Ethereum 2 Validator Setup With Lighthouse Client

This repo is to set up Ethereum 2 Validator with Lighthouse Client. The repo is based on https://someresat.medium.com/guide-to-staking-on-ethereum-2-0-ubuntu-pyrmont-lighthouse-a634d3b87393.

Setting up Ethereum validator is mostly automated, but you still need to generate deposit keys and deposit your ETH in the process. As a result, there are two ansible playbooks: one for before the deposit key generation and the other after.

Step 0: Make your own inventory file.

Get started with

cp inventory.sample inventory

Step 1: Setup before deposit keys

Run the first playbook. Make sure that you have adjusted your inventory file. Replace VALIDATOR_TARGET with your host or group.

ansible-playbook -i inventory ethereum_step_1.yml -e "target=VALIDATOR_TARGET"

This will:

1. set up firewall
2. install node exporter
3. install eth2 lighthouse client

It is assumed that you will get the eth1 client from a third-party such as Infura. A free account should be sufficient.

Step 2: Make deposit keys and associate the keys with Lighthouse

1. Download the deposit key generator from https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-deposit-cli/releases. And generate keys. All security measures apply here.

./deposit new-mnemonic --num_validators <numberofvalidators> --mnemonic_language=english --chain {{ pyrmont or mainnet }}

2. Copy the key files to the validator server using command like this.

scp -r -P 22 ~/local-path/validator_keys user@remote-server:remote-path

3. On the remote server, run the command to put the validator keys into a folder that Lighthouse client can use.

lighthouse --network {{ pyrmont or mainnet }} account validator import --directory /home/ubuntu/validator_keys --datadir /var/lib/lighthouse

Step 3: Set up Lighthouse Beacon node and validator

Run the second playbook. Replace VALIDATOR_TARGET with your host or group.

ansible-playbook -i inventory ethereum_step_2.yml -e "target=VALIDATOR_TARGET"

This will:

1. Install Lighthouse Beacon client
2. install Lighthouse validator

Helpful Eth2 log file monitoring to make sure everything is working. You might need to wait for a few days before everything is fully synced. Testnet will take longer to sync than the mainnet. Good news is that you have not deposited Eth yet, so just relax if you find bugs.

sudo journalctl -fu lighthousebeacon.service
sudo journalctl -fu lighthousevalidator.service
sudo tail /var/log/syslog -n 100

Step 4: Make deposit and see it go!

Extra Steps

• Triple check all key and password backups.
• Reboot your machine and make sure the services come back up.
• Understand how to update the client and server software.
• Use htop to monitor resources on the local machine. I recommend that set up Prometheus and Grafana for monitoring.
• Get familiar with beaconcha.in so you can monitor your validators. They offer alerting (via email — sign up required) and up to 3 POAPs.
• Join the Ethstaker and Lighthouse Discord for important notifications.

Extra Steps: Update Lighthouse

Update the group_vars file and run the playbook

ansible-playbook -i inventory update_lighthouse.yml -e "target=VALIDATOR_TARGET"