How to Compile & Install Cardano Node Binaries from Source (Debian Buster)

April 15, 2021

Although the Official Cardano Build Instructions are great for a variety of systems. We wanted to share the specific procedures we use to build and install the applications for our Cardano Stake Pool infrastructure.

The directions below will instruct you on how to build and install Cardano Binaries on Debian 10 (Buster).

Update the Operating System

apt update -y
apt upgrade -y
apt dist-upgrade -y
apt autoremove -y
shutdown -r now

Install Haskell

Edit Apt Sources

apt edit-sources

Add the following lines to the sources:

#GHC https://downloads.haskell.org/debian/
deb http://downloads.haskell.org/debian buster main

Register GPG Signing Key

apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys BA3CBA3FFE22B574

Install Cabal and GHC

apt update
apt install cabal-install-3.4 ghc-8.10.2

Set Evironment Path

Add the following to ~/.bashrc

export PATH="/opt/ghc/bin:$PATH"

Load Changes

source ~/.bashrc

Install Dependencies

Install Libsodium

apt install libsodium-dev libsodium23

Install Build Dependencies

apt install automake build-essential pkg-config libffi-dev libgmp-dev libssl-dev libtinfo-dev libsystemd-dev zlib1g-dev make g++ tmux git jq wget libncursesw5 libtool autoconf libsodium-dev -y

Download and Compile Node

Download Node Source

mkdir -p ~/src
cd ~/src
git clone https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-node.git
cd cardano-node
git fetch --all --recurse-submodules --tags
git tag
git checkout tags/<TAGGED VERSION>

Set Build Options

# Set compiler version
cabal configure --with-compiler=ghc-8.10.2

# Update the local project file to use the VRF library that you installed earlier
echo "package cardano-crypto-praos" >>  cabal.project.local
echo "  flags: -external-libsodium-vrf" >>  cabal.project.local

Build Binaries

cabal update
cabal build all

Install Binaries

cp -p "$(find dist-newstyle -type f -name cardano-node)" /usr/local/bin/
cp -p "$(find dist-newstyle -type f -name cardano-cli)" /usr/local/bin/
chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/cardano-*

Cleanup

apt remove automake build-essential pkg-config libffi-dev libgmp-dev libssl-dev libtinfo-dev libsystemd-dev zlib1g-dev make g++ tmux jq wget libncursesw5 libtool autoconf libsodium-dev -y
apt autoremove -y
rm -rf ~/src

Cardano Notebook (c) by Powered By Crypto LLC, and other contributors. This document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-SA 4.0).