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Farming on many machines
Updated for beta 27 release to support TLS
This guide allows you to run a harvester on each machine, without having to run a full node, wallet, and farmer on each one. This keeps your system simpler, uses less bandwidth, space, CPU, and also keeps your keys safer. It also makes your overall farm quicker and more efficient when replying to challenges.
The architecture is composed of one main machine which runs the farmer, full node, and wallet, and other machines which run only the harvester. Only your main machine will connect to the Chia network.
To secure communication between your harvester and main machine, TLS is used where your main machine will be the private Certification Authority (CA) that signs all certificates. Each harvester must have it's own signed certificate to properly communicate with your main machine.
_____ Harvester 1 (certificate A)
/
other network peers -------- Main machine (CA) ------ Harvester 2 (certificate B)
\_____ Harvester 3 (certificate C)
- First, make sure Chia is installed on all machines and initialized by running the CLI
chia init
. - When creating plots on the other harvesters, use
chia plots create -f farmer_key -p pool_key
, inserting the farmer and pool keys from your main machine. Alternatively, you could copy your private keys over by usingchia keys add
, but this is less secure. After creating a plot, runchia plots check
to ensure everything is working correctly. - Make a copy of your main machine CA directory located in
~/.chia/beta-1.0bx/config/ssl/ca
to be accessible by your harvester machines; you can share thessl/ca
directory on a network drive, USB key, or do a network copy to each harvester.
Then for each harvester, follow these steps:
- Make sure your main machines IP address on port 8447 is accessible by your harvester machines
- Shut down all chia daemon processes with
chia stop all -d
- Make a backup of any settings in your harvester
- Run
chia init -c [directory]
on your harvester, where[directory]
is the copy of your main machine CA directory. This command creates a new certificate signed by your main machine's CA. - Open the
~/.chia/beta-1.0bx/config/config.yaml
file in each harvester, and enter your main machine's IP address in the remote harvester's farmer_peer section - Launch the harvester by running CLI
chia start harvester
and you should see a new connection on your main machine in your INFO level logs. - To stop the harvester, you run CLI
chia stop harvester
Warning:
You cannot copy the entire config/ssl
directory from one machine to another. Each harvester must have a different set of TLS certificates for your main machine to recognize it as different harvesters. Unintended bugs can occur, including harvesters failing to work properly when the same certificates are shared among different machines.
Security Concern:
Since beta27, the CA files are copied to each harvester, as the daemon currently needs it to startup correctly. This is not ideal, and a new way to distribute certificates will be implemented in a subsequent release post mainnet launch. Please be careful when running your harvester that is accessible from the open internet.
Note:
Currently (beta27), the GUI doesn't show harvester plots. The best way to see if it's working is shut down Chia full node and set your logging level to INFO
in your config.yaml
on your main machine and restart Chia full node. Now you can check the log ~/.chia/beta-1.0bx/log/debug.log
and see if you get messages like the following:
[time stamp] farmer farmer_server : INFO -> new_signage_point to peer [harvester IP address] [peer id - 64 char hexadecimal]
[time stamp] farmer farmer_server : INFO <- new_proof_of_space from peer [peer id - 64 char hexadecimal] [harvester IP address]
The new_signage_point message states the farmer sent a challenge to your harvester. The new_proof_of_space message states the harvester found a proof for the challenge. You will get more new_signage_point messages than new_proof_of_space messages.
Chia Network - Green money for a digital world.
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- Install instructions
- Quick Start Guide
- FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
- Pooling FAQ
- Pooling User Guide
- Chia Project FAQ
- Plotting Basics
- Alternate Plotters
- Plot Sizes (k-sizes)
- CLI Commands Reference
- Windows Tips & Tricks
- How to Check if Everything is Working (or Not)
- SSD Endurance - Info on SSD's and plotting
- Reference Plotting Hardware
- Reference Farming Hardware
- Farming on Many Machines
- Good Security Practices on Many Machines
- Chialisp Documentation (Official)
- How to Connect to Testnet
- Timelords and Cluster Timelords
- Release Notes
- RPC Interfaces
- Resolve Sync Issues - Port 8444