How can I set up an RPC node for the Solana testnet

Question

There are only articles to start with a local validator. I don't want to start any local validator; I want to run an RPC node for the real testnet. How can I do it? I can't find any documentation regarding it. I only found this: https://nodes.guru/testnets/solana/setup-guide/en, but it’s still not working and showing the error:

[2024-09-27T13:39:43.745284020Z ERROR solana_validator] Failed to start validator: "failed to load bank: AccountsFile error: I/O error: Disk quota exceeded (os error 122), full snapshot archive: /efs/solana_node/ledger/remote/snapshot-294878673-a6AxTznrH1mgMp6UhcP8Y7x4LXswTk7Grob8TFaRtSm.tar.zst, incremental snapshot archive: /efs/solana_node/ledger/remote/incremental-snapshot-294878673-294889827-D1ggzreWHaL2uYCP9bT9BK99vyMaUWBZo7CakF191EFj.tar.zst"

Please help me set up a testnet node. Thanks. Please don’t delete my message; just let me know in which chanel to ask, as the Solana exchange is super slow and no one is responding there.

//solana discord mods removed me for this question, no freedom of speed.

Answer 1

Solana Labs has a docs page (which will likely be moved soon) about how to setup a node against testnet: https://docs.solanalabs.com/operations/setup-a-validator

The error of a disk quota exceeded might persist even if you follow these directions though. Be sure to provision enough disk space in your VM.

Answer 2

Your best bet is probably to test directly on devnet if that's what you want to do. If you're using Anchor you can configure your tests for devnet:

[provider]
cluster = "devnet"

Running anchor tests in this environment will deploy your program to devnet.

If using Solana cli:

solana config set --url https://api.devnet.solana.com

You would have to manually deploy your program to devnet.

You need a lot of hardware to run an RPC node, so unless you have a machine with 256Gb of RAM sitting around and a lot of money to burn you probably aren't running your own validator. Devnet is free to use and is the best representation of mainnet.