Installing

There are three ways to install Stellar Core: you can use a Docker image, use pre-built packages, or build from source. Using a Docker image is the quickest and easiest method, so it's a good choice for a lot of developers, but if you're running Stellar Core in production you may need to use packages or, if you want to sacrifice convenience for maximum control, build from source. Whichever method you use, you should make sure to install the latest release since releases are cumulative and backwards compatible.

Docker-based installation

Development environments

SDF maintains a quickstart image that bundles Stellar Core with Horizon and postgreSQL databases. It's a quick way to set up a default, non-validating, ephemeral configuration that should work for most developers.

In addition to SDF images, Satoshipay maintains separate Docker images for Stellar Core and Horizon. The Satoshipay Stellar Core Docker image comes in a few flavors, including one with the AWS CLI installed and one with the Google Cloud SDK installed. The Horizon image supports all Horizon environment variables.

Production environments

The SDF also maintains a Stellar-Core-only standalone image.

Example usage:

docker run stellar/stellar-core:latest help
docker run stellar/stellar-core:latest gen-seed

To run daemon you need to provide a configuration file:

# Initialize postgres DB (see DATABASE config option)
docker run -v "/path/to/config/dir:/etc/stellar/" stellar/stellar-core:latest new-db
# Run stellar-core daemon in the background
docker run -d -v "/path/to/config/dir:/etc/stellar/" stellar/stellar-core:latest run

The image utilizes deb packages so it's possible to confirm checksum of the stellar-core binary in the docker image matches that in the cryptographically signed deb package. See packages documentation for information on installing Ubuntu packages. To calculate checksum in the docker image you can run:

docker run --entrypoint=/bin/sha256sum stellar/stellar-core:latest /usr/bin/stellar-core

Package-based Installation

If you are using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or later, we provide the latest stable releases of stellar-core and stellar-horizon in Debian binary package format.

You may choose to install these packages individually, which offers the greatest flexibility but requires manual creation of the relevant configuration files and configuration of a PostgreSQL database.

Most people, however, choose to install the stellar-quickstart package which configures a Testnet stellar-core and stellar-horizon both backed by a local PostgreSQL database. Once installed you can easily modify either the Stellar Core configuration if you want to connect to the public network.

Installing from source

See the install from source for build instructions.

Release version

In general you should install the latest release build. Builds are backward compatible and are cumulative.

The version number scheme that we follow is protocol_version.release_number.patch_number where:

protocol_version is the maximum protocol version supported by that release (all versions are 100% backward compatible), release_number is bumped when a set of new features or bug fixes not impacting the protocol are included in the release, patch_number is used when a critical fix has to be deployed.