Quick Start for Farming, etc. on Safe Network

Community
#1

Hi, so I’ve seen a lot of people on the forum lately asking how to get involved in the upcoming testnet, run a node, etc. A few have been even aware of things like the CLI user guide, the primer, etc. but were intimidated I think by the length or didn’t feel like they had the time to read it, so they made questions here instead.

Totally understandable, but I thought it might be useful to distill some of the information into the most barebones form possible and make a little “quickstart” guide based on the CLI user guide and the primer.

I’ve written a first draft of a “farming quickstart” and hoping to get something drafted for file ops, etc. later today.

If anybody has a moment, I’d appreciate it if you could check it out for correctness/clarity. I boiled out 90% of non-necessary configuration from the user guide as best I could, but I wrote it pretty fast so it’s possible there are some inaccuracies or something isn’t very clear. I’ll revisit it later today myself, but I thought maybe another set of eyes could help.

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Maidsafe-testnet - Error on auth create --test-coins
#2

I’ll have a look in a bit.

I think this is a great idea. A lot of people are scared off by the CLI, whereas for the most part it’s just a case of copying and pasting an instruction and hitting Enter. Any idiot could do it (case in point yours truly).

9 Likes
#3

Nice, simple but I bet 99.9% of people will not be able to run it. Simply because they do not know what is command line:) Non tech people simply do not know, they need to enter cmd in their most likely windows environment int “Type here to search” box, left down on the desktop. And even if they are able to run it, then, they will not be able to set path to the folder correctly:)

Tutorials for common people should not be written by programmers:)

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#4

Looks like I’ll be sitting it out. Way out of my depth. Video tutorial may help

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#5

Haha, fair point I suppose!

I wanted to keep it as concise as possible, but that’s a good point. Maybe some images or something would be useful, thanks for the feedback!

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#6

Anyway, I really like it, because it helped me:) I did not run network before so your tutorial made everything clear for me instantly. But I am working with command lines every day. Btw downloading something from github does not need more explanation for those who ever used it, but it is not that simple for the rest. Someone who did not do that before, will very likely fail just on that first step.

4 Likes
#7

I thought that but it isnt as frightening as you think and the people on the forum will help with any questions no matter how insignificant you think they may be. AlI I am saying is give it a go and you might be pleasantly surprised :+1:t2:

5 Likes
#8

Yea, another instance where an image could be illuminating I think. The linked page is to the releases, which seems pretty intuitive, but zero-knowledge assumption is probably good here. I’ll see what I can do to edit those in during the next few hours (work day starting soon here :upside_down_face:) if somebody doesn’t beat me to it.

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#9

Requirements: An internet router which supports IGD.

I hope this is not required if you have public static IP.

1 Like
#10

That’s a really good question that I unfortunately don’t know the answer to as I’ve never tried it personally (Maybe somebody else has a better answer).

If it doesn’t work out of the box, and you have a public static IP, you can setup manual port forwarding if it’s required. Although, there aren’t any good tutorials (yet) on that as it’s a very new feature, but I think it’s beyond the scope of a “quickstart” article. I’m hoping to also compile a farming FAQ as the testnet wears on and questions bubble up, so if we can figure out an answer for sure for this, that would be a good place for it.

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#11

I mean router is not needed sometimes :slight_smile:

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#12

Looks pretty straightforward. Thank you!

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#13

No, in that case you are fine. Also manually port forwarding is fine, we have the config/setup enabled for that too.

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#14

For Windows users opening a Command Prompt in the right folder will be the first challenge. To

  1. Navigate to the extracted sn_cli folder and open a terminal.

I suggest you add something like:

In Windows the terminal is called Command Prompt (cmd). Using File Explorer navigate to the sn_cli folder.

folder
folder981×212 6.39 KB

Click the address bar to select it (or press Alt+D) and type cmd into the address bar.

cmd
cmd1000×213 5.62 KB

Hit Enter to open the Command Prompt.
command-prompt
command-prompt796×298 11.1 KB

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#15

Yup, I was thinking something similar myself. Perhaps even faster is just to tell them to open the folder in File Explorerer and hit Alt+f at the same time and then hit r. Seems pretty brainless that way.

In either case, I added a little section there to address this, and also added subsections for mac/linux. Havent inserted images yet for this part, but I’ll see what I can do about adding those in as well soon.

5 Likes
#16

I didn’t know you could do that. Yes, that’s much simpler.

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#17

Thanks for this, I think it will be enough to get me locked in.

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#18

Glad to hear it, that was the goal :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

1 Like
#19

This certainly is very useful.

This might be true, but I don’t think these people can be helped at this stage. Trying to do that within the scope of this “most barebones form possible” document would defeat its original purpose and distract those who already know what a terminal is.

- Unzip the sn_cli folder you downloaded from Github. (Put it anywhere you want.)
- Navigate to the extracted sn_cli folder and open a terminal.

We should avoid mixing e.g. unzip/extract in the same context. I think it’s tiny terminological issues like this one that confuse less experienced users. But they can easily be avoided just by being consistent, without explaining the whole concept of, say, “compression” or “terminal”.

2 Likes
#20

Yea I agree on this and was waffling on it at first. This particular point about the terminal can be addressed with a little aside about a keyboard shortcut, but I think even that was pushing it as far as scope. At this point the only knowledge requirements are that you can extract a file and that you know what a path is. If you don’t know that much, then it’s up to you to figure it out and Google the things you don’t know, or admit that the article is currently beyond you.

The problem is you can take being pedantic to the umpteenth degree if you wanted to, and there’s no clear stopping point (as you mentioned above). At this point, I think the guide can’t justifiably be made longer or more basic than it currently is.

Agree entirely, good catch!

1 Like