Tox Bootstrap Node

tox-node was merged into the main tox repository.

A server application to run tox bootstrap node.

Building and running

You'll need Rust >= 1.51.0.

Build with:

cargo build --release

Run with:

cargo run --release

If you want to change default log level you can do it via setting RUST_LOG environment variable. For example, if you want to see all received and sent packets you can change log level to trace for tox crate:

RUST_LOG=tox=trace cargo run --release

Also it's possible to use syslog via --log-type parameter.

Running tox-node in docker

There is a docker repository of tox-node with exposed 443/tcp 3389/tcp 33445/tcp 33445/udp ports. You can run tox-node using docker like this:

TOX_SECRET_KEY=<secret key> docker run -e TOX_SECRET_KEY toxrust/tox-node <ARGS>

or

docker run --mount type=bind,source=<path/to/config.yml>,target=<path/to/target/config.yml> \
    --mount type=bind,source=<path/to/keys>,target=/var/lib/tox-node/keys toxrust/tox-node config <path/to/config.yml>

Example commands:

TOX_SECRET_KEY="4a2d4098e9d6ae6addb8035085cf1467fd7611edd2e22df2f1b60a71763b4ce4" \
    docker run -e TOX_SECRET_KEY toxrust/tox-node \
    --bootstrap-node 1D5A5F2F5D6233058BF0259B09622FB40B482E4FA0931EB8FD3AB8E7BF7DAF6F 198.98.51.198:33445 \
    --udp-address '0.0.0.0:33445' --tcp-address '0.0.0.0:33445' \
    --motd "{{start_date}} {{uptime}} Tcp: incoming {{tcp_packets_in}}, outgoing {{tcp_packets_out}}, Udp: incoming {{udp_packets_in}}, outgoing {{udp_packets_out}}"

or

docker run --mount type=bind,source=$PWD/dpkg/config.yml,target=/config.yml \
    --mount type=bind,source=$PWD/keys,target=/var/lib/tox-node/keys toxrust/tox-node config /config.yml

Running tox-node on NixOS

If you are using NixOS (unstable channel), you can install and run tox-node by adding services.tox-node.enable = true; to your configuration.nix.

Configuration options are also available. An example of configuration:

{
  services.tox-node = {
    enable = true;

    logType = "Syslog";
    keysFile = "/var/lib/tox-node/keys";
    udpAddress = "0.0.0.0:33445";
    tcpAddresses = [ "0.0.0.0:33445" ];
    tcpConnectionLimit = 8192;
    lanDiscovery = true;
    threads = 1;
    motd = "Hi from tox-rs! I'm up {{uptime}}. TCP: incoming {{tcp_packets_in}}, outgoing {{tcp_packets_out}}, UDP: incoming {{udp_packets_in}}, outgoing {{udp_packets_out}}";
  };
}

Running tox-node on Arch Linux

Install tox-node-rs or tox-node-rs-git from AUR in any convenient way. See ArchWiki for more information.

MOTD

MOTD is an abbreviation for The Message of The Day. Tox bootstrap nodes have a special packet kind called BootstrapInfo to retrieve the MOTD alongside with version. Our node supports basic templates for the MOTD that can be specified via --motd key. It's possible to use the following variables surrounded by {{ }}:

• start_date: time when the node was started
• uptime: uptime in the format 'XX days XX hours XX minutes'
• tcp_packets_in: counter of tcp incoming packets
• tcp_packets_out: counter of tcp outgoing packets
• udp_packets_in: counter of udp incoming packets
• udp_packets_out: counter of udp outgoing packets

Keys generation

In order to run node you have to provide either secret key or path to a keys file.

Keys file

Keys file is a binary file with sequentially stored public and secret keys. Path to a keys file can be specified via --keys-file argument. If file doesn't exist it will be created with automatically generated keys. The format of this file is compatible with tox-bootstrapd.

You may also extract the key from the file:

hexdump -s32 -e '32/1 "%02x" "\n"' ./key

Secret key

Secret key is a hexadecimal string of size 32 bytes. It can be specified via TOX_SECRET_KEY environment variable. Any random string will fit but note that only strong random generators should be used to generate a secret key. Here are some examples how you can do it in the terminal:

openssl rand -hex 32
hexdump -n 32 -e '8 "%08x" 1 "\n"' /dev/random
od -vN 32 -An -tx1 /dev/random | tr -d " \n" ; echo

Config or CLI

In order to run with config, run with config subcommand, e.g. tox-node config <file>. Example config.yml is below.

log-type: Stderr
keys-file: ./keys
udp-address: 0.0.0.0:33445
tcp-addresses:
  - 0.0.0.0:33445
tcp-connections-limit: 512
motd: "{{start_date}} {{uptime}} Tcp: incoming {{tcp_packets_in}}, outgoing {{tcp_packets_out}}, Udp: incoming {{udp_packets_in}}, outgoing {{udp_packets_out}}"
bootstrap-nodes:
  - pk: 1D5A5F2F5D6233058BF0259B09622FB40B482E4FA0931EB8FD3AB8E7BF7DAF6F
    addr: 198.98.51.198:33445
  - pk: DA4E4ED4B697F2E9B000EEFE3A34B554ACD3F45F5C96EAEA2516DD7FF9AF7B43
    addr: 185.25.116.107:33445
threads: auto # or any u16 > 0
lan-discovery: True

Or you can use it with CLI like this

tox-node --keys-file keys \
    --bootstrap-node 1D5A5F2F5D6233058BF0259B09622FB40B482E4FA0931EB8FD3AB8E7BF7DAF6F 198.98.51.198:33445 \
    --udp-address '0.0.0.0:33445' --tcp-address '0.0.0.0:33445' \
    --motd "{{start_date}} {{uptime}} Tcp: incoming {{tcp_packets_in}}, outgoing {{tcp_packets_out}}, Udp: incoming {{udp_packets_in}}, outgoing {{udp_packets_out}}"

Build Debian package

Install cargo-deb - a Cargo helper command which automatically creates binary Debian packages (.deb) from Cargo projects:

cargo install cargo-deb

And build binary Debian package:

cargo deb

This command will create a Debian package in target/debian directory. The description of the package:

• Binary in /usr/bin/tox-node
• Default config in /etc/tox-node/config.yml
• Systemd config in /lib/systemd/system/tox-node.service
• postinstall creates user tox-node and its home in /var/lib/tox-node/
• keys will be generated in /var/lib/tox-node/keys if missing during service startup

bootstrap-nodes from config.yml can be generated with:

curl 'https://nodes.tox.chat/json' -s | jq -r '.nodes[] | .public_key + " " + .ipv4 + ":" + (.port | tostring)' | \
while read pk addr; do echo "  - pk: $pk"; echo "    addr: $addr"; done