POC - Solana on Multipass

Prerequisites

This document assumes you have some virtualization software installed on your machine. I am using VirtualBox on Win10.

• 15 GB of free disk space for solana-rust-builder

• Additional 15 GB of free disk space for solana-quick-node

• I am using a tool called multipass from Canonical (more info) to spin up Ubuntu VMs.

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ℹ️ We need to build from source if we want to run the local testnet demo in virtual environment without AVX CPU flags.

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Spin Up Ubuntu Instance to Build Solana from Source

ℹ️ In order to create a local testnet, we need to build Solana (more info) from source.

To spin up an Ubuntu instance using rust and cargo to build Solana for a local testnet:

ahester@DESKTOP:~$ ./spin_up_rust_builder.sh

The above script uses a Cloud Config file, solana-config.yaml, in addition to command line arguments passed to the multipass command to spin up a new instance of Ubuntu.

On my machine it took 47m10s to build everything.

[2022-06-21T18:11:56.465] [debug] [solana-rust-builder] Running: VBoxManage, startvm, solana-rust-builder, --type, headless

Launched: solana-rust-builder

real    47m10.076s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m0.000s

Spin-Up Script Effects

After building, the spin_up_rust_builder.sh script then:

• Install rust and cargo.
• Mounts the source machine's build_mount directory to the same directory in solana-rust-builder:~/build_mount.
• Copies the just-built binaries from your virtual Ubuntu instance to source's build_mount/manual_build directory.

The build_mount/manual_build directory is then used to speed up launches of new instances.

Note: The action of mounting the directory using multipass will install multipass-sshfs on the target machine using the snap store.

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Shell Into Solana Builder

Once the rust build is complete, connect to the new instance. In this example the name of the instance is solana-rust-builder. Yours will most likely be different.

To access the Ubuntu instance:

ahester@DESKTOP:~$ multipass shell solana-rust-builder

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Local Single-Node Cluster

One of the easiest ways to get a Solana on-chain program running is to use the solana_test_validator.

During early stage development, it is often convenient to target a cluster with fewer restrictions and more configuration options than the public offerings provide. This is easily achieved with the solana-test-validator binary, which starts a full-featured, single-node cluster on the developer's workstation.

Create a Test Wallet

Check you Solana wallet's balance with:

solana balance

If you have yet to create a Solana wallet, you'll see something like:

Error: Dynamic program error: No default signer found, run "solana-keygen new -o /home/ubuntu/.config/solana/id.json" to create a new one

Run the command it suggests to create your wallet. The output of that command on solana-rust-builder:

ubuntu@solana-rust-builder:~$ solana-keygen new -o ~/.config/solana/id.json
Generating a new keypair

For added security, enter a BIP39 passphrase

NOTE! This passphrase improves security of the recovery seed phrase NOT the
keypair file itself, which is stored as insecure plain text

BIP39 Passphrase (empty for none):
Enter same passphrase again:

Wrote new keypair to /home/ubuntu/.config/solana/id.json
============================================================================
pubkey: D7YKR8P1wrTS7L4fVxA7ziK4UnTNnjGkFfygicgCPsu8
============================================================================
Save this seed phrase and your BIP39 passphrase to recover your new keypair:
---- -------- ------ -------- ----- -------- ------- ------ --------- -----
============================================================================

Start Your Cluster

Now you can start you single-node cluster:

ubuntu@solana-rust-builder:~$ solana-test-validator
Ledger location: test-ledger
Log: test-ledger/validator.log
⠲ Initializing...
⠄ Initializing...
Identity: Hnz2PxcVqZUkxrr6bbsU6ZcKn7jko1JFNAMbWLrKHXdQ
Genesis Hash: H1iw5ZNxEZQB9Qs81TfYDwM2TbyrZ2e4TERdLQpEGdNs
Version: 1.11.1
Shred Version: 54048
Gossip Address: 127.0.0.1:1024
TPU Address: 127.0.0.1:1027
JSON RPC URL: http://127.0.0.1:8899
⠠ 00:00:22 | Processed Slot: 48 | Confirmed Slot: 48 | Finalized Slot: 16 | Full

