dash/doc/build-unix.md

UNIX BUILD NOTES

Some notes on how to build Dash Core in Unix.

(For BSD specific instructions, see build-*bsd.md in this directory.)

Note

Always use absolute paths to configure and compile Dash Core and the dependencies. For example, when specifying the path of the dependency:

../dist/configure --enable-cxx --disable-shared --with-pic --prefix=$BDB_PREFIX

Here BDB_PREFIX must be an absolute path - it is defined using $(pwd) which ensures the usage of the absolute path.

To Build

./autogen.sh
./configure
make # use "-j N" for N parallel jobs
make install # optional

This will build dash-qt as well, if the dependencies are met.

Dependencies

These dependencies are required:

Library	Purpose	Description
libboost	Utility	Library for threading, data structures, etc
libevent	Networking	OS independent asynchronous networking

Optional dependencies:

Library	Purpose	Description
gmp	Optimized math routines	Arbitrary precision arithmetic library
miniupnpc	UPnP Support	Firewall-jumping support
libnatpmp	NAT-PMP Support	Firewall-jumping support
libdb4.8	Berkeley DB	Optional, wallet storage (only needed when wallet enabled)
qt	GUI	GUI toolkit (only needed when GUI enabled)
libqrencode	QR codes in GUI	Optional for generating QR codes (only needed when GUI enabled)
libzmq3	ZMQ notification	Optional, allows generating ZMQ notifications (requires ZMQ version >= 4.0.0)
sqlite3	SQLite DB	Wallet storage (only needed when wallet enabled)

For the versions used, see dependencies.md

Memory Requirements

C++ compilers are memory-hungry. It is recommended to have at least 1.5 GB of memory available when compiling Dash Core. On systems with less, gcc can be tuned to conserve memory with additional CXXFLAGS:

./configure CXXFLAGS="--param ggc-min-expand=1 --param ggc-min-heapsize=32768"

Linux Distribution Specific Instructions

Ubuntu & Debian

Dependency Build Instructions

Build requirements:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libtool autotools-dev automake pkg-config bsdmainutils bison python3

Now, you can either build from self-compiled depends or install the required dependencies:

sudo apt-get install libevent-dev libboost-dev libboost-system-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-test-dev

Berkeley DB is required for the wallet.

Ubuntu and Debian have their own libdb-dev and libdb++-dev packages, but these will install Berkeley DB 5.1 or later. This will break binary wallet compatibility with the distributed executables, which are based on BerkeleyDB 4.8. If you do not care about wallet compatibility, pass --with-incompatible-bdb to configure.

Otherwise, you can build Berkeley DB yourself.

SQLite is required for the wallet:

sudo apt-get install libsqlite3-dev

To build Dash Core without wallet, see Disable-wallet mode

Optional port mapping libraries (see: --with-miniupnpc and --with-natpmp):

sudo apt-get install libminiupnpc-dev libnatpmp-dev

ZMQ dependencies (provides ZMQ API):

sudo apt-get install libzmq3-dev

GMP dependencies (provides platform-optimized routines):

sudo apt-get install libgmp-dev

GUI dependencies:

If you want to build dash-qt, make sure that the required packages for Qt development are installed. Qt 5 is necessary to build the GUI. To build without GUI pass --without-gui.

To build with Qt 5 you need the following:

sudo apt-get install libqt5gui5 libqt5core5a libqt5dbus5 qttools5-dev qttools5-dev-tools

Additionally, to support Wayland protocol for modern desktop environments:

sudo apt-get install qtwayland5

libqrencode (optional) can be installed with:

sudo apt-get install libqrencode-dev

Once these are installed, they will be found by configure and a dash-qt executable will be built by default.

Fedora

Dependency Build Instructions

Build requirements:

sudo dnf install gcc-c++ libtool make autoconf automake python3

Now, you can either build from self-compiled depends or install the required dependencies:

sudo dnf install libevent-devel boost-devel

Berkeley DB is required for the wallet:

sudo dnf install libdb4-devel libdb4-cxx-devel

Newer Fedora releases, since Fedora 33, have only libdb-devel and libdb-cxx-devel packages, but these will install Berkeley DB 5.3 or later. This will break binary wallet compatibility with the distributed executables, which are based on Berkeley DB 4.8. If you do not care about wallet compatibility, pass --with-incompatible-bdb to configure.

Otherwise, you can build Berkeley DB yourself.

