Mainnet-Staging October 2019

Mainnet-Staging October 2019#

This release changes the storage backend and requires specific care when updating.

The new storage backend uses a different file format for context files, which contain chain data. As a result, a mainnet node in archive mode requires less than 40GB disk space, compared to more than 200GB before that.

To upgrade a mainnet node which is in archive mode, you need to bootstrap from scratch (delete the old context and store folders in the .tezos-node data directory, otherwise the node will not start). The synchronization process usually takes a few days. Don’t forget to run your node with --history-mode=archive as this setting will be lost.

To upgrade a mainnet node which is not in archive mode, export a snapshot before updating to this release. Then update your node and import the snapshot.

If you were testing the feature on branch mainnet-pack-validator, you were already using the new storage format and you do not need to bootstrap from scratch or use a snapshot. However, the storage format did change slightly since this branch and you need to convert it. To this end, update your node and run: dune exec -- vendors/index/fix.exe <data-dir> Depending on your hardware this can take a few minutes.

Another notable change is that validation now runs in an external process. This means, in particular, that your node should be more responsive to RPC calls. This behavior can be disable using command-line flag --singleprocess.

Changelog#

Shell#

  • Improve storage efficiency by switching from LMDB to new pack backend

  • Make validation run in an external process (can be disabled with –singleprocess)

  • Improve bootstrap efficiency

  • Slightly improve log readability

  • Remove hardcoded testchain TTL

Docker Images#

  • Default Docker image is now stripped of debug symbols, reducing size by 70Mb

  • New bare image is also stripped and does not have the alphanet.sh entrypoint

  • New debug image is the old default image, i.e. not stripped

Codec#

  • New binary: tezos-codec to encode and decode Tezos values

Baker#

  • Use preserved_cycles from configuration instead of hard-coded constant

Client#

  • Add --verbose-signing to client for consistency

  • Change output of command hash data (replace Hash with Script-expression-ID-Hash and Raw Script-expression-ID-Hash)

All Binaries#

  • Handle SIGINT and SIGTERM more consistently

Build System#

  • Fix make build-dev-deps so that installing merlin does not change other packages

Contents