Configure Your Solana CLI Tools

Next configure your Solana CLI Tool Suite to use your local JSON RPC connection. Note that I am running this command from within the virtual Ubuntu instance called solana-rust-builder. The URL given in the command should match the JSON RPC URL printed by solana-test-validator.

ubuntu@solana-rust-builder:~$ solana config set --url http://127.0.0.1:8899
Config File: /home/ubuntu/.config/solana/cli/config.yml
RPC URL: http://127.0.0.1:8899
WebSocket URL: ws://127.0.0.1:8900/ (computed)
Keypair Path: /home/ubuntu/.config/solana/id.json
Commitment: confirmed

Confirm Your CLI Configuration

To confirm the configuration is pointing at your local test network, run solana genesis-hash and ensure the output matches the Genesis Hash printed by solana-test-validator.

ubuntu@solana-rust-builder:~$ solana genesis-hash
H1iw5ZNxEZQB9Qs81TfYDwM2TbyrZ2e4TERdLQpEGdNs

Check Your Enabled Features

After configuring your Solana CLI tools to point to your local validator, you can check the feature supported by your client with:

ubuntu@solana-rust-builder:~$ solana feature status -ul

...

Tool Software Version: 1.11.1
Software Version    Stake      RPC
1.11.1            100.00%  100.00%  <-- me

Tool Feature Set: 499180940
Software Version  Feature Set    Stake      RPC
1.11.1              499180940  100.00%  100.00%  <-- me

Get Money

To get money:

ubuntu@solana-rust-builder:~$ solana airdrop 1000000

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Spin Up Solana Node Quickly From Prebuilt Binaries

To spin up an Ubuntu instance called solana-quick-node with solana installed from the binaries you just built above:

Enable Networking on Multipass Instance

⚠️ Before spinning up your new node, on your machine run:

:~$ multipass networks

Choose the network you are using from the output list. Update the time multipass launch line's --network option from 'Ethernet' to whatever your network is. You do not have to do this if you do not care to connect to this node's RPC from outside the VM.

Create Solana Quick Node

:~$ ./spin_up_new_node_from_binaries.sh

On my machine in took 1m55s to build the node from prebuilt binaries using shared mounts.

[2022-06-21T20:43:21.816] [debug] [veteran-dory] Running: VBoxManage, startvm, veteran-dory, --type, headless

Launched: veteran-dory

real    1m54.921s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m0.015s

Spin-Up Script Effects

After initializing the node with multipass, spin_up_new_node_from_binaries.sh will then:

• Install rust and cargo.
• Mounts the source machine's build_mount directory to the same directory in solana-quick-node:~/build_mount.
• Copies the previously-built binaries from the mounted volume to virtual Ubuntus ~/.local/share/solana/install... directory.
• Set up target's PATH in ~/.profile.

This new node should only take a couple minutes to spin up with built-from-source binaries in use.

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Local Multi-Node Cluster

If the Test Validator is not enough for you and you want to setup the multi-node demo:

Generate Genesis

ubuntu@solana-rust-builder:~$ cd solana
ubuntu@solana-rust-builder:~$ NDEBUG=1 ./multinode-demo/setup.sh

TBA

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Note on "Illegal Instruction" Error

During generation of genesis, I ran into issue of Illegal Instruction, probably due to lack of AVX and AVX2 CPU flags due to Hypervisor. Apparently, AVX and Hypervisor are mutually exclusive.

To disable Hyper-V in Windows Powershell:

Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V-Hypervisor

An alternative way to disable Hyper-V using cmd . I had to change Microsoft-Hyper-V to HypervisorPlatform, otherwise it worked for me.

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