Set Up BigchainDB Node on Local Dev Machine

The BigchainDB core dev team develops BigchainDB on recent Ubuntu, Fedora and CentOS distributions, so we recommend you use one of those. BigchainDB Server doesn’t work on Windows or macOS (unless you use a VM or containers).

With MongoDB

First read the BigchainDB CONTRIBUTING.md file. It outlines the steps to set up a machine for developing and testing BigchainDB.

Create a default BigchainDB config file (in $HOME/.bigchaindb):

$ bigchaindb -y configure mongodb

Note: The BigchainDB CLI and the BigchainDB Configuration Settings are documented elsewhere. (Click the links.)

Start MongoDB 3.4+ using:

$ mongod --replSet=bigchain-rs

You can verify that MongoDB is running correctly by checking the output of the previous command for the line:

waiting for connections on port 27017

To run BigchainDB Server, do:

$ bigchaindb start

You can run all the unit tests to test your installation.

With RethinkDB

First read the BigchainDB CONTRIBUTING.md file. It outlines the steps to set up a machine for developing and testing BigchainDB.

Create a default BigchainDB config file (in $HOME/.bigchaindb):

$ bigchaindb -y configure rethinkdb

Note: The BigchainDB CLI and the BigchainDB Configuration Settings are documented elsewhere. (Click the links.)

Start RethinkDB using:

$ rethinkdb

You can verify that RethinkDB is running by opening the RethinkDB web interface in your web browser. It should be at http://localhost:8080/

To run BigchainDB Server, do:

$ bigchaindb start

You can run all the unit tests to test your installation.