How to Self-Host a Block Explorer with Docker

What you need

• Docker and Docker Compose.
• OpenSSL, which the setup script uses to generate secrets.
• make, because the commands in the README use the Makefile.
• A domain name or the IP address of your server.
• The RPC URL of the EVM chain you want to explore.

Steps

1. 1

   Clone the repository

   Clone Ethernal and check out the latest tagged release, which is the latest stable version.

   git clone https://github.com/tryethernal/ethernal.git
   cd ethernal
   git checkout $(git describe --tags --abbrev=0)

2. 2

   Run make start

   On the first run, the script asks for your domain name (apex, without www) or server IP, the port to serve the app on (80 by default), and, if you entered a domain, whether to enable SSL (yes by default). It then generates the secrets and config files, pulls the images, starts the containers, creates the database and runs the migrations. Generated secrets and config files are added to .gitignore.

   make start

3. 3

   Point your domain at the server

   If you used a domain instead of an IP address, add two A records at your DNS provider that point to the public IP address of your server: one for your domain (your-domain.com) and one wildcard record (*.your-domain.com). Each explorer is served on its own subdomain of your domain, so the wildcard record is needed for explorers to be reachable.

4. 4

   Open the setup page

   When make start finishes it prints a summary, including a setup link that looks like http://your-domain-or-ip/setup, plus the Bull dashboard address and credentials for background jobs. Run make info to print it again. Open the setup link in your browser.

5. 5

   Create the admin user

   The first screen of the setup creates your admin user. Enter an email and a password, then click Create User.

6. 6

   Create your first explorer

   Enter an Explorer Name and the RPC URL of your chain (it has to start with http:// or https://), then click Create Explorer.

7. 7

   Open your explorer

   The last screen shows the address of your new explorer and links to its settings, the Ethernal dashboard and your list of explorers.

8. 8

   Update, stop or reset the instance

   These are separate commands, not a sequence. To update, run make update, which pulls the latest images and applies migrations and seeds. To stop, run make stop, which stops and cleans up the containers and networks. To reset, run make nuke only if you want to start over: it is destructive and removes containers, volumes and generated config files, which deletes all your data.

   Update

   make update

   Stop

   make stop

   Reset (deletes all data)

   make nuke

Troubleshooting and FAQ

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