Step 4: Installing execution client

Pick an execution client

Your choice of either Geth, Besu, Nethermind, or Erigon.

To strengthen Ethereum's resilience against potential attacks or consensus bugs, it's best practice to run a minority client in order to increase client diversity. Find the latest distribution of execution clients here: https://clientdiversity.org

🛡️ Recommendation 🛡️: Nethermind

Reminder: Ensure you are logged in and execute all steps in this guide as non-root user, ethereum ,created during Step 2: Configuring Node.

Geth - Go Ethereum is one of the three original implementations (along with C++ and Python) of the Ethereum protocol. It is written in Go, fully open source and licensed under the GNU LGPL v3.

Review the latest release notes at https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/releases

🧬Install from the repository

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ethereum/ethereum
sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get install ethereum -y

⚙️ Setup and configure systemd

Run the following to create a unit file to define your eth1.service configuration.

Simply copy/paste the following.

cat > $HOME/eth1.service << EOF
[Unit]
Description=Geth Execution Layer Client service
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target
Documentation=https://www.coincashew.com

[Service]
Type=simple
User=ethereum
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=3
TimeoutSec=690
ExecStart=/usr/bin/geth \
  --mainnet \
  --metrics \
  --pprof \
  --authrpc.jwtsecret=/secrets/jwtsecret

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

Move the unit file to /etc/systemd/system and give it permissions.

sudo mv $HOME/eth1.service /etc/systemd/system/eth1.service

sudo chmod 644 /etc/systemd/system/eth1.service

Run the following to enable auto-start at boot time.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable eth1

⛓️Start geth

sudo systemctl start eth1

Hyperledger Besu is an open-source Ethereum client designed for demanding enterprise applications requiring secure, high-performance transaction processing in a private network. It's developed under the Apache 2.0 license and written in Java.

🧬Install java dependency

sudo apt update
sudo apt install openjdk-17-jre -y libjemalloc-dev jq

🌜Download and unzip Besu

Review the latest release at https://github.com/hyperledger/besu/releases

Run the following to automatically download the latest linux release, un-tar and cleanup.

RELEASE_URL="https://api.github.com/repos/hyperledger/besu/releases/latest"
TAG=$(curl -s $RELEASE_URL | jq -r .tag_name)
BINARIES_URL="https://github.com/hyperledger/besu/releases/download/$TAG/besu-$TAG.tar.gz"

echo Downloading URL: $BINARIES_URL

cd $HOME
wget -O besu.tar.gz "$BINARIES_URL"
tar -xzvf besu.tar.gz -C $HOME
rm besu.tar.gz && mv besu-* besu

⚙️ Setup and configure systemd

Run the following to create a unit file to define your eth1.service configuration.

Simply copy/paste the following.

cat > $HOME/eth1.service << EOF
[Unit]
Description=Besu Execution Layer Client service
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target
Documentation=https://www.coincashew.com

[Service]
Type=simple
User=ethereum
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=3
KillSignal=SIGINT
TimeoutStopSec=690
Environment="JAVA_OPTS=-Xmx5g"
ExecStart=/home/ethereum/besu/bin/besu \
  --network=mainnet \
  --metrics-enabled=true \
  --sync-mode=X_CHECKPOINT \
  --data-storage-format=BONSAI \
  --data-path="/home/ethereum/.besu" \
  --Xplugin-rocksdb-high-spec-enabled \
  --engine-jwt-secret=/secrets/jwtsecret

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

Good to know: --Xplugin-rocksdb-high-spec-enabled allows Besu increased database performance. Recommended for machines with 16GB of RAM or more.

Move the unit file to /etc/systemd/system and give it permissions.

sudo mv $HOME/eth1.service /etc/systemd/system/eth1.service

sudo chmod 644 /etc/systemd/system/eth1.service

Run the following to enable auto-start at boot time.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable eth1

⛓️ Start besu

sudo systemctl start eth1

Nethermind is a flagship Ethereum client all about performance and flexibility. Built on .NET core, a widespread, enterprise-friendly platform, Nethermind makes integration with existing infrastructures simple, without losing sight of stability, reliability, data integrity, and security.

