Manual Deployment

The process is basically the following:

Install OS required libraries
Install python3 (3.11+)
Install nodejs (20) and yarn
Install postgresql
Install redis (6.2.0+)
Clone and run all parts of Bitcart
(Optional) Open Firewall Ports and Access the Sites

Warning: Not recommended to use in production

Manual installation is NOT recommended in production. It should be only used for learning purpose.

Instead you should use the docker deployment.

The docker deployment will provide you easy update system and make sure that all moving parts are wired correctly without any technical knowledge. It will also setup HTTPS for you.

Typical manual installation

This steps have been done on ubuntu 22.04, adapt for your own install.

1) Install OS required libraries

sudo apt install libsecp256k1-dev

Or the equivalent for your os package manager

More info on libsecp256k1 in electrum docs or bitcoin core docs

2) Install Python 3

Usually it might have already been installed, but we also need pip3 and dev packages, so:

sudo apt install python3 python3-pip python3-dev

3) Install uv

uv is a fast Python package manager used to manage dependencies in Bitcart. Install it by following the official uv installation guide.

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

4) Install Node.JS and Yarn

sudo apt install nodejs
curl -sS https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install yarn

If nodejs from your distro is not at least the version we require, then you should install it via nodesource

Using a nodejs version higher than specified way work, but we officially support only 1 release series (usually current LTS)

5) Install PostgresSQL

Note, replace REPLACEME with your new postgres password.

sudo apt install postgresql postgresql-contrib
sudo -u postgres createdb bitcart
sudo -u postgres psql -U postgres -d postgres -c "alter user postgres with password 'REPLACEME';"

6) Install Redis

sudo apt install redis-server

Ensure that your redis version is > 6.2.0. Check with redis-server -v.

If redis from your distro is too old, install from official redis repository

7) Clone and prepare Bitcart components

Bitcart core(daemons) & Merchants API:

git clone https://github.com/bitcart/bitcart
cd bitcart
# uv creates a virtual environment in .venv for us automatically
uv sync --no-dev --group web --group production --group btc
source .venv/bin/activate

For any other daemon(coin) you want to use, run:

uv sync --no-dev --group coin_name

Where coin_name is coin code(btc, ltc, eth, etc.).

Ensure that you include all the needed groups when running uv sync. It doesn't remember the old state, so each time you run uv sync you need to include all the needed groups. E.g. for btc and eth, you need to run uv sync --no-dev --group web --group production --group btc --group eth.

If you are met with the following error during launch of the app/alembic: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'sqlalchemy.cutils'

It means that your system is missing python development packages or a compiler. On ubuntu python3-dev does exactly that.

Create a file conf/.env It contains all the settings. For now, we just need to set database password and enabled cryptos.

# Replace REPLACEME with your database password
# specify used cryptocurrencies with BITCART_CRYPTOS

cat > conf/.env << EOF
DB_PASSWORD=REPLACEME
BITCART_CRYPTOS=btc,ltc
EOF

Apply database migrations:

alembic upgrade head

Bitcart admin panel

git clone https://github.com/bitcart/bitcart-admin
cd bitcart-admin
yarn
yarn build

Bitcart store

git clone https://github.com/bitcart/bitcart-store
cd bitcart-store
yarn
yarn build

Run everything

Bitcart core(daemons) & Merchants API:

Start daemons from the bitcart repo directory:

python3 daemons/btc.py

For any other coin, do the similar procedure:

python3 daemons/coin_name.py

Start api:

gunicorn -c gunicorn.conf.py main:app

Start background worker:

python3 worker.py

If you want to run a specific coin on a test network or change other environment settings you can update the .env file in the bitcart conf/ directory

Bitcart admin panel

cd bitcart-admin
yarn start

Bitcart store

cd bitcart-store
NUXT_PORT=4000 yarn start

Default ports

The Bitcart API runs on port 8000.
Daemons on ports 5000-500X
The Bitcart Admin panel runs on port 3000
The Bitcart Store runs on port 4000.

