bitmessage/README.md

# Intro

> Русская версия: [README.ru-RU.md](README.ru-RU.md)

[PyBitmessage](https://bitmessage.org/) is a client of the Bitmessages P2P communication protocol used to send encrypted messages to another person or to many subscribers.

PyBitmessage client running as a daemon in docker container with XML-RPC API enabled.

This repository covers the docker deployment only.

# Usage

The container generates a Bitmessage Deterministic Addresses based on a `BITMESSAGE_SEED_PHRASE` variable.

Here are some example snippets to help you get started creating a container.

The container has two ports and they are not interchangeable. **8442** is the
XML-RPC API: it controls the daemon completely and has no TLS, so set your own
credentials and keep it on loopback. **8444** is the Bitmessage P2P port:
publish it to let other nodes connect in, leave it unpublished to stay
outbound-only. The daemon listens on both inside the container either way.

## docker-compose

```yaml
services:
  pybitmessage:
    build:
      context: https://git.bitdeals.org/private/bitmessage.git
      dockerfile: ./docker/Dockerfile
    image: registry.bitdeals.org/bitmessage
    environment:
      - BITMESSAGE_API_USER=CHANGE_ME
      - BITMESSAGE_API_PASSWORD=CHANGE_ME
      - BITMESSAGE_SEED_PHRASE=bitmessage_seed_phrase
      - BITMESSAGE_SEED_ADDRESSES=1
      - BITMESSAGE_TTL=172800
      - BITMESSAGE_STOPRESENDINGAFTERXDAYS=60
      - BITMESSAGE_MAXTOTALCONNECTIONS=40
    ports:
      - 127.0.0.1:8442:8442   # API — loopback only
      - 8444:8444             # P2P — omit this line to stay outbound-only
    volumes:
      - bitmessage:/home/bitmessage

volumes:
  bitmessage:
```

## docker cli

```sh
docker run -d \
  -e BITMESSAGE_API_USER=CHANGE_ME \
  -e BITMESSAGE_API_PASSWORD=CHANGE_ME \
  -e BITMESSAGE_SEED_PHRASE=bitmessage_seed_phrase \
  -e BITMESSAGE_SEED_ADDRESSES=1 \
  -e BITMESSAGE_TTL=172800 \
  -e BITMESSAGE_STOPRESENDINGAFTERXDAYS=60 \
  -e BITMESSAGE_MAXTOTALCONNECTIONS=40 \
  -p 127.0.0.1:8442:8442 \
  -p 8444:8444 \
  -v bitmessage:/home/bitmessage \
  registry.bitdeals.org/bitmessage
```

# Parameters

Container images are configured using parameters passed at runtime.

|Parameter|Function|
|:--------|:-------|
|-p 127.0.0.1:8442|API port. The daemon always binds `0.0.0.0` inside the container, so what you publish decides who reaches it|
|-p 8444|Bitmessage P2P port. Optional: without it the node still connects out to peers, it just cannot be connected to. Must be published as `8444:8444` — see Notes|
|-v /home/bitmessage|Data directory: `keys.dat` (identity, settings) and `messages.dat`. Without it the node is a new node after every update|
|-e BITMESSAGE_API_USER|XML-RPC API user. Default: `bitmessage_api_user` — change it|
|-e BITMESSAGE_API_PASSWORD|XML-RPC API password. Default: `bitmessage_api_password` — change it, see Notes|
|-e BITMESSAGE_SEED_PHRASE|Create Deterministic Addresses password. Default: regenerated on every start, giving different addresses each time. Only used when `BITMESSAGE_SEED_ADDRESSES` is above `0`|
|-e BITMESSAGE_SEED_ADDRESSES|Number of Deterministic Addresses to generate. Default: `0`|
|-e BITMESSAGE_TTL|The expiration of newly send messages, in seconds. Default: `172800`|
|-e BITMESSAGE_STOPRESENDINGAFTERXDAYS|Stop resending unreceived message after X days. Default: `30`|
|-e BITMESSAGE_APIVARIANT|provides xml or json-RPC API. Default: `legacy`|
|-e BITMESSAGE_MAXTOTALCONNECTIONS|Cap on all connections at once, inbound and outbound together (`maxoutboundconnections` is 8, so this minus 8 is the inbound headroom). Default: `200`, the PyBitmessage stock value — lower it when the P2P port is published|
|-e BITMESSAGE_TRUSTED_PEER|`host:port` of the one peer this node may connect out to; it dials nothing else. Default: empty — the node chooses its own peers. See Notes|
|-e BITMESSAGE_SEND_OUTGOING|Whether the node dials out at all, `True` or `False`. Default: `True`. `False` gives a node that only accepts inbound connections — the hub of a private contour|
|-e BITMESSAGE_KNOWN_NODES|Comma-separated `host:port` list, written into `knownnodes.dat` on every start in place of whatever was there. Default: empty — the file is left as it is. Also switches the DNS bootstrap off, see Notes|
|-e BITMESSAGE_WATCHDOG|Whether to restart a daemon that has lost every peer, `True` or `False`. Default: `True`. See Notes|
|-e BITMESSAGE_WATCHDOG_PERIOD|Seconds between peer checks. Default: `60`|
|-e BITMESSAGE_WATCHDOG_AFTER|How many peerless checks in a row it takes to act. Default: `5`, so five minutes at the default period|
|-e BITMESSAGE_WATCHDOG_COOLDOWN|Floor between two restarts, in seconds. Default: `900`. `0` removes it|

