Testnet Changelog - December 24th, 2020

Following on from last week’s “soft launch” local testnet announcement, today’s dev update will solely consist of the bug fixing progress. We still have a couple of outstanding issues which we would like to investigate further before considering the network stable enough to host a public testnet for everyone. With the majority of the team already enjoying some well deserved rest, we believe it will be the New Year before we next update you on our progress.

Bug Fixes

Here’s a list of fixes we’ve implemented over the past 7 days:

  • sn_api: known issue in authorising CLI, as reported in last week’s dev update, was solved - PR 659
  • sn_cli: fix $ safe update command as it was not looking up in the correct URL - PR 660
  • sn_cli: change the default number of nodes launched by $ safe node run-baby-fleming command to 11 (eleven nodes) - also PR 660
  • sn_cli: install script had an issue for Mac users - PR 661
  • sn_node: return Balance(0) when no db found - PR 1188

These fixes have resulted in new versions of the CLI, sn_authd and sn_node since last week’s update. One issue discovered was with the CLI update command itself, therefore you’ll need to re-install the CLI rather than update it. You can do this by following the instructions in the download section of the User Guide, i.e.:

$ curl -so- https://sn-api.s3.amazonaws.com/install.sh | bash

With the latest CLI (v0.17.0) installed, you can re-install authd (v0.0.13) and sn_node (0.25.18), or simply update them with the following two commands:

$ safe auth update
$ safe node update

Once these three are updated, your local testnet can be launched again, as described below.

Creating Your Own Local Testnet

Once you have installed the latest CLI, authd and node, you can launch a local network following the steps below:

$ safe node run-baby-fleming

This will launch 11 nodes on your machine: 6 adults and 5 elders.

We can also add further nodes to the network, this is achieved using safe node join as follows.

Note that you may need to set the RUST_LOG environment variable before starting your node to prevent the logs from being too verbose.

## for Linux and Mac OS
$ export RUST_LOG=sn_node=trace
## Windows (command prompt)
$ set RUST_LOG=trace
## Windows (powershell)
$ $env:RUST_LOG="sn_node=trace"

And then start the node with:

$ safe node join
Storing nodes' generated data at ~/.safe/node/local-node
Starting a node to join a Safe network...
Launching with node executable from: ~/.safe/node/sn_node
Node started with hardcoded contact(s): ["127.0.0.1:12000"]
Launching node...
Node logs are being stored at: ~/.safe/node/local-node/sn_node.log

Your node will now launch and attempt to connect to your local network. You can keep an eye on its progress via its logs, which can be found at ~/.safe/node/local-node/sn_node.log.

Before working your way through the CLI commands to perform various actions on the network, remember to authenticate and create your Safe.

Known Issues

  • Inter-section messages have been observed being dropped. This seems to occur when the network goes through high loads while testing and the messaging breaks after a certain point. We think this could be related to the OOM issue mentioned below, therefore we’d need to take a closer look at the underlying mechanics just to be sure we aren’t missing anything critical.

  • Over time a node’s memory use continues increasing and would eventually lead to out of memory. Initial investigations show that this is primarily down to logging, which is not deallocating as it should, but requires further investigation.

Where can I report any issues found?

Please continue to let us know if you come across any issues in your testing. You can do so by reporting these issues in the comments on this topic’s thread. We will monitor and investigate these as soon as we can.

And Finally…

With the end of the year fast approaching and the majority of the team already taking a well deserved break, we would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for your help, support, encouragement, faith in the project and constructive criticism over the last year. It has been a particularly eventful year for everyone I’m sure, but you have genuinely inspired and assisted us the whole way through.

Our next official update is expected to be on Thursday, 7th January 2021.

Everyone here at MaidSafe wishes you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. May 2021 be filled with success, happiness, and prosperity for you all.

Nollaig chridheil agus bliadhna mhath ùr

Useful Links


Feel free to reply below with links to translations of this dev update and moderators will add them here:

As an open source project, we’re always looking for feedback, comments and community contributions - so don’t be shy, join in and let’s create the Safe Network together!

