Solana Testnet Validator - Quickstart
Installation & Validator Launch
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:
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: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.Input Server's IP Address
Input 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.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.
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".
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.
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.
The configuration has now been saved to
~/.slv/inventory.testnet.validators.yml.Deploy the Validator
Once you confirm the configuration, the deployment will start.
First, the configuration confirmation will be displayed.
Select Yes to continue.
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:
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.
This command will set the identity key from your local computer located at:
~/.slv/keys/<name>.jsonRestart 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.