Loki | Weekly Dev Update #57 | Service Node Bug Fixes

Hey Y’all,

This week was particularly busy as we worked towards the final binaries release for the mandatory upgrade period. Thank you to everyone who jumped on testnet and set up nodes – with your help we were able to identify a host of bugs which were fixed in our final 4.0.3 release.

If you are a Service Node operator you should upgrade your node to version 4.0.3. Instructions on how to do this can be found here: https://lokidocs.com/ServiceNodes/SNFullGuide/#updating-your-binaries

Loki Core

Revert to manually serialising checkpoints/quorum: https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/743
Make testing_quorum JSON serialisation work for input: https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/737
New print_sn_state_changes command for showing changes in the network over time: https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/727
Checkpoint quorum fixes: https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/741
Correct checkpoint votes using the wrong quorum: https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/738
Document checkpointing quorum generation rules: https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/733
Checkpointing dereg fix; pre-fork mainnet dereg vote relay fix: https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/732
Merge everything from dev in the last few months back to master: https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/731
Rollback chain when receiving conflicting checkpoints: https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/726
Use autobind IP for outgoing sources: https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/724
Update print_checkpoints to be integration test friendly: https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/723
Rescan chain when difficulty doesn’t match: https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/722
Use quorums N-MAX_REORG_BLOCKS_POST_HF12 for checkpointing: https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/721
Don’t enforce blockhash in checkpoints: https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/720
Add softfork code for Service Node checkpointing: https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/719
Allow state changes to create no conflicting states: https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/718

Loki Launcher

The Loki Launcher is a node JS package that will allow for the independent management of all the components required to run a full Service Node. This includes managing Lokinet, lokid, the Loki Storage Server and any other future applications we require. When Loki Service Nodes begin to route data and store messages for Lokinet and Loki Messenger, we’ll recommend that every single Service Node run the Loki Launcher.

What’s going on this week with Loki Launcher:

We released two versions of the Launcher this week for the 4.0.3 release. There were a lot of fixes for various crashes, but also support to be able to run versions 3 and up of lokid on mainnet. We also added extra startup checks to improve our status accuracy and made some minor user experience improvements.

Changelog:

Prequal additional configuration system for Storage Server
Update prequal ports to test
Rename port names, adjust prequal output
Abort launcher start up if Storage Server port is not open to the public
Handle “port is in use” error handling better
Store stdout/stderr for launcher when backgrounding
Add *-server-port-check args
Wait for blockchain-rpc port to be open before considering start up a success
Temporarily collect Storage Server startup info for 10s in case of problems with output
Report if the launcher was already stopped when stopping internally
Make sure certain modes are only run with root
Activate Storage Server based on blockchain binary version
Only pass version 4 parameters when blockchain binary version 4 or above
Reminders to restart loki-launcher if mode has stopped it
Strip out launcher arguments from passing all the way to blockchain startup
Remove duplicate Storage Server port check when backgrounding
Put try/catch guard around process check to prevent intermittent launcher crashes
When running port test submit a disconnect message when done
Add unhandled exception logger
Improve HUP information format
Process blockchain stderr
Make sure blockchain rpc server is up before starting network/storage
Change Storage Server default port from 8080 to 23023
Up retries for getPublicIPv4
Untangle retry counter with various repos in download-binaries

Github Pulse: Excluding merges, 2 authors have pushed 41 commits to master and 41 commits to all branches. On master, 14 files have changed and there have been 590 additions and 196 deletions

Lokinet

If you’re on our Discord you might catch Jeff or Ryan, the developers of LLARP, live streaming as they code: https://www.twitch.tv/uguu25519, https://www.twitch.tv/neuroscr.

What’s going on this week with Lokinet:

The configuration refactor finally reached a state close to stable. There were lots of MacOS and FreeBSD fixes, and a huge internal change to using IPv6 on tunnel adapters to allow more connections to a hidden service or client.

Changelog:

Revert Tom’s revert-config-refactor : https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/679
Fix llvm8 build, more MacOS fixes, set netid first: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/685
Add function to set thread name: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/688
Allow environmental variables override config: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/687
Remove redundant else blocks: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/690
Add missing cppbackport fs::path constructor: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/692
Should fix FreeBSD build: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/691
Fix FreeBSD build: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/695
Fix minor warnings: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/696
Fix FreeBSD build: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/697
Disable shell hooks by default: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/699
Fix config application: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/703
IPv6 support branch, remove auto in config: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/686
Add FindLibUV and migrate to use it: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/704

Pull Requests:

Modernise LLARP directory: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/693
Matrix build for Travis CI: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/705
Refactor endpoint state management to a new class: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/706

Loki Messenger Desktop

Start building a public chat channel system for Loki Messenger to enable large group chats hosted on external Servers: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-messenger/pull/343
Purge nodes from retrieved swarm list, filter 0.0.0.0 addresses: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-messenger/pull/337

Storage Server

Rename binary to ‘loki-storage’ from ‘httpserver’ : https://github.com/loki-project/loki-storage-server/pull/236
Show warning if compiled without signatures: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-storage-server/pull/233
Show the reason the Storage Server is not being activated: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-storage-server/pull/232
Provide a min version for libsodium: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-storage-server/pull/228
Improve error accuracy and logging: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-storage-server/pull/223, https://github.com/loki-project/loki-storage-server/pull/227, https://github.com/loki-project/loki-storage-server/pull/221.
Print endpoint with tostring: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-storage-server/pull/222
Default Service Node signatures to on: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-storage-server/pull/220
Bootstrap on startup and use the target height from bootstrap nodes to determine when we have finished syncing: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-storage-server/pull/219
Cancel the deadline timer as soon as possible for incoming connections: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-storage-server/pull/218
Don’t use a potentially closed socket: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-storage-server/pull/217

Loki Blocks Onion Explorer

The Loki block explorer has been expanded to show a number of new things, including checkpoints and their votes and decommissioned or inactive nodes.

Updated RPC changes around quorum state calls in 4.0.2 (replaced batch quorum calls with new quorum states call).
Add checkpoint quorum display to quorum states page and to main index.
Add display of a single obligations or checkpoint quorum, linked where appropriate.
Cut off quorum display after 20 nodes with a “+ 7 more ↪” that links to the full obligations quorum details.
Add a list of last three checkpoints to the main page (and a link to a page with up to 50 fully displayed). https://github.com/loki-project/loki-onion-blockchain-explorer/pull/1