Run a Node on Windows

If this is the first time for you to setup a validator node, head to our Validator Bootcamp 🚀. Please head to Run a node for instructions on how to setup a RPC node with neard.

This doc is written for developers, sysadmins, DevOps, or curious people who want to know how to run a NEAR node on Windows.

Heads up

This documentation may require additional edits. Please keep this in mind while running the following commands.

If Windows Subsystem for Linux is not enabled, open PowerShell as administrator and run:
```
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux
```
Then restart your computer.
Go to your Microsoft Store and look for Ubuntu; this is the Ubuntu Terminal instance. Install and launch it.
Now you might be asked for username and password, do not use admin as username.

Your Ubuntu Instance need initial before next steps

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install build-essential pkg-config libssl-dev

You need to install OpenSSL, which you will need to run the node. To download OpenSSL, please run the following commands in the Ubuntu Terminal:
```
cd /tmp
wget https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.1.1.tar.gz
tar xvf openssl-1.1.1.tar.gz
```
After it finished downloading OpenSSL, run the following commands to install:
```
cd openssl-1.1.1
sudo ./config -Wl,--enable-new-dtags,-rpath,'$(LIBRPATH)'
sudo make
sudo make install
```
The files will be under the following directory: /usr/local/ssl.
Once this is finished, you have to ensure that Ubuntu is going to use the right version of OpenSSL. Now update the path for man pages and binaries. Run the following command:
```
cd ../..
sudo nano /etc/manpath.config
```
A text file will open, add the following line:
```
MANPATH_MAP     /usr/local/ssl/bin      /usr/local/ssl/man
```
Once this is done press ctrl + o . It will ask you to save the file, just press enter. Now press ctrl + x to exit.
To make sure that OpenSSL is installed run:
```
openssl version -v
```
This should show you the installed version. More info on this can be found here. (https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bionic/man1/version.1ssl.html)

Now you have to run the following commands to install all nessesary software and dependencies:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install -y git jq binutils-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev zlib1g-dev libdw-dev libiberty-dev cmake gcc g++ protobuf-compiler python3 python3-pip llvm clang

Install Rustup

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
source $HOME/.cargo/env
rustup default nightly

Great! All set to get the node up and running!

Clone the github nearcore
First we need to check a version which is currently working in testnet:
```
curl -s https://rpc.testnet.near.org/status | jq .version
```
You'll get something like this: "1.13.0-rc.2". "1.13.0" is a branch which we need to clone to build our node for testnet.
```
git clone --branch 1.13.0 https://github.com/near/nearcore.git
```
This created a nearcore directory, change into that one and build a node:
```
cd nearcore
make neard
```
Initialize the working directory and run the node:
```
./target/release/neard --home ~/.near init --chain-id testnet --download-genesis --download-config rpc
./target/release/neard --home ~/.near run
```
For detailed instructions on initializing and running the node (including mainnet), see Run a Validator Node.

To run this node as a validator, you must configure your validator keys in the --home directory (for example by placing validator_key.json there) and follow the steps in the Validator Bootcamp.

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