Running a DAL attester node#

To attest the data published on the DAL, you need an active baker and node. While you can run a DAL node without an active baker, when you do so, your account is not assigned DAL attestation rights and therefore your node can distribute data among other DAL nodes but cannot attest that it is available. Adding a DAL node to a baker’s setup improves the Tezos ecosystem because the DAL greatly expands the amount of data that Tezos can distribute without causing congestion on layer 1.

Before you begin, make sure that you have an instance of the octez-node binary running in operator mode. For instructions on setting up the octez-node binary, see Running Octez.

Warning

For the most secure setup, run the DAL node and layer 1 node on different IP addresses; for more information, see Bakers & the DAL.

Follow these steps to run a DAL node along with a layer 1 node and a baker.

Verify that you have attestation rights by running this command, where MY_ADDRESS is your account’s address (not its octez-client alias):
```
octez-client rpc get /chains/main/blocks/head/helpers/attestation_rights?delegate="$MY_ADDRESS"
```
Initialize the DAL node by running its config init command with the URL to an RPC node. For example, this command initializes the DAL node with the address of a local octez-node instance on port 8732:
```
octez-dal-node config init --endpoint http://127.0.0.1:8732
```
You can specify parameters such as the RPC node in the config init command or in the run command. These commands have the same parameters; for information about them, run octez-dal-node config init --help or see DAL node commands.

At minimum, you must specify with the --endpoint parameter the URL of an RPC node that the DAL node can use.
Ensure that the port that the DAL node runs on is accessible from outside its system.

By default, it runs on port 11732, but you can change the port and address that the node listens on by setting the --net-addr argument, as in --net-addr 0.0.0.0:11732. Depending on your network, you may need to adapt your firewall rules or set up network address translation (NAT) to direct external traffic to the DAL node. For example, you might need to redirect external traffic on TCP port <external_port> to your node at <local_ip_address>:<port> where <local_ip_address> is the IP address of the node on your local network and <port> is the port given in the --net-addr argument.

If <external_port> is different from <port>, then you should set the public address of your node via its configuration or the CLI option --public-addr <external_ip_address>:<external_port>.

This setup assumes that <external_ip_address> is fixed and won’t change during the lifetime of the node.
Start the DAL node by running its run command, using the URL of your octez-node instance.
```
octez-dal-node run
```
To set the address and port that the node listens on, pass the --net-addr argument.

Leave the DAL node process running.
In a new terminal window, start or restart a baking daemon as usual, but tell it to connect to the DAL node by passing the --dal-node argument. The DAL node runs on port 10732 by default, so the command might look like this example, where <PROTO_HASH> is the short hash of the current protocol of the network:
```
octez-baker-<PROTO_HASH> run with local node "$HOME/.tezos-node" bob --liquidity-baking-toggle-vote pass --dal-node http://127.0.0.1:10732
```
The baker daemon connects to the DAL node and attests to the availability of DAL data as well as its usual layer 1 baking function.
In a new terminal window, verify that the DAL node is running properly:
1. Verify that the node is connected to the DAL by running this command:
```
curl http://localhost:10732/p2p/gossipsub/connections
```
  This command should show a list of other DAL nodes that the node is connected to.
2. Verify that the node is connected to topics by running this command:
```
curl http://localhost:10732/p2p/gossipsub/topics
```
  This command should return topics in the form {"slot_index":<index>,"pkh":"<ADDRESS OF BAKER>"} to represent the topics that the node is subscribed to on the DAL peer-to-peer network.
3. Verify that the node is assigned to attest DAL shards by running this command and using your address:
```
octez-client rpc get /chains/main/blocks/head/context/dal/shards?delegates=$MY_ADDRESS
```
  For more information about topics and shards, see DAL overview.

Now the DAL node is running and subscribed to the relevant topics.