2024 10 16 Testnet Rollback and Restart

Edit

As of 2024-10-18 20:07 UTC testnet is back online. The instructions below are no longer relevant. Nodes that haven't yet joined the cluster will need to update their shred version and start normally:

--expected-shred-version 27799 \

---

This testnet restart is NOT urgent. Follow these instructions when you have time, but don’t skip sleep or disrupt other plans for this.

Summary

In order to restart testnet on v1.18.26 we need to roll back 3 more feature gates that are not yet enabled on mainnet-beta.

Attribute	Value
Validator version	Agave: v1.18.26
Snapshot slot	296877183
Restart slot	296877184
Shred version	27799
Expected bank hash	ABuvd5grMYhbrjeLmu3qCNqiD8DaDRw6oyboMgZfaQS5

Step 1. Stop validator process if you haven’t already

Step 2: Install Agave v1.18.26

This is necessary in order to create the correct snapshot in step 3.

Agave: agave-install init v1.18.26

Frankendancer: Please switch to Agave for this restart and the subsequent upgrade/downgrade cycle.

Step 3. Create snapshot

This command creates a snapshot but removes 3 activated v1.18 feature gate accounts.

agave-ledger-tool --ledger <ledger-path> create-snapshot \
--incremental \
--snapshot-archive-path  <snapshot-path> \
--hard-fork 296877183 \
--deactivate-feature-gate \
7uZBkJXJ1HkuP6R3MJfZs7mLwymBcDbKdqbF51ZWLier \
tvcF6b1TRz353zKuhBjinZkKzjmihXmBAHJdjNYw1sQ \
decoMktMcnmiq6t3u7g5BfgcQu91nKZr6RvMYf9z1Jb \
--  296877183 <snapshot-path>

The output should include this at (or near) the end:

    Successfully created snapshot for slot 296877184, hash ABuvd5grMYhbrjeLmu3qCNqiD8DaDRw6oyboMgZfaQS5: /home/sol/ledger-snapshots/incremental-snapshot-<BASE_SLOT>-296877184-<SNAPSHOT_HASH>.tar.zst
    Shred version: 27799

Note that each operator's snapshot file name may contain different base slot number and hash, but

• the bank hash should be ABuvd5grMYhbrjeLmu3qCNqiD8DaDRw6oyboMgZfaQS5
• the second slot number should be 296877184
• the shred version should be 27799

Once you have created a snapshot move all the other snapshots to a backup directory, so your snapshot directory contains one full snapshot and one incremental snapshot. Note that the <BASE_SLOT> in these two filenames should match.

snapshot-<BASE_SLOT>-<BASE_SNAPSHOT_HASH>.tar.zst
incremental-snapshot-<BASE_SLOT>-296877184-<SNAPSHOT_HASH>.tar.zst

If you fail to create a snapshot see the appendix for possible fixes.

Step 4: Update startup config and start your validator

Agave

Add these arguments to your validator startup script:

--wait-for-supermajority 296877184 \
--expected-shred-version 27799 \
--expected-bank-hash ABuvd5grMYhbrjeLmu3qCNqiD8DaDRw6oyboMgZfaQS5 \

As it starts, the validator will load the snapshot for slot 296877184 and wait for 80% of the stake to come online before producing/validating new blocks.

To confirm your restarted validator is correctly waiting for 80% stake, look for this periodic log message to confirm it is waiting:

INFO  solana_core::validator] Waiting for 80% of activated stake at slot 296877184 to be in gossip...

And if you have RPC enabled, ask it for the current slot:

solana --url http://127.0.0.1:8899 slot

Any number other than 296877184 means you did not complete the steps correctly.

Once started you should see log entries for “active stake” visible in gossip and “waiting for 80% of stake” to be visible. You can track these to see how the stake progresses.

---

Appendix (use this only if step 3 failed)

If you get an error like this:

Error: Slot 296877183 is not available

Or this:

Unable to process blockstore from starting slot <slot> to 296877183; the ending slot is less than the starting slot. The starting slot will be the latest snapshot slot, or genesis if the --no-snapshot flag is specified or if no snapshots are found.

Your snapshots directory contains a snapshot that is for a slot >296877183. If you also have a snapshot for slot <=296877183 then move snapshots for slots >296877183 to a backup directory and run the agave-ledger-tool command again. If you do not have a snapshot for slot <=296877183 then you will need to download a snapshot

If you successfully created a snapshot, resume the instructions above starting at Step 4. If you are unable to create a snapshot, follow the instructions below on downloading a snapshot.

If you couldn’t produce your snapshot locally follow these appendix steps

Step 1: Download a snapshot from a known validator

If you are unable to generate a snapshot locally for slot 296877184 you will need to download one from a known validator. Add these lines to your startup script.

--known-validator 5D1fNXzvv5NjV1ysLjirC4WY92RNsVH18vjmcszZd8on \
--expected-shred-version 27799 \

Remove the flag --no-snapshot-fetch in your startup script if it is present.

Step 2: After download, restart

Verify that you have a new snapshot in your snapshot directory. If the snapshot is done downloading, stop your validator process.

Add the flag --no-snapshot-fetch to your startup script

Resume the instructions above starting at Step 4.