Installation
There are various ways to install Chia, with the best method depending on what you intend to do:
- If you simply wish to use the Chia wallet, or to run a farm on a single personal computer, then we recommend installing the GUI from our official downloads page for Windows and MacOS, and for Linux users to install the package as described below. The GUI is the simplest way to interact with the Chia client and ideal for most non-developer use cases.
- If you intend to run a dedicated Chia full node on a server and connect to it programmatically using the RPC interface, the best method would be to install and run Chia via the command line on a proper server environment.
- If you intend to do Chialisp development or build projects that leverage Chia, you have the options of either using an installer (the recommended pattern), or installing from source.
- Lastly, if you plan on making contributions to the source code, then installing Chia from source would be your path.
In summary, unless you already knew before reading this page that you should be installing from source, chances are your best path will be to install from our official downloads page or a Linux package, depending on your OS.
System Requirements
The minimum supported specs are that of the Raspberry Pi 4, 4GB model:
- Quad core 1.5Ghz CPU (must be 64 bit)
- 4 GB RAM
- Python versions between 3.7 and 3.10 are supported
Drive Format
Chia plot files are at least 108GB in size (for K32). To plot successfully requires drives formatted to support large files. Formats that will work include NTFS, APFS, exFAT, and ext4. Do not use drives with FAT formatting (for example FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32), or else plotting will fail. Future versions of Chia will check for unsupported drives, but for now it’s up to each user to check their drive format.
Install
Using the CLI
This method is intended for linux environments
# Install packages sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl gnupg # Add GPG key curl -sL https://repo.chia.net/FD39E6D3.pubkey.asc | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/chia.gpg # Set up repository echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/chia.gpg] https://repo.chia.net/debian/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/chia.list > /dev/null sudo apt-get update # Install chia-blockchain sudo apt-get install chia-blockchain # Use chia-blockchain-cli instead for CLI only # Install packages sudo yum install -y yum-utils sudo yum-config-manager --add-repo https://repo.chia.net/rhel/chia-blockchain.repo # Install chia-blockchain sudo yum install chia-blockchain # Use chia-blockchain-cli for CLI only # Install packages sudo dnf install 'dnf-command(config-manager)' sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://repo.chia.net/rhel/chia-blockchain.repo # Install chia-blockchain sudo dnf install chia-blockchain # Use chia-blockchain-cli for CLI only Make sure you have Python 3.10 and Git installed.
# Create virtual environment python -m venv venv # Activate virtual environment . ./venv/bin/activate # MacOS / Linux ./venv/Scripts/Activate.ps1 # Windows # Update pip pip install --upgrade pip # Install chia-blockchain pip install --extra-index-url https://pypi.chia.net/simple chia-blockchain miniupnpc Chia strives to provide binary wheels for modern systems. If your system does not have binary wheels, you may need to install development tools to build some Python extensions from source. If you’re attempting to install from source, setting the environment variable BUILD_VDF_CLIENT to N will skip trying to build Timelord components that aren’t very cross platform, e.g. export BUILD_VDF_CLIENT=N .
From Source
This method is primarily intended for contributing to the Chia codebase
Make sure you have Python 3.10 and Git installed.
# Download chia-blockchain git clone https://github.com/Chia-Network/chia-blockchain -b latest --recurse-submodules # Change directory cd chia-blockchain # Install dependencies sh install.sh # Activate virtual environment . ./activate # Initialize chia init The following is how you update to the latest version:
# Change directory cd chia-blockchain # Activate the virtual environment . ./activate # Stop running services chia stop -d all # Deactivate the virtual environment deactivate # Pull the latest version git fetch git checkout latest git reset --hard FETCH_HEAD --recurse-submodules # If you get RELEASE.dev0 then delete the package-lock.json in chia-blockchain-gui and install.sh again # This should say "nothing to commit, working tree clean" # if you have uncommitted changes, RELEASE.dev0 will be reported git status # Install the new version sh install.sh # Activate the virtual environment . ./activate # Initialize the new version chia init Make sure you have Python 3.10 and Git installed.
# Download chia-blockchain git clone https://github.com/Chia-Network/chia-blockchain -b latest --recurse-submodules # Change directory cd chia-blockchain # Install dependencies ./Install.ps1 # Activate virtual environment . ./venv/Scripts/Activate.ps1 # Initialize chia init The following is how you update to the latest version:
# Change directory cd chia-blockchain # Activate the virtual environment . ./venv/Scripts/Activate.ps1 # Stop running services chia stop -d all # Deactivate the virtual environment deactivate # Pull the latest version git fetch git checkout latest git reset --hard FETCH_HEAD --recurse-submodules # If you get RELEASE.dev0 then delete the package-lock.json in chia-blockchain-gui and install.sh again # This should say "nothing to commit, working tree clean" # if you have uncommitted changes, RELEASE.dev0 will be reported git status # Install the new version ./Install.ps1 # Activate the virtual environment . ./venv/Scripts/Activate.ps1 # Initialize the new version chia init Raspberry Pi 4
Chia does not support the Raspberry Pi 3, and we do not recommend running the GUI on the 4GB Raspberry Pi 4 model.
