Monero XMR Mining Operation
This page documents the configuration of the Monero XMR Daemon (monerod) as a system service. This ensures that it starts automatically whenever the host computer boots up. The Monero daemon supports interactive commands and to take advantage of this interactive aspect of the daemon I have configured a named pipe or Unix socket that allows for this. With this configuration you can send commands to the Monero daemon by echoing commands into the named pipe.
I am running Debian, but these instructions apply to basically any machine running Linux.
The disk space required to house the full Monero blockchain is significant. As of the writing of this article, June 2025, the full monero blockchain is 240 Gb. It’s recommended that you use a SSD hard-drive, but I’m a using an old-school, magnetic, spinning disk. I migrated from an SSD to this spinning disk and didn’t notice any degradation of mining performance.
The instructions here assume you have the Monero software installed on your system. I have a document on how to download, compile and install the software here. This procedure assumes you have the software installed in /opt/prod:
ls -l /opt/prod
total 12
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 May 27 14:52 monerod -> monerod-0.18.4.0
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 May 27 14:53 monerod-0.18.4.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 May 27 14:52 monero-gui -> monerod-0.18.4.0
.
.
.
I keep the actual blockchain data files in a different directory than the Monero Daemon. This is referenced by the --data-dir switch and the DATA_DIR definition in the start-monerod.sh script described in the previous section. By keeping the blockchain in a different directory I can download and install a newer version of the Monero GUI Wallet, copy in the start-monerod.sh script and fire it up without needing to move the 240 Gb file. It also allows you to store that file on another disk mounted on another directory in case you’re using a dedicated SSD drive to house the blockchain.
You’ll need to create this directory:
sudo mkdir /opt/prod/monero-blockchain
The Monero Daemon is an interactive process that accepts commands. In order to take advantage of this feature while still running it as a service this implementation uses two distinct services. The primary service is the actual Monero Daemon. The secondary service sets up a named pipe which allows the user to send commands to the Monero Daemon by echoing commands into the named pipe.
A custom monerod.ini file should be created in the /opt/prod/monerod directory. This file contains the deployment specific settings for the Monero Daemon. A complete listing is shown below:
# Bind to all available network interfaces
IP_ALL="0.0.0.0"
# Port numbers
ZMQ_PUB_PORT="21083"
ZMQ_RPC_PORT="21082"
P2P_BIND_PORT="21080"
RPC_BIND_PORT="21081"
# Peer limits
OUT_PEERS="50"
IN_PEERS="50"
# Log settings
LOG_LEVEL="0"
MAX_LOG_FILES="5"
MAX_LOG_SIZE="100000"
LOG_NAME="monerod.log"
# Not sure
SHOW_TIME_STATS="1"
# Where the Monero software is installed
MONEROD_DIR=/opt/prod/monerod
# Where the blockchain (lmdb directory) is stored
DATA_DIR="/opt/prod/monero-blockchain"
# Trusted Monero nodes to sync off
PRIORITY_NODE_1="kermit.osoyalce.com"
PRIORITY_NODE_1_PORT="20080"
PRIORITY_NODE_2="nodes.hashvault.pro"
PRIORITY_NODE_2_PORT="18080"
The start-monerod.sh script reads it’s settings from the monerod.ini file. this script is not usually called directly. Instead it is called from systemd. This file should be created in /opt/prod/monerod/bin.
A few things to note about this script.
ZMQ_PUB_PORT="18083"). This isn’t really relevant, but is worth mentioning in case you encounter documentation that talks about slightly different port numbers.--add-priority-hosts switch. I trust both of these machines and the people who run the Monero nodes on these machines. You can safely remove both of these lines if you prefer.DATA_DIR is set to /opt/prod/monero-blockchain see The Blockchain Data File for more info.#!/bin/bash
# Read in the settings
source /opt/prod/monerod/conf/monerod.ini
# Don't allocate large pages
export MONERO_RANDOMX_UMASK=1
# Find the monerod daemon
if [ -d ${MONEROD_DIR} ]; then
MONERO_DIR=$MONEROD_DIR
MONEROD=${MONEROD_DIR}/bin/monerod
if [ ! -x ${MONEROD} ]; then
echo "ERROR: Unable to locate the monerod daemon (${MONEROD}), exiting..."