⚙️ Install dependencies

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install curl libsnappy-dev libc6-dev jq libc6 unzip -y

🌜Download and unzip Nethermind

Review the latest release at https://github.com/NethermindEth/nethermind/releases

Run the following to automatically download the latest linux release, un-zip and cleanup.

cd $HOME
curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/NethermindEth/nethermind/releases/latest | jq -r ".assets[] | select(.name) | .browser_download_url" | grep linux-x64 | xargs wget -q --show-progress
unzip -o nethermind*.zip -d $HOME/nethermind
rm nethermind*linux*.zip

⚙️ Setup and configure systemd

Run the following to create a unit file to define your eth1.service configuration.

Simply copy/paste the following.

cat > $HOME/eth1.service << EOF
[Unit]
Description=Nethermind Execution Layer Client service
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target
Documentation=https://www.coincashew.com

[Service]
Type=simple
User=ethereum
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=3
KillSignal=SIGINT
TimeoutStopSec=690
WorkingDirectory=/home/ethereum/nethermind
ExecStart=/home/ethereum/nethermind/Nethermind.Runner \
  --baseDbPath /home/ethereum/.nethermind \
  --Metrics.Enabled true \
  --Metrics.ExposePort 6060 \
  --Metrics.IntervalSeconds 10000 \
  --Sync.SnapSync true \
  --Sync.AncientBodiesBarrier 11052984 \
  --Sync.AncientReceiptsBarrier 11052984 \
  --JsonRpc.JwtSecretFile /secrets/jwtsecret

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

Move the unit file to /etc/systemd/system and give it permissions.

sudo mv $HOME/eth1.service /etc/systemd/system/eth1.service

sudo chmod 644 /etc/systemd/system/eth1.service

Run the following to enable auto-start at boot time.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable eth1

⛓️ Start Nethermind

sudo systemctl start eth1

Erigon - Successor to OpenEthereum, Erigon is an implementation of Ethereum (aka "Ethereum client"), on the efficiency frontier, written in Go.

Erigon requires at least 16GB RAM. 32GB is highly recommended.

⚙️ Install Go dependencies

Find the latest release of Go from here and update the download URL for the tar.gz file below.

wget -O go.tar.gz https://go.dev/dl/go1.19.linux-amd64.tar.gz

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/go && sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf go.tar.gz

echo export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin>> $HOME/.bashrc
source $HOME/.bashrc

Verify Go is properly installed and cleanup files.

go version
rm go.tar.gz

🤖 Build and install Erigon

Install build dependencies.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install build-essential git

Review the latest release at https://github.com/ledgerwatch/erigon/releases

cd $HOME
git clone --branch stable --recurse-submodules https://github.com/ledgerwatch/erigon.git
cd erigon
make erigon

Verify the build completed successfully by displaying Erigon's version.

./build/bin/erigon --version

Example of version:

erigon version 2.47.0-stable-5536d645

Make data directory and update directory ownership.

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/erigon
sudo chown ethereum:ethereum /var/lib/erigon

⚙️ Setup and configure systemd

Run the following to create a unit file to define your eth1.service configuration.

Simply copy/paste the following.

cat > $HOME/eth1.service << EOF
[Unit]
Description=Erigon Execution Layer Client service
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target
Documentation=https://www.coincashew.com

[Service]
Type=simple
User=ethereum
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=3
KillSignal=SIGINT
TimeoutStopSec=690
ExecStart=/home/ethereum/erigon/build/bin/erigon \
 --datadir /var/lib/erigon \
 --chain mainnet \
 --metrics \
 --pprof \
 --prune htc \
 --prune.r.before=11052984 \
 --authrpc.jwtsecret=/secrets/jwtsecret

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

By default with Erigon, --prune deletes data older than 90K blocks from the tip of the chain. For example, if tip block is no. 12'000'000, then only the data between 11'910'000-12'000'000 will be kept).

Move the unit files to /etc/systemd/system and give it permissions.

sudo mv $HOME/eth1.service /etc/systemd/system/eth1.service

sudo chmod 644 /etc/systemd/system/eth1.service

Run the following to enable auto-start at boot time.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable eth1

⛓️Start Erigon

sudo systemctl start eth1

🛠️ Helpful execution client commands

journalctl -fu eth1

🪜 Next Steps

Now that your execution client is configured and started, proceed to the next section to setup your consensus client.

If you're checking the logs and see any warnings or errors, please be patient as these will normally resolve once both your execution and consensus clients are fully synched to the Ethereum network.

PreviousStep 3: Setting up Validator Keys NextStep 5: Installing consensus client