SQLite is required for the wallet:

sudo dnf install sqlite-devel

To build Dash Core without wallet, see Disable-wallet mode

Optional port mapping libraries (see: --with-miniupnpc and --with-natpmp):

sudo dnf install miniupnpc-devel libnatpmp-devel

ZMQ dependencies (provides ZMQ API):

sudo dnf install zeromq-devel

GMP dependencies (provides platform-optimized routines):

sudo dnf install gmp-devel

GUI dependencies:

If you want to build dash-qt, make sure that the required packages for Qt development are installed. Qt 5 is necessary to build the GUI. To build without GUI pass --without-gui.

To build with Qt 5 you need the following:

sudo dnf install qt5-qttools-devel qt5-qtbase-devel

Additionally, to support Wayland protocol for modern desktop environments:

sudo dnf install qt5-qtwayland

libqrencode (optional) can be installed with:

sudo dnf install qrencode-devel

Once these are installed, they will be found by configure and a dash-qt executable will be built by default.

Notes

The release is built with GCC and then "strip dashd" to strip the debug symbols, which reduces the executable size by about 90%.

miniupnpc

miniupnpc may be used for UPnP port mapping. It can be downloaded from here. UPnP support is compiled in and turned off by default.

libnatpmp

libnatpmp may be used for NAT-PMP port mapping. It can be downloaded from here. NAT-PMP support is compiled in and turned off by default.

Berkeley DB

It is recommended to use Berkeley DB 4.8. If you have to build it yourself, you can use the installation script included in contrib/ like so:

./contrib/install_db4.sh `pwd`

from the root of the repository.

Otherwise, you can build Dash Core from self-compiled depends.

Note: You only need Berkeley DB if the wallet is enabled (see Disable-wallet mode).

Boost

If you need to build Boost yourself:

sudo su
./bootstrap.sh
./bjam install

Security

To help make your Dash Core installation more secure by making certain attacks impossible to exploit even if a vulnerability is found, binaries are hardened by default. This can be disabled with:

Hardening Flags:

./configure --enable-hardening
./configure --disable-hardening

Hardening enables the following features:

• Position Independent Executable: Build position independent code to take advantage of Address Space Layout Randomization offered by some kernels. Attackers who can cause execution of code at an arbitrary memory location are thwarted if they don't know where anything useful is located. The stack and heap are randomly located by default, but this allows the code section to be randomly located as well.

  On an AMD64 processor where a library was not compiled with -fPIC, this will cause an error such as: "relocation R_X86_64_32 against `......' can not be used when making a shared object;"

  To test that you have built PIE executable, install scanelf, part of paxutils, and use:

    scanelf -e ./dashd
  

  The output should contain:

  TYPE ET_DYN

• Non-executable Stack: If the stack is executable then trivial stack-based buffer overflow exploits are possible if vulnerable buffers are found. By default, Dash Core should be built with a non-executable stack, but if one of the libraries it uses asks for an executable stack or someone makes a mistake and uses a compiler extension which requires an executable stack, it will silently build an executable without the non-executable stack protection.

  To verify that the stack is non-executable after compiling use: scanelf -e ./dashd

  The output should contain: STK/REL/PTL RW- R-- RW-

  The STK RW- means that the stack is readable and writeable but not executable.

Disable-wallet mode

When the intention is to run only a P2P node without a wallet, Dash Core may be compiled in disable-wallet mode with:

./configure --disable-wallet

In this case there is no dependency on Berkeley DB 4.8 and SQLite.

Mining is also possible in disable-wallet mode using the getblocktemplate RPC call.

Additional Configure Flags

A list of additional configure flags can be displayed with:

./configure --help

Setup and Build Example: Arch Linux

This example lists the steps necessary to setup and build a command line only, non-wallet distribution of the latest changes on Arch Linux:

pacman -S git base-devel boost libevent python
git clone https://github.com/dashpay/dash.git
cd dash/
./autogen.sh
./configure --disable-wallet --without-gui --without-miniupnpc
make check

Note: Enabling wallet support requires either compiling against a Berkeley DB newer than 4.8 (package db) using --with-incompatible-bdb, or building and depending on a local version of Berkeley DB 4.8. The readily available Arch Linux packages are currently built using --with-incompatible-bdb according to the PKGBUILD. As mentioned above, when maintaining portability of the wallet between the standard Dash Core distributions and independently built node software is desired, Berkeley DB 4.8 must be used.