The easiest/faster option to run Polkadot in Docker is to use the latest release images. These are small images that use the latest official release of the Polkadot binary, pulled from our package repository.
Following examples are running on westend chain and without SSL. They can be used to quick start and learn how Polkadot needs to be configured. Please find out how to secure your node, if you want to operate it on the internet. Do not expose RPC and WS ports, if they are not correctly configured.
Let's first check the version we have. The first time you run this command, the Polkadot docker image will be downloaded. This takes a bit of time and bandwidth, be patient:
docker run --rm -it parity/polkadot:latest --version
You can also pass any argument/flag that Polkadot supports:
docker run --rm -it parity/polkadot:latest --chain westend --name "PolkaDocker"
Once you are done experimenting and picking the best node name :) you can start Polkadot as daemon, exposes the Polkadot ports and mount a volume that will keep your blockchain data locally. Make sure that you set the ownership of your local directory to the Polkadot user that is used by the container. Set user id 1000 and group id 1000, by running chown 1000.1000 /my/local/folder -R
if you use a bind mount.
To start a Polkadot node on default rpc port 9933 and default p2p port 30333 use the following command. If you want to connect to rpc port 9933, then must add Polkadot startup parameter: --rpc-external
.
docker run -d -p 30333:30333 -p 9933:9933 -v /my/local/folder:/polkadot parity/polkadot:latest --chain westend --rpc-external --rpc-cors all
Additionally if you want to have custom node name you can add the --name "YourName"
at the end
docker run -d -p 30333:30333 -p 9933:9933 -v /my/local/folder:/polkadot parity/polkadot:latest --chain westend --rpc-external --rpc-cors all --name "PolkaDocker"
If you also want to expose the webservice port 9944 use the following command:
docker run -d -p 30333:30333 -p 9933:9933 -p 9944:9944 -v /my/local/folder:/polkadot parity/polkadot:latest --chain westend --ws-external --rpc-external --rpc-cors all --name "PolkaDocker"
You can use the following docker-compose.yml file:
version: '2'
services:
polkadot:
container_name: polkadot
image: parity/polkadot
ports:
- 30333:30333 # p2p port
- 9933:9933 # rpc port
- 9944:9944 # ws port
volumes:
- /my/local/folder:/polkadot
command: [
"--name", "PolkaDocker",
"--ws-external",
"--rpc-external",
"--rpc-cors", "all"
]
With following docker-compose.yml you can set up a node and use polkadot-js-apps as the front end on port 80. After starting the node use a browser and enter your Docker host IP in the URL field: http://[YOUR_DOCKER_HOST_IP
version: '2'
services:
polkadot:
container_name: polkadot
image: parity/polkadot
ports:
- 30333:30333 # p2p port
- 9933:9933 # rpc port
- 9944:9944 # ws port
command: [
"--name", "PolkaDocker",
"--ws-external",
"--rpc-external",
"--rpc-cors", "all"
]
polkadotui:
container_name: polkadotui
image: jacogr/polkadot-js-apps
environment:
- WS_URL=ws://[YOUR_DOCKER_HOST_IP]:9944
ports:
- 80:80
Chain syncing will utilize all available memory and CPU power your server has to offer, which can lead to crashing.
If running on a low resource VPS, use --memory
and --cpus
to limit the resources used. E.g. To allow a maximum of 512MB memory and 50% of 1 CPU, use --cpus=".5" --memory="512m"
. Read more about limiting a container's resources here.
Start a shell session with the daemon:
docker exec -it $(docker ps -q) bash;
Check the current version:
polkadot --version
To get up and running with the smallest footprint on your system, you may use the Polkadot Docker image. You can build it yourself (it takes a while...) in the shell session of the daemon:
cd scripts/ci/dockerfiles/polkadot
./build.sh
If you run into issues with Polkadot when using docker, please run the following command (replace the tag with the appropriate one if you do not use latest):
docker run --rm -it parity/polkadot:latest --version
This will show you the Polkadot version as well as the git commit ref that was used to build your container. Just paste that in the issue you create.