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Support FAQ
Collection of frequently asked questions about coda and testnets.
Q: What is the difference between seed daemon, proposer daemon and snark daemon?
A: In a simple test cluster, you need a few basic components for the network to bootstrap and proceed. (seed, proposer, snarker) These can all run on the same machine for very simple testing.
The seed daemon is used to bootstrap the DHT peer discovery network. It is used as an initial central connection point to learn about other nodes on the network. In the mainnet, several seeds should be maintained all around the globe by the bigger community.
The proposer daemon is needed to propose new blocks (move the network forward). It collects transactions and proposes new blocks containing those transactions. This type of node will also do snark operations on the block and needs good compute capabilities.
The snark daemon is needed to processes and 'prove' each transaction and then merge proofs that 'prove' multiple transactions (recursive snarks). This node is very compute intensive. There's a trade off in scaling where more cores give faster wall clock time, but less efficient overall computation. In initial testing, we have found it's better to limit each snark worker to 8 cores. (different hardware may behave differently)
Q: How do I measure snark performance?
A: There's a profiler that can give some scaling guidance to better guide hardware choices for snarking.
coda transaction-snark-profiler
The final output number in seconds represents multiple snark operations, but should ideally be less than half of your CODA_PROPOSAL_INTERVAL.
You can limit the number of threads by setting the OMP_NUM_THREADS environment variable.
export OMP_NUM_THREADS=8
Q: What should I set my CODA_PROPOSAL_INTERVAL to?
A: In our testnets we usually set this value to 60000 (60 seconds). This has each block advertised on a minute boundary which is very helpful for humans to debug/track/monitor. Our main net should be much faster, but requires more snarking capacity to complete.
Q: How do I know if the daemon is working?
A: A quick way to check if your daemon is running is to have the client send a status request.
coda client status -daemon-port 8301 (default port is 8301)
This will report on how your current daemon sees the network. Important things to look at are the list of Peers (other connected nodes) and the block count. (you want to make sure blocks are increasing every proposal interval)
The other thing to check is for a coda.log file in your config directory. It captures daemon STDOUT and STDERR and is the best place to look if the daemon isn't responding and may have stopped.
Q: How do I figure out the command line options?
A: You can see all the current options for a command by using the keyword 'help' in your cli.
eg. coda client help currently shows:
Lightweight client process
coda client SUBCOMMAND
=== subcommands ===
batch-send-payments send multiple payments from a file
constraint-system-digests Print the md5 digest of each SNARK constraint
system
dump-keypair Print out a keypair from a private key file
dump-ledger Print the ledger with given merkle root as a sexp
generate-keypair Generate a new public-key/private-key pair
get-balance Get balance associated with an address
get-nonce Get the current nonce for an account
get-public-keys Get public keys
prove-payment Generate a proof of a sent payment
send-payment Send payment to an address
snark-job-list List of snark jobs in JSON format
status Get running daemon status
status-clear-hist Clear histograms reported in status
stop-daemon Stop the daemon
wrap-key Wrap a private key into a private key file
help explain a given subcommand (perhaps recursively)
Q: How do I start a mini test cluster?
A: Here is a simple bash script to help initiate a trivial test cluster.
It may quickly go out of date, so consider it a work in progress.
#!/bin/bash
killall coda coda-kademlia exe
sleep 1
export CODA_PROPOSAL_INTERVAL=60000
PORT=8300
COMMON=" -txn-capacity 8 -ip 127.0.0.1"
while [ $PORT -lt 8600 ]
do
CONFDIR="/home/codademo/conf-$PORT"
rm -rf $CONFDIR
CLIENT=$(($PORT + 1))
EXTERNAL=$(($PORT + 2))
PEER=$(($PORT + 3))
REST=$(($PORT + 10))
PORTARGS="-client-port $CLIENT -external-port $EXTERNAL -rest-port $REST"
if [ $PORT -eq 8300 ]; then
echo "Starting seed on port $CLIENT"
EXTRAARGS=""
coda daemon $EXTRAARGS $COMMON $PORTARGS -config-directory $CONFDIR > log-$PORT.txt &
SLEEPTIME=10
echo "Sleeping $SLEEPTIME"
sleep $SLEEPTIME
elif [ $PORT -eq 8400 ]; then
echo "Staring proposer on port $CLIENT"
EXTRAARGS="-propose-key secrets/high -peer 127.0.0.1:8303"
coda daemon $EXTRAARGS $COMMON $PORTARGS -config-directory $CONFDIR > log-$PORT.txt &
elif [ $PORT -eq 8500 ]; then
echo "Staring snarker on port $CLIENT"
EXTRAARGS="-run-snark-worker KNQxdQ2zGPN+xbEinl9//vVvVxIvI/I6UCXiYCj3Bu66afuhDHkBAAAA -peer 127.0.0.1:8303"
coda daemon $EXTRAARGS $COMMON $PORTARGS -config-directory $CONFDIR > log-$PORT.txt &
fi
let PORT=PORT+100
done
sleep infinityQ: What ports are in use by coda?
A: The default ports and their functions are listed below.
- TCP 8301 - client/daemon communications (called client-port on daemon and daemon-port on client)
- TCP 8302 - daemon-to-daemon gossip communications (called external port in daemon)
- UDP 8303 - coda-kademlia peer port (network discovery) (is fixed to external port +1)
Other optional ports
- TCP 8304 - HTTP/REST Port (deprecated) (called rest-port in daemon)
- TCP XXXX - GraphQL Communications (work in progress)