75 Likes

:christmas_tree: Thank you all at MaidSafe and have a great Christmas break :christmas_tree:

vdash Node Monitor

For anyone playing with this update, you can use vdash v0.5.1 to monitor your nodes.

If you have Rust, update or install vdash with cargo install vdash. If you are on Windows things are a bit more complicated, so refer to the instructions on github for details.

35 Likes

Second!!!

Errr I’ll second what @happybeing said. Have a good Xmas break and don’t mingle too much. Just relax - its been a weird time. I want to see you ALL here, dev team and forumites as well,. this time next year when we can have a proper party.

Have a good one eveybody.

18 Likes

There’s also an extra special present under the tree courtesy of @Miguelo here:

22 Likes

Does this still count as third?

Thank you so much for all the hard work and persistence, MaidSafe!! Wishing you all a wonderful, restful Merry Christmas and prosperous New Year!! :smile: :christmas_tree:

18 Likes

Nollaig Chridheil?

Strconv(StrReverse(“Nollaig Chridheil”), vbProperCase)

Aha: Liehdirhc Giallon

Strconv(StrReverse(“!Fijne Feestdagen”), vbProperCase)

There: Negadtseef Enjif!

5 Likes

Are you using a morphological analyzer, @JBishop ? Can I ask which one?

1 Like

No, had to quit. Having been warned of:

The Fate of Morphological Complexity in Language Death: Evidence from East Sutherland Gaelic

Speakers being evicted from their fertile valleys …

5 Likes

Merry Christmas everyone! Enjoy your days off and get some well deserved rest! :racehorse:

9 Likes

The link is not working, if it’s a link.

Memory is a little foggy, was node OOM issues not the thorn in the side of the last tests too?

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Document is titled this way but I deemed actually linking to it less important when I just wanted to pull someone’s leg.

Unkind? Fake link was correctly constructed, serving as a ‘page jump’, though a short one:

PLEASE NOTICE the # sign in there. We need that to denote it is an internal link. Without the # sign, the browser looks for something outside the page.

Then the forum-software ate most of it … Sorry there @Sascha :slight_smile:

1 Like

Morphological complexity is alive and well here in Finland. Don’t even try processing it on a Windows machine… :wink:

Not my field really but I’ve seen enough to think they, can you say “Fins”, have a name to lose :slightly_smiling_face:


Finns

(But “pulling legs” and “losing names” requires much more complex automata/automatons.) :wink:

Memory issue in Rust can be very annoying in my experience, even if you don’t touch unsafe.
I now write “mem tests” for any crates on exposed/public functionality, and crate shatter when possible.
I find this approach saves me a lot of time, using rust tools to find leaks is time consuming. You do have to set #[global_allocator] to a custom allocator to keep track of allocs and frees. Call the function in a loop a billion times, check for leaks.

6 Likes

Yes, it is not of the same scale though. Here it’s a bug, then it was a design issue. So we are all good here :+1:

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Thanks for all your hard work this year @maidsafe! The grit and determination of this team is something to behold.

It feels like the public test net is super close now and I feel this community and the wider crypto space are starting to wake up to it. I’m thrilled at what people will do with it and what dapps will emerge from it.

Enjoy your Christmas and take a good rest. The big end of year push was much appreciated, so make sure you kick back and rest up. Everything else can wait until after the new year has started!

16 Likes

I got to read this - East Sutherland is my tribes hunting grounds, well after they got kicked out of North Sutherland and managed to avoid being shipped off to Canada or worse…

Can I get the real link please? Too busy preparing food (at the wives direction) to feed 10 folk for 3 days – Its just going to be 5 of us for tonight and tomorrow…

1 Like

Here, in a bit, err, unauthorized storage location:

The Fate of Morphological Complexity in Language Death: Evidence from East Sutherland Gaelic

3 Likes