Using bitcoind on Fedora, CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux
=============================================================

SELinux
-------

This build of bitcoind includes an SELinux policy which restricts access to the
system Bitcoin wallet and database files. The effect of this policy is twofold:

 1. Confined system services and users cannot read the Bitcoin wallet or
    database files.
 2. The Bitcoin daemon itself cannot read any other file on the system.

Note well that unconfined users and services are subject only to discretionary
access controls, i.e. standard Unix permissions. Confining your users, and
running no unconfined services, is strongly recommended. See the Red Hat
Enterprise Linux SELinux Guide for further details on SELinux.

To repair incorrect SELinux contexts, run the command:

    restorecon -r -v /etc/bitcoin /var/lib/bitcoin

Default Paths
-------------

This bulid of bitcoind is installed to FHS-compliant paths and reads its
configuration files, wallet and database from standard paths. These differ from
the upstream defaults:

 * The configuration file is located at /etc/bitcoin/bitcoin.conf
 * All other data, including the wallet, is stored in /var/lib/bitcoin

Configuration
-------------

There is no configuration file installed by default, and bitcoind runs fine
without one. However, in order to use the bitcoin-cli to communicate with
bitcoind, you must create a bitcoin.conf file and set an rpcpassword in it.
The bitcoin.conf file must be readable only by users who are authorized to
use the bitcoin-cli command; you must do this yourself by adding users to the
bitcoin group or creating other appropriate groups.

A sample configuration file is available in /usr/share/doc/bitcoin-server-*.

The bitcoin.conf file should be readable only by users authorized to
communicate with bitcoind; if you have added authorized users to the bitcoin
group, then these commands should be sufficient:

chown -R bitcoin.bitcoin /etc/bitcoin
chmod -R u+rw,g+r,o= /etc/bitcoin

Berkeley DB
-----------

On all platforms, including RHEL/CentOS/Fedora and the upstream build, bitcoin
uses Berkeley DB 4.8.
Oracle makes clear that binary compatibility is not guaranteed even between minor
releases of Berkeley DB. This has implications if you move your wallet to and
from a system with a different Berkeley DB version.

It is strongly recommended that if you change Berkeley DB versions you first
dump your wallet from the old system into a text file, and then import the
wallet into the new system.

To dump or import a wallet from a Bitcoin daemon, you will need to use the
bitcoin-cli utility.

To dump your wallet on the old system, enter the command:

    bitcoin-cli dumpwallet path/to/filename.txt

Copy filename.txt from the old system to the new system, being aware that it
is not encrypted and taking appropriate precautions.

To import your wallet on the new system, enter the command:

    bitcoin-cli importwallet path/to/filename.txt

Bitcoin will automatically begin rescanning the block chain after the import is
complete. The rescan will take several minutes, depending on the speed of the
system's CPU and hard drives.