What to Expect When Setting Up a Node Witness

Intro
My Names Isaac i'm a professional Computer Programmer, I develop Robotic Process Automation For business during my day job and i recently started the Journey into Crypto as a learning experience and boy have i already learned a Lot. In this article i wanted to Discuss a LOT of things i learned and you should considered BEFORE deciding to setup a node witness!

What Do i Need!
So you might think you know what you need! Yeah your going to turn that old pc in the corner into a money printing machine right? Well probably not but if your like me you may want to experiment with hosting a node for other reasons than sheer profit.
List of requirements

1. Linux Machine Cores 4gb Ram and 500 GB Of Storage
2. Stable Internet and Electricity ( or a backup power supply)
3. Worker bee to stake ( you have to have a little to be an active witness)
4. Hive Work Power ( About 100 Staked Hive)
5. Patients

Lesson 1 RTFM then ASK
Theirs an old saying RTFM ( Read the XXXX manual) there are some great step by step guides on the process you can find on Hive Engine that you can read on how to install Linux. How to install MongoDB and how to setup the steem contracts. That's not my intent to recreate those here. Read them Carefully ( all the way ) give them a try and if you have question ask in the Hive Engine Discord their are plenty of people willing to help. I've never had a problem posting a question there and getting it answered. If all else fails feel free to hit me up and i can try to help you as well.

Lesson 2 Validate Your Linux
This may sound kind of basic but validate that your linux install is working properly before you move on to the next step. I had several errors that caused me to have to "Start over" That i could have avoided if i had completed my linux install and validated it was working properly prior to starting the mongodb and node installs. Heres a list of system items to verify before you proceed with your node setup.

1. Validate your Syslog
2. Validate your kern.log
   ( mine where generating roughly 1 gig per minute of logs this quickly became a problem)
3. Validate your ports 5000, and 5001 are open on Both your machine and any router your using on your home. You may have to set up port forwarding.

Lesson 3 Get The Right Version Combo
Don't Simply Get the newest versions of everything make sure you get the proper versions for the node. This caused me to diverge 3 times. As of the time of writing this the proper version seems to be node 16.13.1 and mongo version 4.4.1

Lesson 4 Be Patient with Mongo Restores
My System has 8 cores with 16gigs of ram and it still takes nearly 18 hours for a full mongo restore operations to take effect. Make sure you set your system to run and leave it uninterrupted to get the best of your restore operations. Also if you test your node before the restore even for a minute go ahead and dump the old database directly before you do the restore.

Thats what I've got for you guys as of now. I'll keep this updated with anything else i learn along the way. These are just a few quick tips i wanted to share that i had learned along the way as far as getting your hive engine witness node up and running.