# Notes

- `%` cannot be used in the API password: it breaks PyBitmessage's own config
  reader, and every API call then returns `500` while `keys.dat` looks correct.
  Other characters are fine, the container escapes them.
- Clients must percent-encode the credentials — they go into
  `http://user:password@host:port/`, where `@`, `#`, `/` and `:` change how the
  URL parses. The scripts in this image do; yours has to as well.
- The container turns healthy once the daemon has a network connection, which
  on a new node takes a few minutes. The start period also covers the startup
  `VACUUM` of `messages.dat`.
- **A peerless daemon is restarted; a silent one is not.** A daemon that has
  lost every peer does not find its way back — it can sit at zero connections
  for as long as you leave it — while one that has just started dials hard and
  does. So the container supervises its own daemon: it asks the API for the
  connection count every `BITMESSAGE_WATCHDOG_PERIOD`, and after
  `BITMESSAGE_WATCHDOG_AFTER` answers of zero in a row it stops the daemon
  through its own API and starts it again. The *container* is not restarted and
  nothing outside it is involved, so a node that depends on this one keeps its
  addresses and only sees the API blink.

  A daemon whose API does not answer at all is left alone, deliberately. That is
  the node trapped retrying a startup `VACUUM` it cannot finish, restarting does
  not cure it, and restarting anyway cuts the next `VACUUM` in half too. The
  healthcheck reports both cases as unhealthy; only one of them is something to
  do anything about, and a person has to look at the other.

  **Give the container `stop_grace_period: 90s`** (compose) or
  `--stop-timeout 90` (`docker run`). Closing `messages.dat` properly takes
  longer than Docker's default ten seconds — measured at about thirteen on a
  small database, and it grows with the file — so without this the daemon is
  SIGKILLed mid-write, which is the very thing the supervisor is there to
  prevent. An image cannot set this for itself; only the caller can.

  `BITMESSAGE_WATCHDOG=False` turns the peer rule off. The supervisor stays
  either way — it is also what stops the daemon cleanly on `docker stop`, and
  what restarts one that died outright rather than leaving the container up
  around a corpse.
- **The P2P port must be published as `8444:8444`.** The daemon tells peers the
  port from its own config (`port` in `keys.dat`), not the port you mapped it
  to, so `8555:8444` advertises a port nobody can reach. A different host port
  needs `extport` in `keys.dat`, which this container does not template.
- **Your own address is never configured.** The version message carries a
  hardcoded `127.0.0.1` that every peer discards in favour of the IP it sees on
  the socket, and it takes the port from that same message. So a node with 8444
  published is found by the network on its own, as soon as it connects out —
  there is no host IP or DNS name to set anywhere. The one exception is a Tor
  hidden service, which needs an explicit `onionhostname`.
- **A private contour needs its peers pinned, and a star to pin them into.**
  PyBitmessage refuses a candidate whose network group (the /16 for IPv4) is
  already represented among its outbound connections. Every container of one
  compose project lives in a single /16, so each node keeps exactly one outbound
  connection, to a peer it picked at random — which as often as not leaves the
  contour split into components. Give one node `BITMESSAGE_SEND_OUTGOING=False`
  so it becomes a hub that only accepts (the check looks at outbound connections
  only, so inbound are not capped by it), point the rest at it with
  `BITMESSAGE_TRUSTED_PEER=<hub-ip>:8444`, and objects travel spoke → hub →
  spokes. Use IP addresses, not service names: the sybil check parses the host
  as an IP, and the `addr` exchange between nodes carries IPs anyway.
- **`BITMESSAGE_KNOWN_NODES` is what keeps a private contour private.** A node
  whose `knownnodes.dat` names a peer outside PyBitmessage's built-in default
  list stops asking `bootstrap8080.bitmessage.org` for more; without it even a
  pinned node resolves the public bootstrap host on every start. The file is
  rewritten on each start, so the variable, not the container's history, is what
  the node believes on boot.
- **Publishing 8444 is a deliberate security trade-off.** The daemon runs on
  Python 2 and already parses untrusted data from its outbound peers, so an open
  port does not create that exposure — it changes *who* may connect, *when*, and
  *how many*. The pre-handshake parser becomes reachable by anyone, and the
  practical risk is resource exhaustion rather than code execution. Keep
  `BITMESSAGE_MAXTOTALCONNECTIONS` low and put memory and CPU limits on the
  container.
- **The daemon holds no privilege of its own, and the container drops what it
  can.** `run.sh` needs root exactly once, at startup: `keys.dat` can arrive
  from a bind mount owned by anyone, so it is chowned, given mode 600 and read
  before anything else. The moment that is done the script re-executes itself
  with a bounding set of four capabilities -- `SETUID` and `SETGID` to start the
  daemon as its own user, `KILL` for the fallback stop, `SETPCAP` to drop the
  rest -- and every start of the daemon goes through `drop_privs.py`, at uid
  2000, with all four capability sets empty and `no_new_privs` on. No file in the
  image carries a setuid or setgid bit, so a daemon that has been taken over has
  nothing left to climb.

  Three things only the caller can set, and all three are worth setting.
  `cap_drop: ALL` with `CHOWN`, `DAC_OVERRIDE`, `FOWNER`, `SETUID`, `SETGID`,
  `KILL` and `SETPCAP` added back: those seven are what the startup above needs,
  and the container cannot narrow what the healthcheck and `docker exec` run
  with -- only this can. `read_only: true`, with `tmpfs` for `/tmp` and `/run`;
  the daemon writes only into its own home. And `pids_limit`, next to the memory
  and CPU limits the note above asks for.