Solana Testnet Validator - Quickstart | SLV - The Toolkit for Solana Devs

Installation & Validator Launch

bash
curl -fsSL https://storage.slv.dev/slv/install | sh
slv validator init
slv validator deploy

Deploy Solana Testnet Firedancer Validator

🚀 Prerequisites Please prepare a server with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS cleanly installed.

🔑 About Key Handling For new SLV Firedancer deployments, unstaked-keypair.json is always used as the identity key initially for security.

This is a best practice to prevent critical issues such as double voting.

✅ Identity Setting After Deployment After deployment, be sure to set the authorized identity key with the following command:

bash
slv v set:identity -n testnet --pubkey <name>

Preparing a Baremetal Server for Testnet

While it is possible to run Solana nodes on VPS or virtual machines (VM), achieving optimal performance and stability is challenging in practice. Solana officially recommends using baremetal servers, which deliver much higher performance than virtualized environments.

Since testnet environments have lower load compared to mainnet, we have confirmed stable operation using servers with 16-core Ryzen CPU and 128GB DDR5 RAM. Using this server configuration helps reduce operational costs, so it is recommended.

When you run the slv v init command, you will be asked whether your baremetal server is already set up:

bash
➜ slv v init
? Select Solana Network (testnet) › testnet
? 🛡️ Do you have a Solana Node Compatible Server? (no)
❯ yes
  no

This tutorial assumes you select yes.

If you have not yet prepared your baremetal server, please refer to the Baremetal Server Setup Guide to complete the setup.

Input Server's Default Username

Most of the time, the default username is ubuntu or root.

bash
? What's the user for the server? (ubuntu) › ubuntu

Input Server's IP Address

Input the IP address of the server.

bash
? What's the IP address of the server? ›

Set RSA Key for SSH

※ Please set the path to your RSA key. The default path is ~/.ssh/id_rsa. Currently, only the default path is supported, so please set it as is.

bash
? What's the path to your RSA key? (~/.ssh/id_rsa) › ~/.ssh/id_rsa
🔍 Checking SSH connection...
✔︎ SSH connection succeeded

Then SLV will check the connection to the server. If the connection is successful, the next step will be prompted.

Select Solana Validator Type

Select the type of Solana validator.

bash
? Select Validator Type (firedancer-jito)
  agave
  jito
  firedancer-agave
❯ firedancer-jito

Generate or Set the Solana Validator Identity Key

You can generate a new identity key or set an existing identity key. This example shows how to set an existing identity key with the name "epics-test".

bash
? Do you want to create a new identity key now? (Y/n) › No
? Please Enter Your Identity Public Key › TKMNqvfwb7PKkc9KFEJJ8EaNK9s5XjNWgFS6oyqSLkp
? Enter Inventory Name (TKMNqvfwb7PKkc9KFEJJ8EaNK9s5XjNWgFS6oyqSLkp) › epics-test
⚠️ Please place your identity key in

  ~/.slv/keys/TKMNqvfwb7PKkc9KFEJJ8EaNK9s5XjNWgFS6oyqSLkp.json
.
.
✔︎ Success
✔ Inventory updated to ~/.slv/inventory.yml
✔ Successfully created solv user on x.x.x.x

Please place your identity key in ~/.slv/keys/<your-pubkey>.json. Then, SLV will create the solv user using a password.

Automatic Region Detection

Next, the system will ping each block engine from your configured node to automatically detect the nearest region. By measuring actual ping values, you can select the optimal region.

bash
📍 Measuring latencies from x.x.x.x to testnet regions...
  Pinging Dallas (dallas.testnet.block-engine.jito.wtf)...
  Pinging New York (ny.testnet.block-engine.jito.wtf)...
  ✅ New York: 74.341 ms
  ✅ Dallas: 114.722 ms

🎯 Nearest region: 🇺🇸 New York
   Latency: 74.341 ms
   Block Engine: https://ny.testnet.block-engine.jito.wtf
   Shred Receiver: 64.130.35.224:1002
   Relayer: http://ny.testnet.relayer.jito.wtf:8100
   NTP Server: ntp.dallas.jito.wtf

Generate or Set the Solana Validator Vote Account Key

You can generate a new vote account key or set an existing vote account key. This example shows how to set an existing vote account key.

bash
? Do you want to create a new vote account key now? (Y/n) › No
? Please Enter Your Vote Account Public Key > <your-vote-account>

The configuration has now been saved to ~/.slv/inventory.testnet.validators.yml.

Deploy the Validator

Once you confirm the configuration, the deployment will start.

bash
slv v deploy -n testnet

First, the configuration confirmation will be displayed. Select Yes to continue.

bash
Your Testnet Validators Settings:
┌────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Identity Key   │ TKMNqvfwb7PKkc9KFEJJ8EaNK9s5XjNWgFS6oyqSLkp  │
├────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Vote Key       │ 6XdQ6szHJjm1t3XbgahSS6WVEhsrs5fniZbLgfkN1QWn │
├────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Authority Key  │ authAccount                                  │
├────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ IP             │ x.x.x.x.                                     │
├────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Validator Type │ jito                                         │
├────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Version        │ 3.0.7-jito                                   │
└────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────┘
? Do you want to continue? (Y/n) › Yes

It's done! Your Solana Validator is now deployed. It will take some time to sync with the Solana network.

Debugging & Monitoring

After deployment, you can debug and monitor within the Solana RPC node. You can check the status of the Solana RPC node using the following commands:

bash
$ solv m

solv is an alias for agave-validator -l /mnt/ledger. This setting is added to ~/.profile during the RPC node deployment.

Change the Identity Key

After deployment, you need to change the unstaked key to the authorized identity key.

bash
slv v set:identity -n testnet --pubkey epics-test

This command will set the identity key from your local computer located at:

~/.slv/keys/<name>.json

Restart Firedancer

If you have any issues with the validator, you can restart firedancer with the following command.

The --rm option will stop the validator, remove the ledger and snapshot directories, download a snapshot using the snapshot finder, and then start the validator.

bash
slv v restart -n testnet --pubkey <name> --rm

SLV Validator Commands

bash
slv validator --help
Usage:   slv validator
Version: 0.9.700

Description:

  🛠️ Manage Solana Validator Nodes 🛠️

Options:

  -h, --help  - Show this help.

Commands:

  init               - 🚀 Initialize a new validator configuration
  deploy             - 📦 Deploy Validators
  list               - 📋 List validators
  set:identity       - 🪪  Set Validator Identity
  set:unstaked       - 📴 Set Validator Identity to Unstaked Key
  setup:firedancer   - 🔥 Setup/Update Firedancer Validator
  update:firedancer  - 🔄 Update Firedancer Version
  build:solana-cli   - 🛠️ Build Solana CLI from Source
  install:solana     - ➡️ Install Solana CLI Binary
  update:script      - ⚙️  Update Validator Startup Config
  update:jinja       - 🧩 Update Jinja Template
  start              - 🟢 Start Validator
  stop               - 🔴 Stop Validator
  restart            - ♻️  Restart Validator
  cleanup            - 🧹 Cleanup Validator - Remove Ledger/Snapshot Unnecessary Files
  get:snapshot       - 💾 Download Snapshot with aria2c
  gen:vote-account   - 🗳️  Generate Vote Account
  switch             - 🔁 Switch Validator Identity - No DownTime Migration