Create a systemd timer for claiming rewards twice a day

Do you want to claim rewards for a steem account automatically twice a day? When:

• you use a linux system with python and systemctl
• have beem installed
• a wallet created (beempy createwallet --wipe)
• and a posting key stored (beempy addkey)
  then you can follow this tutorial to add a systemd timer for claiming rewards.

Warning

Installing a timer for claiming rewards twice a day is convenient, but involves some risks. We are storing the posting key of an account on a (remote) server. Everyone that manages it to log in as root on the server will be able to receive the posting key. (The wallet password is stored in the script. After copying the wallet-sql library, the attacker can decrypt the stored posting key with the wallet password.)

Never store an owner key or a master key in a beem wallet!

Knowing this, it is advised to immediately change the posting key, when something unusual happens.

At first we need three files:

• steem-claimreward.timer

[Unit]
Description=Claim rewards twice daily

[Timer]
OnCalendar=*-*-* 00,12:00:00
RandomizedDelaySec=43200
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

• steem-claimreward.service

[Unit]
Description=Claim reward service
After=syslog.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
User=root
Group=root
ExecStart=/root/claimreward.sh
SyslogIdentifier=steem-claimreward
StandardOutput=syslog
StandardError=syslog

• claimreward.sh

#!/bin/bash
beempy updatenodes
export UNLOCK='Your-Wallet-Password'
beempy claimreward yoursteemacc

We store steem-claimreward.timer and steem-claimreward.service in /etc/systemd/system.

cp steem-claimreward.*  /etc/systemd/system

The bash script is moved to /root. In order to increase security, we assure that only root can read this file:

chmod 700 /root/claimreward.sh

It is also possible to replace the root user by another user in the steem-claimreward.service. The claimreward.sh has than to moved to a place the user can access.

Now, replace yoursteemacc with the account name from which you want to claim (posting key of this account has to be stored into the beempy wallet). Then you have to replace Your-Wallet-Password with your beempy wallet password.

Activate the timer

systemctl reenable --now steem-claimreward.timer

activates the timer. With

systemctl list-timers

or

systemctl status steem-claimreward.timer

you can check for the next execution time point.

The log file can be viewed by:

journalctl -f -u  steem-claimreward

Controlling the timer

• enable

systemctl enable steem-claimreward.timer

• disable

systemctl disable steem-claimreward.timer

• start

systemctl start steem-claimreward.timer

• stop

systemctl stop steem-claimreward.timer

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