It is highly recommended you put the Chia blockchain and wallet database on an SSD or NVMe drive, rather than the SD card.
Swap
It is suggested that you set up 1024 MiB of swap:
Run the following commands to set up the swap:
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swap bs=1M count=1024 sudo chmod 600 /swap sudo mkswap /swap sudo swapon /swap Add this line to /etc/fstab so that swap available on reboot:
/swap swap swap defaults 0 0 Here is an excellent walk-through of increasing swap space on Raspbian 64.
Setup
Run the following commands to prepare for installation:
# Requirements to compile the blockchain sudo apt-get install -y build-essential python3-dev # If you are not using Raspbian 64, add this export PIP_EXTRA_INDEX_URL=https://www.piwheels.org/simple/ # Make sure you have 64-bit Python between versions 3.7 and 3.10 python3 -c 'import platform; print(platform.architecture())' Proceed
If you run into an error during the build process, make sure you are running a 64-bit version of the OS.
You can check by running uname -a . If it says arm7l , you need a 64-bit version of the OS. The uname -a output should end with aarch64 GNU/Linux .
Finally, follow the typical from source installation for Linux to continue.
Disable Timelord
This is not necessary when installing from source.
However, if you install Chia in some other way, disable the timelord build process:
Directory Structure
.chia/ └── mainnet/ ├─ config/ │ ├─ config.yaml │ └─ ssl/ ├─ db/ ├─ log/ │ └─ debug.log ├─ run/ └─ wallet/ All data used by the Chia blockchain is stored at the location set with the CHIA_ROOT environment variable, which defaults to ~/.chia/mainnet (the hidden folder .chia inside of your home directory) if unset.
The blockchain database is stored under the db subdirectory. It is possible to copy the database file to use as a backup or put on another machine. To resync the full node from the start, delete the database file and restart the node.
The config file under the config subdirectory. Its name is config.yaml , and it can be used to find the root cause of problems.
It is possible to configure the CHIA_ROOT environment variable to another location. A common use for this would be to switch it to ~/.chia/testnet to have a separate config for the testnet.
CLI
Using the CLI gives greater and more precise control over the various Chia services such as the full node. As of 1.8.2, when installing from an installer or package CLI commands will be automatically added to your path for Windows and Linux. For more details on the commands, read the CLI Reference.
The CLI commands are stored in the following location:
/Applications/Chia.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/daemon To be able to use these commands without going to that directory in the terminal, add it to the path.
This can be done by running the following command:
export PATH=/Applications/Chia.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/daemon:$PATH To load this on startup, add it to the .bashrc , .bash_profile , or .zshrc file depending on which is used by the shell.
The CLI commands are stored in the following location:
~\AppData\Local\Programs\Chia\resources\app.asar.unpacked\daemon Chia linux or windows
Welcome to r/Chia! This unofficial subreddit is dedicated to the open discussion of Chia cryptocurrency and any news related to the project.
Somebody mentioned that he was able to improve by a lot (~50%) performance of plotting when doing linux MadMax instead of Win11 (same hardware and general settings).
I wonder if somebody has run «scientific testing».
My I9-12900K, 64GB RAM (PrimoCache 50GB), 5X FireCuda 530 in RAID0 does 25.8min plots (which seems fast to me).
a) WSL ubuntu: about the same that Windows.
b) Ubuntu inside a Hyper V: about 2 minutes faster (or 10% faster).
c) Ubuntu full metal: 19.8 min/plot, so about 30% faster. (ext4 file system, NTFS in Linux resulted in slower performance).
- Linux did not recognize the RAID0 NMVe array, I had to use mdadm to create a native array (which I believe is software based).
- For some reason Linux doesn’t see the partitions of some internal NTFS drives (while others formatted just the same are seen).
- Most importantly: I use PrimoCache on the 110Gb drive for MaxMad to minimize writes, is there a Linux alternative?
After a lot of testing and setting up more processes (not all that run in Windows) my plotting time in Linux went to 22.8min/plot. And I hadn’t setup my forks yet.
I also played (a lot) with different settings for the cache, however, I didn’t find a way to get similar results than PrimoCache in terms of NVMe writes — the closer I got to PrimoCache was 50% more writes.
I am going back to Windows. I think Linux might make sense if you have 128GB or more of RAM and/or you are not running forks or even farming in the plotter.
It was a fun experiment though, and it might serve me if I ever split to have a dedicated plotter.