A Docker configuration with sane defaults for running a fully-validating Bitcoin node, based on Alpine Linux.

Warning: older versions of this Dockerfile were based on Ubuntu and included all build dependencies, but due to the ridiculous size of the resulting image I've moved to binaries downloaded to Alpine Linux. If I've screwed up your development workflow somehow, file an issue and we'll get it fixed.

Requires that Docker be installed on the host machine.

# Create some directory where your bitcoin data will be stored.
$ mkdir /home/youruser/bitcoin_data

$ docker run --name bitcoind -d \
   --env 'BTC_RPCUSER=foo' \
   --env 'BTC_RPCPASSWORD=password' \
   --env 'BTC_TXINDEX=1' \
   --volume /home/youruser/bitcoin_data:/root/.bitcoin \
   -p 8332:8332 \
   --publish 8333:8333 \
   jamesob/bitcoind

$ docker logs -f bitcoind
[ ... ]

A custom bitcoin.conf file can be placed in the mounted data directory. Otherwise, a default bitcoin.conf file will be automatically generated based on environment variables passed to the container:

The smart thing to do if you're daemonizing is to use Docker's builtin restart policies, but if you're insistent on using systemd, you could do something like

$ cat /etc/systemd/system/bitcoind.service

# bitcoind.service #######################################################################
[Unit]
Description=Bitcoind
After=docker.service
Requires=docker.service

[Service]
ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/docker kill bitcoind
ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/docker rm bitcoind
ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/docker pull jamesob/bitcoind
ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker run \
    --name bitcoind \
    -p 8333:8333 \
    -p 8332:8332 \
    -v /data/bitcoind:/root/.bitcoin \
    jamesob/bitcoind
ExecStop=/usr/bin/docker stop bitcoind

to ensure that bitcoind continues to run.

• docker-bitcoind: sort of the basis for this repo, but configuration is a bit more confusing.
• docker-bitcoin: more complex, but more granular versioning. Includes XT & classic.