Using a remote node

In order to interrogate a node with cardano-cli and submit transactions to it with cardano-cli, cardano-cli needs to connect to its socket file.

It is possible to use socat to connect to the socket of a remote node. For that, 2 things must be done:

• on the server running the node, where the socket file is, the following socat command must be executed: socat TCP-LISTEN:2010,reuseaddr,fork UNIX-connect:/opt/cardano/cnode/db/node.socket This command will create a TCP socket on the port 2010 (the port can be any available port), and will connect it to the cardano-node socket file (the path /opt/cardano/cnode/db/node.socket must be adjusted to point to the existing socket file).

• on the client, where the cardano-cli commands will be executed, the following command must executed: socat UNIX-LISTEN:/run/cardano-node.socket,fork,reuseaddr,unlink-early,user=<username>,group=<group>,mode=755 TCP:<server_ip_address>:2010 The /run/cardano-node.socket is where the local socket file will be created. The <username> and <group> must be replaced with the username and the group of the user who will run the cardano-cli commands, the <server_ip_address> the must be the server's ip address or hostname, and the port 2010 must be the same port configured on the server.

After doing this, the CARDANO_NODE_SOCKET_PATH environment variable must be set to the /run/cardano-node.socket file (the name that was used in the second command), and then cardano-cli can be used to interrogate the cardano-node.