This guide will walk you through the process of setting up your Proteus for the first time, connecting it to your network, registering with Rocket Pool, and starting your Ethereum staking adventure.

If you purchased one of the conversion kits instead of a complete unit, please see the assembly guide first before following this guide.

NOTE: If you purchased an active-cooled unit with model number MSPR-ACN100 or MSPR-ACW100, please read the following guide before connecting your Proteus to learn about and resolve a design flaw with the Rock 5B that causes the SSD to become disconnected:

Fixing the SSD Mount

Before turning your Proteus on, please do the following:

1. Join the community Discord server! All of our updates for both the Proteus and Rocket Pool Smartnode are published in the Rocket Pool Discord at https://discord.gg/rocketpool. Please join the server to be notified of any updates, ask for help, or just look for more info.

2. Ensure that no other USB device will ever be plugged into the Proteus's power supply! The power supply is NOT a normal USB supply - it is actually 12v instead of 5v, and it will destroy any other device such as a cellphone. We have included a red warning label on it stating this, but please take whatever additional precautions you think are necessary to make 100% sure that neither you, not anyone else, plugs a normal USB device into this power supply.

3. Ensure that the power supply has the correct plug for your region. The power supply we provide has an interchangeable adapter for different regions, but for the sake of saving space during shipping we only provide the one you ordered it with. If there's been a mistake and you received the wrong adapter, let us know and we'll ship the correct one to you.

4. We recommend using a monitor and keyboard to interact with the Proteus at first boot to connect to your wireless network (if using Wi-Fi) and determine its IP address. You can remove them afterwards once you know its IP address.

   1. If you don't have a monitor and keyboard you can use, you will have to be familiar with your router's list of connected devices so you can find the IP address assigned to the Proteus.
   2. If you're using Wi-Fi, you must use a monitor and keyboard in order to enter your Wi-Fi network's name and password.

5. If you're using the Wi-Fi module to connect to your network, make sure the Proteus is close to your router or access point so it can get a strong signal. Running a node over Wi-Fi tends to be particularly sensitive to network noise and signal strengh, so if you have to go this route instead of using a wired Ethernet connection, give it the strongest and cleanest signal possible.

6. Once you plug the power supply into the Proteus, it will start up automatically. Do not plug the power into the Proteus until you're ready for it to start.

Prior to turning it on, connect all of the input cables you'd like to use remembering that plugging the power supply in will cause the machine to start:

• If you're connecting to a monitor, either of the HDMI ports will work.
• If you're using a keyboard, any of the USB ports will work though we recommend using one of the black USB 2.0 ports because they're slower than the blue USB 3.1 ports and are ideal for low-speed devices like keyboards.
• If you're using an Ethernet cable, plug it in now.

When you're ready to turn it on, plug the power supply into the USB-C power input plug. This will cause it to boot automatically.

Ensure the blue power LED and red activity LED on the Front Panel are both on and functioning properly.

For the following guide, we're going to assume you're using a monitor and keyboard plugged directly into the Proteus to do the initial configuration since that's the most consistent setup.

The first time the Proteus boots up, it will do some initialization and then restart automatically. This is expected.

After the restart, you will be prompted with the login screen:

Debian GNU/Linux 11 proteus tty1

proteus login:

If you're using a monitor and keyboard attached to the Proteus,

The default username and password are both rock:

• Enter the default username of rock (then press enter)
• Enter the default password of rock

You will then be asked to change your password. Enter the current password first (rock), then enter a new, secure password of your choice two times. Once you complete this, you will be logged in.

If you're not using Wi-Fi, you can skip this step and move to the "Finding your IP Address" section below.

If you're using Wi-Fi, the first order of business is to connect to your network.

Start by ensuring the Wi-Fi radio is turned on. It is on by default, but it doesn't hurt to make sure:

sudo nmcli radio wifi on

If this doesn't print an error message, then the radio has been enabled.

Next, scan the list of available networks:

sudo nmcli device wifi

This will show all of the Wi-Fi networks the Proteus can see - for example:

IN-USE  BSSID              SSID   MODE   CHAN  RATE        SIGNAL  BARS  SECURITY         
        AB:CD:EF:00:01:02  NET1   Infra  9     195 Mbit/s  67      ***   WPA2             
        AB:CD:EF:00:01:03  NET2   Infra  9     195 Mbit/s  62      ***   WPA2             
        AB:CD:EF:00:01:04  --     Infra  6     195 Mbit/s  44      **    WPA1 WPA2 802.1X     

Here's how to interpret this list:

• The IN-USE column shows which one you're currently connected to.
• The BSSID column is for advanced use only, you can ignore it unless you think someone's trying to spoof your network by using the same Wi-Fi name as you.
• The SSID column shows the Wi-Fi name of the network.
• The MODE and CHAN columns aren't important.
• The RATE column shows the maximum speed of the network. Actual speeds will usually be a little slower than this, depending on signal strength and noise from other Wi-Fi devices.
• The SIGNAL and BARS columns show the relative signal strength for the network. You want SIGNAL to be as close to 100 as possible and BARS to show four stars for the best signal strength.
• The SECURITY column shows which Wi-Fi security protocol the network supports. WPA2 is the standard now.
  • NOTE: you should not use a network that doesn't have WPA2.

