# Initia By [ValiDAO](https://paragraph.com/@validao) · 2024-07-06 --- In this guide we’ll: * Set up an Initia Full node with a custom DB backend * Tune configuration parameters * Tune system-level settings Assumptions: You have a VPS / bare metal server running Ubuntu >`22.04` at hand. While we won’t go over the steps for provisioning a server, we’ll recommend selecting for the recommended specs: * CPU: 16 cores * Memory: 32GB RAM * Disk: 2 TB NVMe/SSD Storage with Write Throughput > 1000 MiBps * Bandwidth: 100 Mbps If on bare-metal, we recommend a RAID0 disk configuration for optimal performance. **System-level performance tuning** ----------------------------------- We’ll be using the `tuned-adm` package to fine-tune kernel-level configurations. `tuned-adm` is a system tuning daemon for Linux that can be used to optimize performance for certain tasks. We find the `throughput-performance` profile to be the most effective. First, install `tuned-adm` and required packages:​ sudo apt install tuned tuned-utils tuned-utils-systemtap Adjust the existing `throughput-performance` profile to decrease the likelihood of moving memory to swap:​ sudo sed -i 's/^vm\.swappiness=10$/vm.swappiness=1/' /usr/lib/tuned/throughput-performance/tuned.conf Enable the profile: sudo tuned-adm profile throughput-performance ​Verify that the profile is now active:​ tuned-adm active **Installing Initia w/ PebbleDB** --------------------------------- PebbleDB is a fast, RocksDB-inspired key-value store that enhances read/write performance. By efficiently moving more operations into memory and improving caching, PebbleDB can reduce disk requirements. It offers better compression, quicker pruning, and more efficient memory usage, resulting in less I/O overhead. In our tests, pruning operation times decreased by over 75%. Additionally, read and write operations per second significantly decreased due to improved caching. Here, we’ll be using `pebbledb` in place of the default `leveldb` Install pre-requisites sudo apt install jq build-essential curl wget Install `go` sudo rm -rf /usr/local/go curl -Ls https://go.dev/dl/go1.22.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz | sudo tar -C /usr/local -xz echo "" >> $HOME/.profile echo 'export GOPATH=$HOME/go' >> $HOME/.profile echo 'export GOBIN=$GOPATH/bin' >> $HOME/.profile echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin:$GOBIN' >> $HOME/.profile source $HOME/.profile` Confirm installation go version Clone the repo cd $HOME git clone https://github.com/initia-labs/initia.git git checkout v0.2.21 # <-- remember to check for up to date version Intall Initia Node (`initiad`). Usually, you’d run `make install` to install the binary. Here though, we’ll make some modifications so that the reuslting binary uses `pebbledb` as its database backend: go mod edit -replace github.com/cometbft/cometbft-db=github.com/cometbft/cometbft-db@v0.12.0 go mod tidy make BUILD_TAGS=pebbledb LDFLAGS="-w -s -X github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/types.DBBackend=pebbledb \ -X github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/version.Version=v0.2.21 \ -X github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/version.Commit=$(git log -1 --format='%H') \ -X github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/version.ServerName=initiad \ -X github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/version.ClientName=initiad \ -X github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/version.Name=initia \ -X github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/version.AppName=initia" build cp build/initiad $GOBIN/initiad Verify installation initiad version --long Initilatise configurations initiad init pebblenode --chain-id initiation-1 cd $HOME/.initia/config rm genesis wget -O genesis.json https://snapshots.polkachu.com/testnet-genesis/initia/genesis.json Set seeds (h/t polkachu) seeds="ade4d8bc8cbe014af6ebdf3cb7b1e9ad36f412c0@testnet-seeds.polkachu.com:25756,86bd5cb6e762f673f1706e5889e039d5406b4b90@seed.initia.testnet.node75.org:20456" sed -i "s/^seeds *=.*/seeds = \"$seeds\"/" $HOME/.initia/config/config.toml Set minimum gas prices min_gas_price="0.002uinit,0.002move\/944f8dd8dc49f96c25fea9849f16436dcfa6d564eec802f3ef7f8b3ea85368ff" sed -i "s/^minimum-gas-prices *=.*/minimum-gas-prices = \"$min_gas_price\"/" $HOME/.initia/config/app.toml Set pruning to custom pruning="custom" pruning_keep_recent="100" pruning_interval="10" sed -i "s/^pruning *=.*/pruning = \"$pruning\"/" $HOME/.initia/config/app.toml sed -i "s/^pruning-keep-recent *=.*/pruning-keep-recent = \"$pruning_keep_recent\"/" $HOME/.initia/config/app.toml sed -i "s/^pruning-interval *=.*/pruning-interval = \"$pruning_interval\"/" $HOME/.initia/config/app.toml sed -i -e "s/^min-retain-blocks *=.*/min-retain-blocks = 3000/" ${HOME}/.initia/config/app.toml Set PebbleDB backend db_backend="pebbledb" sed -i "s/^db_backend *=.*/db_backend = \"$db_backend\"/" $HOME/.initia/config/config.toml sed -i "s/^app-db-backend *=.*/app-db-backend = \"$db_backend\"/" $HOME/.initia/config/app.toml Install systemd service sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/initiad.service > /dev/null < /dev/null if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then echo "failed querying rpc, exiting" exit fi if [ ! -d $HOME/.initia ]; then echo "home .initia does not exist, exiting" exit fi if [ ! -f /etc/systemd/system/initiad.service ]; then echo "servvice initiad does not exist, exiting" exit fi LATEST_HEIGHT=$(curl -s $SNAP_RPC/block | jq -r .result.block.header.height); \ BLOCK_HEIGHT=$((LATEST_HEIGHT - 7500)); \ TRUST_HASH=$(curl -s "$SNAP_RPC/block?height=$BLOCK_HEIGHT" | jq -r .result.block_id.hash) sed -i.bak -E "s|^(enable[[:space:]]+=[[:space:]]+).*$|\1true| ; \ s|^(rpc_servers[[:space:]]+=[[:space:]]+).*$|\1\"$SNAP_RPC,$SNAP_RPC\"| ; \ s|^(trust_height[[:space:]]+=[[:space:]]+).*$|\1$BLOCK_HEIGHT| ; \ s|^(trust_hash[[:space:]]+=[[:space:]]+).*$|\1\"$TRUST_HASH\"|" $HOME/.initia/config/config.toml sudo systemctl stop initiad if [ -d $HOME/.initia/data ]; then mv $HOME/.initia/data/priv_validator_state.json $HOME/.initia/priv_validator_state.json rm -rf $HOME/.initia/data* $HOME/.initia/wasm* mkdir $HOME/.initia/data cp $HOME/.initia/priv_validator_state.json $HOME/.initia/data/priv_validator_state.json fi sudo systemctl start initiad **Fin** ------- Your node should now be syncing via statesync, using pebbleDB! Make sure to open up your firewall to allow incoming traffic on port `26656` as well to increase your peering. --- *Originally published on [ValiDAO](https://paragraph.com/@validao/initia)*