(Optional) Open Firewall Ports and Access the Sites

If you are running Bitcart on your local machine - you will not need to do these steps. You can go ahead and access the system with:

Bitcart Admin Panel: http://127.0.0.1:3000/
Bitcart Store: http://127.0.0.1:4000/
Bitcart Merchants API: http://127.0.0.1:8000/

If you are running Bitcart on a remote machine, you will need to do additional things to access them.

Option 1: Nginx proxy (Recommended)

This option is recommended to proxy secure incoming requests to the correct bitcart process.

Install Nginx

sudo apt install nginx

Add configuration for each component: bitcart-store, bitcart and bitcart-admin

vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/bitcart-admin.conf

server {
    server_name bitcart-admin.<mysite>.com;
    access_log /var/log/nginx/bitcart-admin.access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/bitcart-admin.error.log;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
    }
}

Enable the config

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/bitcart-admin.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

Add DNS records for your server names to point to your VM's ip

Check the config and reload nginx

sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl reload nginx

Add TLS certificates with the letsencrypt CA for the sites

sudo apt install certbot
sudo certbot --nginx

Now you should be able to access the components over TLS. You can then also enable http2 in your nginx configuration if you want.

You might want to look at the FAQ for more detailed info on the Nginx configuration options

Option 2: No proxy

If you have a firewall, you will want to open ports 3000, 4000 and 8000. Using ufw as an example:

sudo ufw allow 3000
sudo ufw allow 4000
sudo ufw allow 8000

yarn is listening on localhost 127.0.0.1 by default and you won't be able to access it over the internet unless you reverse proxy it with nginx. If you want to expose it without reverse proxy, use the environment variable: NUXT_HOST=0.0.0.0 to listen on all interfaces.

The store and admin site need public access to the bitcart api (URL should be resolvable both client and server side).

Using the manual method you need to set that with environment variables. The complete setup of the Bitcart Admin Panel and Store may look like this:

# bitcart-admin
NUXT_HOST="0.0.0.0" BITCART_ADMIN_API_URL="http://bitcart-api-ip:8000" yarn start
# bitcart-store
NUXT_PORT=4000 NUXT_HOST="0.0.0.0" BITCART_STORE_API_URL="http://bitcart-api-ip:8000" yarn start

Note: The above is the minimum to make it work and not a production grade solution. We still recommend to use docker deployment unless you really know what you're doing.

Access the site remotely

Bitcart Admin Panel: http://my-bitcart-admin-ip:3000/
Bitcart Store: http://my-bitcart-store-ip:4000/
Bitcart Merchants API: http://my-bitcart-store-ip:8000/

Continue with: Your first invoice

(Optional) Managing Processes

If you want the procaesses: bitcart api, daemons, worker and frontend (bitcart admin and bitcart store) to be managed with automatic startup, error reporting etc then consider using supervisord or systemd to manage the processes.

Upgrading manual deployment

Note: it is recommended to use docker deployment for easy upgrades.

To upgrade manually, follow the following steps:

1) Stop everything already running

Merchants API, workers, daemons, Admin panel and Store should be stopped

2) Pull latest changes

Run :

git pull

For every Bitcart component directory (Merchants API, Admin Panel, Store).

3) Upgrade dependencies

Bitcart core(daemons) & Merchants API:

uv sync --group web --group production --group btc

For any other daemon(coin) you want to use, run:

uv sync --group coin_name

Where coin_name is coin code(btc, ltc, eth, etc.).

Bitcart admin

yarn

Bitcart store

yarn

4) Apply new database migrations

In Bitcart core(daemons) & Merchants API directory, run:

alembic upgrade head

5) Rebuild store and admin

For Bitcart Admin Panel and Store, run:

yarn build

6) Start everything again

Follow instructions here

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Last updated 4 months ago

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