Goodbye StakeBox, hello Docker portainer!

thehuntergames · December 9, 2023, 9:37pm

Unlike a regular wallet that is opened once in a while, a mint station is a (often headless) wallet that is connected 24-7 and minting every second for a possible stake. Staking coins requires energy, space and maintenance, for this effort a reward is given that results up to 3 to 4 % annually on average if minting continuously. Not everyone participates in staking thought which brings down the actual inflation rate of the POS side.

Nowadays, most if not anything that runs 24-7 online, is running inside a container, mostly a docker container. OS updates are a thing of the past. Instead a new container is created and deployed with a click on a (few) buttons. So why not you?

Docker in itself is a command line tool, but a lot of UI software is available for those who cant remember all the commands. Dont worry, all the software that is used in this article are free and cross platform.

Prerequisites:

an (mini) pc or raspbery pi with external ssd that serves as a home server (Search mini pc, search pi as home server)
a backed up and encrypted wallet.dat from your regular wallet.
Docker on your OS of choice. This is called the docker host (search how to install docker) Do

docker -v

to check the installed version

Portainer Community Edition to manage containers. (search how to install portainer) By default, Portainer runs on port 9443. bookmark this link
a REST client such as Thunder client in Visual Code: Use Thunder Client and VSCode as an alternative to Postman

How to setup a mint station in 10 steps

optional step: create a folder named e.g.: 0.12.4 and copy the 3 files in here from https://github.com/peercoin/docker-peercoind/tree/master/0.12.4 Read more about this project here and docker hub
run the following command to start up a container, change folders, ports names and passwords accordingly but keep 0.0.0.0/0, :/data and :9902:

docker run  -v /opt/data:/data  -p 9998:9902 --name letsmintsome -d peercoin/peercoind -rpcallowip=0.0.0.0/0 -rpcpassword=my_unique_password -rpcuser=my_secret_username

open portainer to see the container running: http://localhost:9443

Screenshot running peercoind behind port 99982458×680 99.3 KB
to see the wallet is syncing, open Thunder client to make a POST request to http://localhost:9998 to retrieve the current block count.

Screenshot Headers of rest1477×460 45.4 KB

Screenshot Basic username and password1395×411 39.4 KB

Screenshot JSON Body of request1433×405 44.5 KB

after a while the current block number should be equal to the latest block displayed on https://explorer.peercoin.net/

stop the container using portainer by clicking ■ stop
find the mounted volume op the host, in this example it is opt/data. Create a folder wallets and copy your encrypted wallet.dat backup in here

Screenshot from mount folder with wallet.dat file1108×269 33.7 KB
restart the container using portainer by clicking triangle-right start
make a POST using Thunder client to request to unlock the wallet with walletpassphrase and you own password to unlock the wallet

Screenshot of walletpassphrase request1626×902 144 KB
now the mint station is up and running for the next 69696969 seconds.
Open your regular wallet once in a while to see if you minted new coins. Or use findstakejs when you want to know when to expect new stakes coming.

thehuntergames · December 10, 2023, 3:16pm

There is now a gist available to do the above in a much simpler way. So go have a look how it can be done a different way:

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/ihavenoface/ac2fcdf0d2e7916bd54d2fc219bc58c5

README.md

# docker
1. Install docker
2. Install portainer
3. Run the container
```bash
mkdir /opt/peercoin-data && cp wallet.dat /opt/peercoin-data/
docker run -d --name=peercoind -v /opt/peercoin-data:/data --restart=always peercoin/peercoind
```
4. Interface via command line  
_The entrypoint in the current peercoin/peercoind image doesn't pass `-datadir=/data` internally by default, so we need to specify it._

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docker-compose.yml

services:
  peercoind:
    image: peercoin/peercoind
    container_name: peercoind
    volumes:
      - /opt/peercoin-data:/data
    restart: always

  portainer:
    image: portainer/portainer-ce:alpine

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what this compose yml does is installing peercoind and portainer. The major difference is no port is mapped to the host, only a folder is mounted to portainer_data. Calling rpc command is to be done via peercoin-cli. I’d say omitting the -p option is a safer setup

services:
peercoind:
image: peercoin/peercoind
container_name: peercoind
volumes:
- /opt/peercoin-data:/data
restart: always

portainer:
image: portainer/portainer-ce:alpine
container_name: portainer
command: -H unix:///var/run/docker.sock
ports:
- “8000:8000”
- “9443:9443”
volumes:
- /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
- portainer_data:/data
restart: always

volumes:
portainer_data:

thehuntergames · December 11, 2023, 7:31pm

I’ve found a portainer alternative that is simple UI wise called Dockge:

just paste the compose yaml in there and hit run. (the last bit seems not needed btw)

enter Bash to get the interactive bash inside the container:

type:

peercoin-cli -datadir=/data getblockcount

to get block count

likewise
type:

peercoin-cli -datadir=/data -walletpassphrase="myawesomepassword" 69696969

to unlock wallet for 69696969 seconds

to clear command history:

type:

history -c