You should see your Wi-Fi network from this list. To connect to it, enter the following command:

sudo nmcli device wifi connect "<network name>" --ask

where <network_name> is the name of your Wi-Fi network. For example, if I wanted to connect to NET2 above, I'd enter this:

sudo nmcli device wifi connect "NET2" --ask

This will prompt you for the password to your Wi-Fi network. Once you've entered it, you should see a successful connection message. Running sudo nmcli device wifi again should now have a * in the IN-USE column for your network:

IN-USE  BSSID              SSID   MODE   CHAN  RATE        SIGNAL  BARS  SECURITY         
        AB:CD:EF:00:01:02  NET1   Infra  9     195 Mbit/s  67      ***   WPA2             
*       AB:CD:EF:00:01:03  NET2   Infra  9     195 Mbit/s  62      ***   WPA2             
        AB:CD:EF:00:01:04  --     Infra  6     195 Mbit/s  44      **    WPA1 WPA2 802.1X     

With that, you're connected and ready to continue.

Once connected to the network, find the machine's IP address using the following command:

sudo ifconfig | grep -A 2 -E "(enP|wlP)"

This will show you the IP address for your Ethernet adapter (if using a hardwire) or your Wi-Fi card (if using Wi-Fi), or both if using both for some reason. I have both connected in the example output below, so you can see what each one looks like when connected:

rock@proteus:~$ sudo ifconfig | grep -A 2 -E "(enP|wlP)"
enP4p65s0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.1.241  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.1.255
        inet6 fe80::4449:ab3b:fd69:d071  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
--
wlP2p33s0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.1.236  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.1.255
        inet6 fe80::70f1:4d32:56db:4cdc  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>

This shows your Proteus's network connections and its IP address.

• The IP address for each device is next to the inet label.
• The enP4p65s0 entry is the hardwired Ethernet adapter. Its IP is 192.168.1.241.
• The wlP2p33s0 entry is the Wi-Fi card. Its IP is 192.168.1.236.
• The names of your devices might not be the same as mine, but Ethernet will always start with enP and Wi-Fi will always start with wlP.

If anything ever changes with your network, you can always come back and use this command to find the IP address of your machine.

NOTE: if you don't want to use a remote connection and prefer to maintain your Proteus with a local monitor and keyboard attached at all times, you can disable SSH and skip this step.

Now that you have your Proteus's IP address, you don't need to use the local monitor and keyboard anymore if you don't want to. You can connect to the Proteus remotely, such as from your laptop or desktop, by using the Secure Shell (ssh) protocol.

If you're not familiar with ssh, the Rocket Pool documentation has an excellent guide that walks you through how to configure and use it. Please visit that guide first, and come back when you've successfully remotely connected to your Proteus via ssh.

An SSH server is installed on the Proteus automatically so you can connect to it right away. However, before continuing, please carefully follow Rocket Pool's SSH security setup documentation to secure the SSH server since doing so needs to be done by you once the Proteus is safely in your hands. You need to follow the section titled "Secure your SSH Access"" only. This will help ensure your remote connection is as secure as possible.

NOTE: the sections that come after the "Secure your SSH Access" section have already been done. The Proteus comes out-of-the-box with the firewall, automatic updates, and brute-force protection already installed. The only thing you need to do is follow the "Secure your SSH Access" guide.

Before running a node, you should first make sure your Proteus is up to date with the latest software.

Please follow this short guide from the Rocket Pool documentation to learn how to do this for your machine, and return back here when you're done.

The Proteus comes with the Rocket Pool Smartnode and all of its dependencies installed out of the box. However, the image it's using might not have the latest Smartnode version depending on how long it takes to ship.

To find the current Smartnode version, run the following command:

rocketpool --version

This will output something like the following:

rocketpool version 1.7.3

In this case, the Proteus is using Smartnode v1.7.3.

To find the latest stable release: please visit this URL in your browser: https://github.com/rocket-pool/smartnode-install/releases/latest

If the version number in that link is the same as your Proteus shows, then you're up to date. If it's newer, then please follow the Rocket Pool documentation for updating your Smartnode but stop after running rocketpool service install -d. We'll configure the Smartnode in the next step, so you don't have to do it as part of the update process.

Once you're all up to date, your Proteus is now essentially just a regular staking machine. You can follow the conventional setup guides and don't need to worry about any other special configuration!

Please start with the standard Rocket Pool configuration guides. We recommend the following setup for the Proteus:

• Execution Client: Geth (the others still require too much RAM right now, but they're working on it)
• Consensus Client: Any

Once you've finished configuring the Smartnode, please follow the standard Rocket Pool starting-up guides to become a member of the network and begin staking.

If you get stuck or need help at any point along the way, please come to the Rocket Pool Discord at https://discord.gg/rocketpool and head to our #support channel. The vast majority of problems are going to be typical Linux or networking problems that other node operators have run into and won't be specific to the Proteus. Our very knowledgeable community members will be able to help you resolve your issues and get you up and running.