connector alephim/vm-connector:alpha

Then install the VM-Supervisor using the official Debian package. The procedure is similar for updates. 

sudo wget -P /opt https://github.com/aleph-im/aleph-vm/releases/download/0.3.0/aleph-vm.ubuntu-22.04.deb
sudo apt install /opt/aleph-vm.ubuntu-22.04.deb

Reboot if required (new kernel, ...).

Configuration

Hostname

Update the configuration in /etc/aleph-vm/supervisor.env using your favourite editor.

You will want to insert your domain name in the form of: 

ALEPH_VM_DOMAIN_NAME=vm.example.org

Network configuration

The network configuration is detected automatically.

The default network interface is detected automatically from the IP routes. You can configure the default interface manually instead by adding: 

ALEPH_VM_NETWORK_INTERFACE=enp0s1
(don't forget to replace enp0s1 with the name of your default network interface).

You can configure the DNS resolver manually by using one of the following options: 

ALEPH_VM_DNS_RESOLUTION=resolvectl
ALEPH_VM_DNS_RESOLUTION=resolv.conf

💡 You can instead specify the DNS resolvers used by the VMs using ALEPH_VM_DNS_NAMESERVERS=["1.2.3.4", "5.6.7.8"].

Volumes and partitions

Two directories are used to store data from the network: - /var/lib/aleph/vm contains all the execution and persistent data. - /var/cache/aleph/vm contains data downloaded from the network.

These two directories must be stored on the same partition. That partition must meet the minimum requirements specified for a CRN.

💡 This is required due to the software using hard links to optimize performance and disk usage.

Applying changes

Finally, restart the service: 

sudo systemctl restart aleph-vm-supervisor

3. Reverse Proxy

We document how to use Caddy as a reverse proxy since it manages and renews HTTPS certificates automatically.

Any other reverse-proxy (Nginx, HAProxy, Apache2, ...) should do the job as well, just make sure to renew the HTTPS/TLS certificates on time.

First, create a domain name that points to the server on IPv4 (A) and IPv6 (AAAA).

This is a simple configuration. For more options, check CONFIGURE_CADDY.md.

Again, run these commands as root: 

sudo apt install -y debian-keyring debian-archive-keyring apt-transport-https
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/gpg.key' | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/caddy-stable-archive-keyring.gpg
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/debian.deb.txt' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/caddy-stable.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install caddy

Then, after replacing the domain vm.example.org with your own, use configure Caddy: 

sudo cat >/etc/caddy/Caddyfile <<EOL
{
    https_port 443
    on_demand_tls {
        interval 60s
        burst    5
    }
}
vm.example.org:443 {
    reverse_proxy http://127.0.0.1:4020 {
        # Forward Host header to the backend
        header_up Host {host}
    }
} 
EOL
Finally, restart Caddy to use the new configuration: 
sudo systemctl restart caddy

4. Test

Open https://[YOUR DOMAIN] in a web browser, wait for diagnostic to complete and look for

image

If you face an issue, check the logs of the different services for errors:

VM-Supervisor: 

sudo journalctl -f -u aleph-vm-supervisor.service

Caddy: 

sudo journalctl -f -u caddy.service

VM-Connector: 

sudo docker logs -f vm-connector

Common errors

"Network interface eth0 does not exist"

Did you update the configuration file /etc/aleph-vm/supervisor.env with ALEPH_VM_NETWORK_INTERFACE equal to the default network interface of your server ?

"Aleph Connector unavailable"

Investigate the installation of the VM-Connector using Docker in step 2.