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Prepare your machine

Nimbus runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, and Android.

You can install Nimbus either using precompiled binaries or build from source.

System requirements

Check that your machine matches the minimal system requirements. The operating system must be a version supported by its vendor.

Build prerequisites

Tip

If you are planning to use the precompiled binaries, you can skip straight to the time section!

When building from source, you will need additional build dependencies to be installed:

  • Developer tools (C compiler, Make, Bash, Git)

On common Linux distributions the dependencies can be installed with:

# Debian and Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install build-essential git-lfs

# Fedora
dnf install @development-tools gcc-g++

# Arch Linux, using an AUR manager
yourAURmanager -S base-devel git-lfs

The Command Line Tools package is available as part of Xcode and can be installed via the Terminal application:

xcode-select --install

winget install Git.Git
winget install NASM.NASM
  • Run all following commands in a "Git Bash" shell (instead of PowerShell or Terminal) to set up the llvm-mingw toolchain:
cd /c
curl -LO https://github.com/mstorsjo/llvm-mingw/releases/download/20250709/llvm-mingw-20250709-ucrt-x86_64.zip
unzip -q llvm-mingw-20250709-ucrt-x86_64.zip && mv llvm-mingw-20250709-ucrt-x86_64 llvm-mingw
cp llvm-mingw/bin/mingw32-make.exe llvm-mingw/bin/make.exe
cd ~
echo 'export PATH="/c/llvm-mingw/bin:/c/Program Files/NASM:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
  • Use a "Git Bash" shell to clone and build nimbus-eth2.
  • Install the Termux app from FDroid or the Google Play store
  • Install a PRoot of your choice following the instructions for your preferred distribution. Note, the Ubuntu PRoot is known to contain all Nimbus prerequisites compiled on Arm64 architecture (the most common architecture for Android devices).

Assuming you use Ubuntu PRoot:

apt install build-essential git-lfs

Time

The beacon chain relies on your computer having the correct time set (±0.5 seconds). It is important that you periodically synchronize the time with an NTP server.

If the above sounds like Latin to you, don't worry. You should be fine as long as you haven't changed the time and date settings on your computer (they should be set automatically).

On Linux, it is recommended to install chrony.

To install it:

# Debian and Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install -y chrony

# Fedora
sudo dnf install chrony

# Archlinux, using an AUR manager
yourAURmanager chrony

Make sure that the options for setting time automatically are enabled.