quickstart.md

Quick start

Requirements

• Go 1.21

Installation

$ git clone https://github.com/cryptopunkscc/astrald
$ cd astrald
$ go install ./cmd/astrald ./cmd/anc

This will install two binaries:

• astrald - the node daemon
• anc - a basic tool to interact with the astral network (astral netcat)

Note: go install puts binaries in $HOME/go/bin by default. Make sure to add this directory to your $PATH.

Running the node

Start the node:

$ astrald
(0) 16:20:33.799 - [node] astral node demo (02204655fc5085bb3a4b53aba35c105a46b89f4d81a655ee579e1aa7fe34c0059e) statrting...
...

demo is the alias of your node followed by its public key in parens. The public key is the canonical way to represent an identity. Aliases are assigned locally (sort of like /etc/hosts file) and should only be used for convenience.

Config directory (Linux)

By default, astrald will use $HOME/.config/astrald directory for all resource and config files. You can specify a different path using -datadir option.

Config directory (MacOS)

On Mac, astrald will use ~/Library/Application Support/astrald directory for resource and config files.

Default identity

In order to interact with the node you need to have an identity as a user. Since you don't have one yet, you can use your node's identity to set things up. Create a config file called mod_apphost.yaml in the config directory with the following content:

default_identity: demo

Replace demo with the alias of your node or its public key. You can use both aliases and public keys in config files, but keep in mind that if you change aliases you also need to update your config files.

Save the file and restart astrald. Anonymous app connections to the node will now have node's identity. Since this lets any app use node's identity on the network, as soon as you set up your own identity make sure to remove the default_identity from the config file.

To test if everything works as expected try using anc:

$ anc r test
listening on test

If you get an unauthorized error, something is wrong with the config (or you forgot to restart the node).

Admin console

Now that you have your identity set up you can access the admin console using anc:

$ anc q admin
connected.
demo@demo> 

The first demo is the identity the user is using to interact with the admin console, the second demo is the identity of the node.

If you got this far, you have a fully functional astral node up and running.

What's next?

• TCP tunnels guide.