Running devnets with kind

In this section, we use kind to run a full devnet (network of validators) locally.

Kind (Kubernetes in Docker) is a tool for running local Kubernetes clusters using Docker container nodes. Kind uses Docker to create a cluster of containers that simulate the Kubernetes control plane and worker nodes, allowing developers to easily create, manage, and test multi-node clusters on their local machine.

Installation

This section covers everything you need to install to run a Linera network with kind.

Linera Toolchain Requirements

The operating systems currently supported by the Linera toolchain can be summarized as follows:

The main prerequisites to install the Linera toolchain are Rust, Wasm, and Protoc. They can be installed as follows on Linux:

• Rust and Wasm

  • curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
  • rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown

• Protoc

  • curl -LO https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases/download/v21.11/protoc-21.11-linux-x86_64.zip
  • unzip protoc-21.11-linux-x86_64.zip -d $HOME/.local
  • If ~/.local is not in your path, add it: export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin"

• On certain Linux distributions, you may have to install development packages such as g++, libclang-dev and libssl-dev.

For MacOS support see the installation section on GitHub.

This manual was tested with the following Rust toolchain:

[toolchain]
channel = "1.77.2"
components = [ "clippy", "rustfmt", "rust-src" ]
targets = [ "wasm32-unknown-unknown" ]
profile = "minimal"

Local Kubernetes Requirements

To run kind locally, you also need the following dependencies:

1. kind
2. kubectl
3. docker
4. helm
5. helm-diff
6. helmfile

Installing the Linera Toolchain

To install the Linera toolchain, download the Linera source from GitHub):

git clone https://github.com/linera-io/linera-protocol.git
cd linera-protocol
git checkout -t origin/devnet_2024_05_07  # Current release branch

and to install the Linera toolchain:

cargo install --locked --path linera-service --features kubernetes

Running with kind

To run a local devnet with kind, navigate to the root of the linera-protocol repository and run:

linera net up --kubernetes

This will take some time as Docker images are built from the Linera source. When the cluster is ready, some text is written to the process output containing the exports required to configure your wallet for the devnet - something like:

export LINERA_WALLET="/tmp/.tmpIOelqk/wallet_0.json"
export LINERA_STORAGE="rocksdb:/tmp/.tmpIOelqk/client_0.db"

Exporting these variables in a new terminal will enable you to interact with the devnet:

$ linera sync-balance
2024-05-21T22:30:12.061199Z  INFO linera: Synchronizing chain information and querying the local balance
2024-05-21T22:30:12.061218Z  WARN linera: This command is deprecated. Use `linera sync && linera query-balance` instead.
2024-05-21T22:30:12.065787Z  INFO linera::client_context: Saved user chain states
2024-05-21T22:30:12.065792Z  INFO linera: Operation confirmed after 4 ms
1000000.