I bought a NUC barebone and added nvme and ddr5, hoping to run Knots and Electrs on it. StartOS, Ubuntu, Fedora all failed to establish network connection. No problem with Windows 11. I will not go back to Linux for this NUC. I spent two months+ trying to make that work. I just don’t have enough knowledge and resources. What’s the best option from here? Run Knots and Electrs on Docker on Windows 11? (With Sparrow on a xfce laptop as a client)
That is one option.
Another option would be WSL. Basically, Windows 11 has a Linux kernel built into it which allows you to run Ubuntu from Powershell. You can use it to run Linux applications. This is a little more technical, because you have to set up firewall rules to communicate between Ubuntu and Windows 11. I have a video that touches on this topic a bit here. I recommend watching that video to get a feel for the level of technical expertise involved with using Bitcoin tools in a WSL context, to see if it is something you are comfortable with. I can help you out too, if you have any questions.
The least technical option (which most people could do at any skill level) would be to run StartOS in Virtualbox (see my video here for how to do that). The trade-off for its extra simplicity is that you must reserve some of the system resources for the Windows 11 host, so not all of the resources (RAM, CPUs, disk space) are available for StartOS (which could slow down the IBD when you first run Knots).
I’m using a Linux Mint Xfce as the client PC where I will run Sparrow wallet. The client PC will not have the internet. LAN only. Should I assign static IPs to the StartOS in the VM as well as the client PC? Or, should I just go with the addresses the router assigns?
Thanks, Paul
Static IP for the VM would be best, since Tor will not be an option for you.
If you are running StartOS in the VM, you’ll also need to set up SimpleProxy, since by default StartOS has strict firewall rules blocking all incoming clearnet connections. This will be similar to how you connect an ASIC to Datum Gateway or Public Pool running on StartOS. If you have trouble figuring out how to write a config for that, let me know and I can help. I helped another forum member connect Sparrow to electrs on their Start9 server over clearnet, so I have recent experience with this.