exit 1
fi
else
echo "ERROR: Unable to locate the Monero software directory (${MONERO_DIR}), exiting..."
exit 1
fi
# Set the log name for monerod
LOG_DIR=${MONERO_DIR}/logs
if [ ! -d ${LOG_DIR} ]; then
mkdir $LOG_DIR
fi
LOG_FILE="${LOG_DIR}/${LOG_NAME}"
# Make sure the blockchain directory exists
if [ ! -d ${DATA_DIR} ]; then
mkdir -p ${DATA_DIR}
if [ $? != 0 ]; then
echo "ERROR: Failed to create blockchain data directory (${DATA_DIR}), exiting..."
exit 1
fi
fi
# Launch the monerod daemon
$MONEROD \
--log-level ${LOG_LEVEL} \
--max-log-files ${MAX_LOG_FILES} \
--max-log-file-size ${MAX_LOG_SIZE} \
--log-file ${LOG_FILE} \
--zmq-pub tcp://${IP_ALL}:${ZMQ_PUB_PORT} \
--zmq-rpc-bind-ip ${IP_ALL} --zmq-rpc-bind-port ${ZMQ_RPC_PORT} \
--p2p-bind-ip ${IP_ALL} --p2p-bind-port ${P2P_BIND_PORT} \
--add-priority-node=${PRIORITY_NODE_1}:${PRIORITY_NODE_1_PORT} \
--add-priority-node=${PRIORITY_NODE_2}:${PRIORITY_NODE_2_PORT} \
--rpc-bind-ip ${IP_ALL} --rpc-bind-port ${RPC_BIND_PORT} --restricted-rpc \
--confirm-external-bind \
--data-dir ${DATA_DIR} \
--out-peers ${OUT_PEERS} --in-peers ${IN_PEERS} \
--disable-dns-checkpoints --enable-dns-blocklist \
--show-time-stats ${SHOW_TIME_STATS} \
--igd enabled \
--max-connections-per-ip 1 \
--db-sync-mode safe
Once you’ve created this shell script you’ll need to make it executible:
sudo chmod a+x /opt/prod/monerod/start-monerod.sh
The Monero Daemon Service is configured as a standard systemd service. To do this you need to create a systemd service description file in the /etc/systemd/system directory. Name this file monerod.service and create it as the root user. A complete listing of this file is shown below.
[Unit]
Description=Monero Daemon Full Blockchain Node
After=network.target monerod.socket
BindsTo=monerod.socket
[Service]
User=db4e
StandardInput=socket
Sockets=monerod.socket
WorkingDirectory=/opt/prod/monerod/
Type=simple
Restart=always
ExecStart=/opt/prod/monerod/bin/start-monerod.sh
TimeoutStopSec=60
StandardOutput=file:/opt/prod/monerod/logs/monerod.log
StandardError=file:/opt/prod/monerod/logs/monerod.err
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
This file is installed in /etc/systemd/system and is named monerod.socket. A full listing of the file is shown below:
[Unit]
Description=Monerod Stdin Socket
[Socket]
User=db4e
ListenFIFO=/opt/prod/monerod/run/monerod.stdin
RemoveOnStop=true
[Install]
WantedBy=sockets.target
Note that the named pipe is called /opt/prod/monerod/monerod.stdin. To send commands to the Monero Daemon simply echo the command and direct the output into this named pipe. The shell command below shows an example:
echo status > /opt/prod/monerod/monerod.stdin
If you look at the previous section where we defined the Monero Daemon service, you will see that it includes a StandardOutput directive. The results of the command (e.g. status) will show up in this file.
In order to let systemd know about these newly created services i.e. monerod.service and monerod.socket you need to issue the command below:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
To have systemd automatically start the Monero Daemon whenever your system boots, simply execute the command below:
sudo systemctl enable monerod
That’s it! You’re done! You can safely reboot the server to confirm that the Monero daemon starts up automatically at boot time. Check the /opt/prod/monerod/logs/monerod.log file for logging information.
You can also start the service without rebooting:
sudo systemctl start monerod
sudo systemctl stop monerod
sudo systemctl status monerod