Bee Clef

Bee makes use of Go Ethereum's external signer, Clef.

Because Bee must sign a lot of transactions automatically and quickly, a Bee specific version of Clef, Bee-clef has been packaged which includes all the relevant configuration and implements the specific configuration needed to make Clef work with Bee.

caution

Clef will create a new Ethereum key pair for you during installation. Make sure you keep a backup of your key pair somewhere safe and secure!

Packages#

Bee clef can be installed automatically using your system's package manager.

AMD64#

wget https://github.com/ethersphere/bee-clef/releases/download/v0.4.12/bee-clef_0.4.12_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i bee-clef_0.4.12_amd64.deb

ARM (Raspberry Pi)#

ARMv7#
wget https://github.com/ethersphere/bee-clef/releases/download/v0.4.12/bee-clef_0.4.12_armv7.deb
sudo dpkg -i bee-clef_0.4.12_armv7.deb
ARM64#
wget https://github.com/ethersphere/bee-clef/releases/download/v0.4.12/bee-clef_0.4.12_arm64.deb
sudo dpkg -i bee-clef_0.4.12_arm64.deb

Configuring Bee-clef#

Configuration files are stored in /etc/bee-clef/

For a normal installation using a package manger, there should not be any configuration changes necessary to start using Bee Clef.

Interact With Clef#

Once Clef has been installed, it will begin running as a service.

To check Clef is running ok, we may use systemctl (on Linux) or launchctl (on MacOS) to query the status of the bee-clef service.

systemctl status bee-clef
● bee-clef.service - Bee Clef
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/bee-clef.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Fri 2020-11-20 23:45:16 GMT; 1min 29s ago

And if you want to follow its logs, you can use:

journalctl -f -u bee-clef.service

When Bee-clef first starts, you should see something very similar to the following:

Feb 21 19:52:43 comp-name systemd[1]: Started Bee Clef.
Feb 21 19:52:43 comp-name bee-clef-service[494678]: WARNING!
Feb 21 19:52:43 comp-name bee-clef-service[494678]: Clef is an account management tool. It may, like any software, contain bugs.
Feb 21 19:52:43 comp-name bee-clef-service[494678]: Please take care to
Feb 21 19:52:43 comp-name bee-clef-service[494678]: - backup your keystore files,
Feb 21 19:52:43 comp-name bee-clef-service[494678]: - verify that the keystore(s) can be opened with your password.
Feb 21 19:52:43 comp-name bee-clef-service[494678]: Clef is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY;
Feb 21 19:52:43 comp-name bee-clef-service[494678]: without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
Feb 21 19:52:43 comp-name bee-clef-service[494678]: PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
Feb 21 19:52:43 comp-name bee-clef-service[494678]: INFO [02-21|19:52:43.862] Using stdin/stdout as UI-channel
Feb 21 19:52:44 comp-name bee-clef-service[494678]: INFO [02-21|19:52:44.036] Loaded 4byte database embeds=146841 locals=3 local=/etc/bee-clef/4byte.json
Feb 21 19:52:44 comp-name bee-clef-service[494678]: {"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"ui_onInputRequired","params":[{"title":"Master Password","prompt":"Please enter the password to decrypt the master seed","isPassword":true}]}
Feb 21 19:54:25 comp-name bee-clef-service[494678]: INFO [02-21|19:54:25.048] Rule engine configured file=/etc/bee-clef/rules.js
Feb 21 19:54:25 comp-name bee-clef-service[494678]: INFO [02-21|19:54:25.048] Starting signer chainid=5 keystore=/var/lib/bee-clef/keystore light-kdf=false advanced=false
Feb 21 19:54:25 comp-name bee-clef-service[494678]: INFO [02-21|19:54:25.049] IPC endpoint opened url=/var/lib/bee-clef/clef.ipc
Feb 21 19:54:25 comp-name bee-clef-service[494678]: {"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"ui_onSignerStartup","params":[{"info":{"extapi_http":"n/a","extapi_ipc":"/var/lib/bee-clef/clef.ipc","extapi_version":"6.1.0","intapi_version":"7.0.1"}}]}
info

This line can be safely ignored, there is no action required: {"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"ui_onInputRequired","params":[{"title":"Master Password","prompt":"Please enter the password to decrypt the master seed","isPassword":true}]}

As soon as bee starts interacting with bee-clef you should start to see log messages populate, for a regularly active and connected node they will appear every few seconds:

Feb 24 22:29:15 comp-name bee-clef-service[1118]: INFO [02-24|22:29:15.118] Op approved
Feb 24 22:30:17 comp-name bee-clef-service[1118]: INFO [02-24|22:30:17.371] Op approved
Feb 24 22:30:19 comp-name bee-clef-service[1118]: INFO [02-24|22:30:19.344] Op approved
...

Data Locations#

Key material and other data is stored in /var/lib/bee-clef/

info

Bee can communicate with Bee-clef in a variety of ways. The default way, if installed via the packages, will use an Inter-process communication (IPC) file. This is a special file that Bee-clef creates on startup that Bee will use to send requests back-and-forth. When the Bee-clef service is running you'll notice that a /var/lib/bee-clef/clef.ipc file is created.

Manual Installation#

Try the Github releases page for x-platform binaries or, to install Clef manually, first retrieve the relevant Clef binary from Ethereum's Geth & Tools download page, or build directly from the source.

Because Bee needs Clef to sign many transactions automatically, we must run Clef as a service with relaxed permissions and rules set. To ensure Clef only signs transactions from Bee, we must protect the clef.ipc file by creating a Bee user and setting permissions so that it is only possible for this user to make use of the ipc socket.

Additionally, Clef requires transaction signatures for the Bee's chequebook interaction.

A shell script automating the post-initialisation permission changing and including the Clef config, clef-service, as well as the 4byte.json transaction signature file and rules.js file can all be found in the Bee-clef repository.

Finally, once Clef is running, simply configure your Bee node to enable Clef using --clef-signer-enable and point Bee to the correct ipc socket using --clef-signer-endpoint.

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