re-posted on the blog for posterity, it's @easyrider's original smoke witness proposal made on the SMOKE.io network. If you happen to hang around over there, do consider giving your witness slate a freshening up. They could sure do with it, still quite a number of deactivated witness nodes are in there.
Smoke Witness Announcement
Ever since joining #Smoke it’s been a whole lot of fun. I didn’t feel any need to rush into setting up a smoke witness server until now. It has been good getting to know people, welcome them onboard, and even do some UpSmokes on my daily coffee breaks. I created and ran a contest, 'Catch420' - which was a lot of fun. I made a whole lot of posts and content here since joining 7 months+ ago. Now, I’ve heard the chain needs more ‘witness participation’, and for the past several weeks I was brushing up on my ‘nix admin skills, something I did hands-on for a long time in my younger days (and comes back quick). Thus, it’s time to deploy a block producing #node, as part of my growing commitment to the SMOKE network. The costs may outstrip the rewards currently, I am prepared for that. The opportunity for SMOKE #blockchain to grow as the largest social and business network / exchange and eco-system for the legal marijuana industry is immense, and I am in it for the long term.
@Easyrider’s Background:
Going right back to very early 2000s, it was part of my job to perform Solaris and HPUX sysadmin for network critical monitoring solutions placed at edge of tier-1 and 2 telecoms providers. From past experience, from a technical standpoint I can follow instructions well, figure out config issues, find my way around most Linux systems - etc. I’m also partly in luck since @murda-ra being a friend and associate, allowed me to borrow his expertise when I was completely stuck and remains on hand for emergencies. He was instrumental in setting the tasks and providing steps for me to figure out getting this smoke witness online.
What will I do as a witness
Securing the SMOKE network is the top priority of a smoke witness. Not development, not community management, not posting or blogging. The task is to produce and sign blocks, and if possible never miss any. The duty is to have a watchful eye on processes and the state of the network. To be available when something happens on the network, or some urgent action is required to keep Smoke Network and Smoke Blockchain safe from harm. That is what I pledge to do, to invest in maintaining servers, as I bring my old system admin knowledge back up to speed.
Another thing
It’s a work in progress, and I do plan to get it onto live URL https://cryptoninja.guru/ soon, it’s an instructional style blog, introducing and on-boarding a curious yet completely new user to the world of SMOKE, STEEM, BTS and more.
Check out the prototype now at http://staging.cryptoninja.guru/
Witness Specs
In a nutshell: VPS on tried and tested provider, anon because witness should remain so however the specs I share like this – remember they are virtual and can be increased anytime. Currently they are set to what the node is expected to require. In future I will consider dedicated node.
Node is located in Asia (Tokyo).
RAM and Discs
SSD hard drive is 160GB which as current state of SMOKE blockchain is sufficient. Solid State discs have no moving parts, and are much faster than traditional (mechanical) hard disk drives with spindles and optics. They behave at a speed approaching RAM, this means we can even use the SSD as ‘virtual RAM’ on the VPS, and it is highly performant. So, 4GB physical RAM, as much virtual as we need – sufficient until SMOKE has a lot more users.
Operating System
OS: Ubuntu 16.04 which remains simpler to configure and quite the stable one for running latest DPoS blockchain instances such as smoked. Is a plan to run on Debian, a highly secure and performant Linux OS flavor, this is being worked on however as there are some build/library dependencies to resolve.
CPU: Intel
Bandwidth: Up to 4TB per month
To vote for witnesses which secure the present and future of the Smoke.io network, go over to this page and review the witness threads - type 'easyrider' in the box at the end, or if I'm in the top 50 already, you will see me there. Cheers!
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~Peace
P.S. Emergency contact = Discord 'easyrider/cryptoninja.guru#7012' or invite link
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