Connect GUI to Remote Node

The Anemos GUI can connect to a remote node instead of a local one. This enables you to easily monitor your node on any VPS from your personal computer. Managing your nodes, sending transactions, and monitoring validators can all be done through the GUI application.

In this document, we explain the ways you can connect to your node through the Anemos GUI.

Bare Connection

To connect to your node, the gRPC service of your remote node must be enabled. The gRPC connection is unencrypted by default, so the connection between the GUI and your node is bare and unencrypted.

Here is an example of how you can connect to your node:

./anemos-gui -grpc-addr http://texplorer.anemos.one:50051 -grpc-insecure

anemos-gui.exe -grpc-addr http://texplorer.anemos.one:50051 -grpc-insecure

The example above uses texplorer.anemos.one:50051, the public Testnet explorer node. You can point it at any node you control instead — its host and gRPC port, for example a Testnet seed such as tseed0.anemos.one:50051 or your own <node-host>:50051. The -grpc-insecure flag indicates that the connection is not secure and not encrypted. We do not recommend enabling the wallet service in this mode, as all credentials and information you send or receive may be observed by a man-in-the-middle attacker.

Secure Connection

One simple way to secure the gRPC connection is to wrap it over the https protocol. This is known as gRPC-Web, which also lets browser and other web clients reach the node (browsers can’t speak native gRPC directly).

The public Testnet explorer already hosts such an endpoint:

• https://texplorer.anemos.one/grpc-web — gRPC-Web over HTTPS for the public Testnet, served by the anemos-explorer node. It is the browser/web-client counterpart to the native gRPC endpoint texplorer.anemos.one:50051 (which remains the right choice for desktop/CLI clients).

./anemos-gui -grpc-addr https://texplorer.anemos.one/grpc-web

To host your own gRPC-Web endpoint on a node you control, follow the Secure Connections tutorial to wrap the gRPC service over https. This requires a domain name and NGINX (plus a gRPC-Web proxy such as grpcwebproxy) on your server. Once set up, point the GUI at your domain, for example https://your-domain.example/grpc-web:

./anemos-gui -grpc-addr https://your-domain.example/grpc-web

anemos-gui.exe -grpc-addr https://your-domain.example/grpc-web

In this case, your connection from your computer to your node is fully encrypted and secure against man-in-the-middle attacks.

Enabling Wallet Service

By default, the wallet service on your node is disabled. You can enable it in the config file; however, if your connection is insecure, we do not recommend it. If you do enable it, make sure you set a strong password for your wallet.

FAQ

I got a server: 403 (Forbidden) error

If you set up your domain using Cloudflare, this is most likely because the Cloudflare gRPC service is disabled. You can check their documentation to enable the gRPC service.

Wallet tab is empty

If the Wallet tab (for example Default Wallet) looks empty, the wallet service on the remote node you connected to is probably still disabled. Enable it in that node’s configuration file as described in Enabling Wallet Service, then restart the node so the change takes effect.