Installation

The RPC Reverse Proxy is independent sofware to Web3 Pi nodes and othere Ethereum nodes. It can be installed on any machine that can directly or via tunnels connect to your Ethereum nodes. There is no restriction if hardware parameters are sufficent - and this is satisfied in most cases since the proxy is lightweight. For instance it can be installed on PC, a dedicated Raspberry Pi, or collocated with one of Ethereum nodes.

The instruction is provided for Linux. Windows instalation needs further examination.

Requirements

To run the proxy, python >= 3.10 is required

Installation

Before proceeding further, verify the python's version. Should be at least 3.10.

user@host:~$ python3 --version

At first create a data directory for RPC Reverse Proxy instance and change the working directory to it. For the purposes of demonstration assume that the data directory is web3pi in the user's home folder. Then the example commands are

user@host:~$ mkdir web3pi
user@host:~$ cd web3pi
user@host:~/web3pi$

You may wish preferably to use a python's virtual environment venv. Note that this is optional. For example, create a virtual environment venv.

user@host:~/web3pi$ python3 -m venv venv

The folder venv is created in the place. Now activate the virtual environment.

user@host:~/web3pi$ source venv/bin/activate
(venv) user@host:~/web3pi$

Get latest version from pypi

(venv) user@host:~/web3pi$ pip install web3pi-proxy

Configuration

Before running for the first time, a basic configuration with Ethereum nodes addresses needs to be provided. For more options and further details see Configuration and Monitoring. Here is simple configuration that allows the proxy to run.

Create the file .env. Note the the file name must be exactly .env.

(venv) user@host:~/web3pi$ touch .env

Edit the file with an editor of your preference, and provide variable/value records. In simple configuration only the variable ETH_ENDPOINTS needs to be set. It lists Ethereum nodes to be connected. A basic example of .env file content is as follows.

(venv) user@host:~/web3pi$ cat .env
ETH_ENDPOINTS='[{"name": "my_node", "url": "http://192.168.1.90:8545/"}]'

Remember that the value of ETH_ENDPOINTS must be a valid json. Furthermore, this is an array of objects, each describing one Ethereum node with arbitrary but distinct name (pick one you like) and url which is an RPC endpoint of Ethereum node.

Run

Simply execute

(venv) user@host:~/web3pi$ web3pi-proxy

Ctrl+C (SIGTERM) shuts down the proxy.

Admin panel

When the proxy is up, you can check it in the admin panel. Here is a short instruction how to open. The access url to the admin panel is generated at the start of proxy. Check logs and grep the line that looks like this

Access admin portal with:
http://0.0.0.0:6561/?token=DJQPiFYBAks9n2vedLIXLtvUu3kuTe60

Update the address part 0.0.0.0 in the url according to your network configuration. The excerpt above is an example, use a token that is actually included in your logs. Note that the access token may change in the next run of the proxy.

See Admin Panel for details.