Running Rivalz.AI rClient on VPS for Beginners

7 min readJun 7, 2024

In the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence and decentralized networks, Rivalz.ai emerges as a trailblazer, merging the best of both worlds. Rivalz.ai is revolutionizing how we store, process, and utilize AI-ready data by leveraging a decentralized peer-to-peer infrastructure. This innovative platform offers a secure and efficient way to manage AI data provenance, making it a cornerstone for the next generation of AI applications.

Because rClient is UI based software, in this guide, I will walk you through the process of setting up and running a Rivalz.ai node on a VPS with Ubuntu desktop. Whether you’re a blockchain enthusiast, an AI developer, or someone keen on exploring decentralized technologies, this tutorial will help you get started with contributing to the groundbreaking Rivalz network.

Additionally, take a look at my NodePay step-by-step guide if you’re looking to optimize and share your VPS resources.

As usual DYOR on Rivalz.ai project :

Rivalz.AI Website : https://rivalz.ai/
Rivalz.AI Discord : https://discord.gg/rivalzai
Rivalz.AI X : https://twitter.com/Rivalz_AI
Rivalz.AI Telegram : https://t.me/RivalzAI_Ann

Before we dive into the step-by-step guide, I encourage you to follow me on Medium and my social media channels for more insightful articles on node farming.

Let’s build and learn together in this exciting journey towards node farming!

Creating Rivalz.AI account

First thing to do, is create an account on rivalz.AI and connect your wallet to get the rewards.

You can create your account from the rivalz.ai website or using my referral link if you want to support my work : create account

Now that you have created your account, you can move on to the next step.

In this guide I recommend contabo because it was tested and fully functional, if you decide to use other VPS, you can encounter issues with rivalz rClient like :

0/0 on disks
Impossible to validate

I don’t recommend using VPS on these providers, as they all have issue :

Aws
Google cloud platform
Racknerd
PQ hosting

Getting & Setup the VPS

Requirements

Based on their documentation, following is the requirements found on their website:

Getting VPS on Contabo

Why Opt for Contabo?

Contabo offers budget-friendly and high-performance VPS options, making it ideal for running Rivalz.ai rClient.

Specifications of the Entry-Level VPS:

CPU: 4 virtual cores
RAM: 6 GB
Storage: 400 GB SSD
Bandwidth: 32 TB outbound + Unlimited inbound (200 Mbit/s connection)
Price: Starting at approximately $6 per month

To get your VPS on Contabo, choose Cloud VPS 1.

If you intend to run other node clients like KOII, I would recommend choosing Cloud VPS 2. If you plan to run with NodePay, VPS 1 is fine.

Choose the term length; I usually stick with 3 months to not take too much risks with the projects I run and reduce the setup fee.

I keep the default region as the European Union, which means the server will be located in Germany, and that works well for me.

In their documentation, Rivalz.ai calculate points according to the ressources, you can check their update rules here.

Even if Nvme is 200% with VPS 1 we only get 100GB including Operating System data storage. So I would recommend choosing 400 GB.

For now it seems that they don’t give more points for storage more than 200 GB, so ordering 600GB is not necessary at the moment.

Select Ubuntu 22.04

Define a password and keep it safe until the next steps.

Now you can order your VPS. It could take few hours for the VPS to be installed and ready.

Setting up your VPS for Rivalz.ai

In a previous version of this guide, the steps was quite complicated, so I decided to create another script with less manual actions.

What the script does :

The script will install Ubuntu Desktop, XRDP for remote access on our Contabo VPS and download rClient.

Feel free to check the script content here before executing.

To run the script :

Connect to Your VPS: Utilize an SSH client to access your Contabo VPS. For Windows users, Putty is recommended. Use the root credentials provided by Contabo or the ones you set when ordering the VPS.
Copy and paste the following commands in putty terminal (you can copy and paste all lines at once)
Change username and password at the end of the curl command with the one you want to use with your remote desktop session (don’t use root)

For password and user don’t use these characters : ; | & $ ` \ ‘ “ < > ( ) * ? [ ] { } # ~ % !

sudo apt update

sudo apt install curl

curl -sL https://gist.githubusercontent.com/NodeFarmer/55f2f477b0afe06afefc6be919462e9e/raw/rivalz.sh | bash -s username password

The whole process will take several minutes…

Connect and Discover Your New Desktop: After the setup is complete, use a Remote Desktop client (like Microsoft Remote Desktop) to connect to your VPS by entering your VPS IP address and the username and password you specified in the curl command.

Running and Configuring rClient

As the script copies the rClient to the Documents folder of the user you provided, go ahead to this folder using file manager.

Click on Activities on the top left and open the files applications in the menu at the bottom of the screen.

Then navigate to Home/Documents and double click on rClient-latest.AppImage

You should now see the Rivalz.ai rClient user interface :

Just follow the following steps to configure the node :

Click on Storage Control and set up your allocated storage

In their discord I saw that the maximum amount of storage taken into account is 200GB at the moment and the minimum is 50GB, so let’s set up with 200GB

Add the wallet address you used to connect to Rivalz.ai in the wallet management field , then save

You can now run the node :

Last step is to Validate the Node, click on validate node and connect your wallet. Validate Node is mandatory to start earning points.

At this step, the linux version encounters some issues to validate node.

I’ve created a second script to run after the first one in this guide in order to fix the validate issue.

You will need to run it from putty with root user

Feel free to check its content before running it .

To run the script :

Connect back on your root session with putty
Copy and paste the following commands in the putty terminal (you can copy whole script)

sudo apt update

sudo apt install curl

curl -sL https://gist.githubusercontent.com/NodeFarmer/64df55760e2d0ffa2d888dc6198df923/raw/rivalzVPSFix.sh | bash