A Docker configuration with sane defaults for running a fully-validating Bitcoin node. Binaries are retrieved from bitcoincore.org and verified for integrity based on the process described here.

References on the Docker registry (https://hub.docker.com) are mutable. A malicious actor could change any images hosted there without you realizing it.

If you use an image served by the Docker registry, ensure that you retrieve it by its content hash, as detailed here. Or just build these images yourself.

With most software this doesn't matter too much, but running an authentic copy of Bitcoin Core is really important!

• 0.13.0
• 0.13.1
• 0.13.2
• 0.14.3
• 0.15.2
• 0.16.3
• 0.17.0
• 0.17.0.1
• 0.17.1
• 0.17.2
• 0.18.0
• 0.18.1
• 0.19.0
• 0.19.1
• 0.20.0
• 0.20.1 (latest)

Requires that Docker be installed on the host machine.

# Create some directory where your bitcoin data will be stored.
$ mkdir /home/youruser/bitcoin_data

$ $EDITOR envfile
BTC_RPCPASSWORD=your_password

$ docker run --name bitcoind -d \
   -e 'BTC_RPCUSER=foo' \
   -e 'BTC_TXINDEX=1' \
   --env-file envfile \
   -v /home/youruser/bitcoin_data:/bitcoin/data \
   -p 127.0.0.1:8332:8332 \
   -p 8333:8333 \
   jamesob/bitcoind:0.20.1

$ docker logs -f bitcoind
[ ... ]

Warning: if you specify your RPC password without using an envfile, it may be captured in your shell history. Use an envfile if you are going to use BTC_RPCPASSWORD.

If you want the RPC port to be accessible to remote hosts, remove the 127.0.0.1 from the -p ...8332 line and set BTC_RPCBIND=0.0.0.0.

If you want to use a preexisting data directory and your own config file, run

$ docker run --name jamesob/bitcoind:0.20.1 -d \
   -v /home/youruser/bitcoin_data:/bitcoin/data \
   -v /home/youruser/bitcoin.conf:/bitcoin/bitcoin.conf \
   -p 127.0.0.1:8332:8332 \
   -p 8333:8333 \
   jamesob/bitcoind:0.20.1

By default, the container runs under UID,GID=1000 to avoid executing as a privileged user. If you want to rebuild the container with different settings, you can do so:

$ git clone https://github.com/jamesob/docker-bitcoind
$ cd docker-bitcoind
$ docker build -t $YOUR_USER/bitcoind:$SOME_VERSION \
   --build-arg UID=$(id -u) \
   --build-arg GID=$(id -g) \
   --build-arg VERSION=$SOME_VERSION \
   .

A custom bitcoin.conf file can be placed at /bitcoin.conf. Otherwise, a default will be automatically generated based on environment variables passed to the container:

The smart thing to do if you're daemonizing is to use Docker's builtin restart policies (i.e. docker run --restart unless-stopped ...), but if you're insistent on using systemd, you could do something like

$ cat /etc/systemd/system/bitcoind.service

# bitcoind.service #######################################################################
[Unit]
Description=Bitcoind
After=docker.service
Requires=docker.service

[Service]
ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/docker kill bitcoind
ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/docker rm bitcoind
ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/docker pull jamesob/bitcoind
ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker run \
    --name bitcoind \
    -p 8333:8333 \
    -p 127.0.0.1:8332:8332 \
    -v /data/bitcoind:/root/.bitcoin \
    jamesob/bitcoind
ExecStop=/usr/bin/docker stop bitcoind

to ensure that bitcoind continues to run.