Cosmos Node Operations¶

These pages cover running infrastructure for chains built on the Cosmos SDK and CometBFT (the consensus engine formerly called Tendermint). The Cosmos Hub (gaiad, chain ID cosmoshub-4) is used as the worked example throughout, but almost everything carries over to any SDK-based chain: swap the binary name, home directory, denom, and chain ID.

Reading order¶

Concepts and architecture - node roles, topologies, and sizing
Host preparation - OS baseline, service user, firewall, node_exporter
Full node - build the binary, initialise, and sync via state sync or snapshot
Cosmovisor - process supervision and on-chain upgrade handling
Validator - operator keys, consensus keys, and registering a validator
Remote signing - Horcrux threshold signing and the newer cosmos-kms
Public endpoints - TLS and path routing for RPC/REST/gRPC with Caddy
Monitoring - Prometheus, node_exporter, and validator-specific alerting
Operations - day-2 tasks, troubleshooting, archive nodes, and upgrades

Conventions¶

Commands are written for bash on Ubuntu LTS. Adapt package commands for other distros.
Node settings live in one environment file, /etc/cosmos/node.env, which is sourced by your shell and read by systemd. Every page assumes $DAEMON_NAME, $DAEMON_HOME, $CHAIN_ID, and $MONIKER are set from it.
Version numbers are examples current as of the date above. Always confirm the version a chain actually requires against its release notes or governance proposal before installing anything.