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Running mainnet node

Minimum Requirements

To run mainnet or testnet validator nodes, you will need a machine with the following minimum hardware requirements:

  • 4 or more physical CPU cores
  • At least 500GB of SSD disk storage
  • At least 16GB of memory (RAM)
  • At least 100mbps network bandwidth

As the usage of the blockchain grows, the server requirements may increase as well, so you should have a plan for updating your server as well.

Initialize Chain

1. Clone home directory into ~/.tenetd

git clone https://github.com/tenet-org/tenet-mainnet.git ~/.tenetd

2. Download binary

Download binary from the v11.0.7 release. Extract archive.

tip

If you want to sync your node from snapshot: enable statesync in ~/.tenetd/config/config.toml and replace binary with the latest release.

Note that you should do it before first start, otherwise you will need to delete ~/.tenetd directory and start again.

3. Install cosmovisor

Download binary from the v1.6.0 release. Extract archive.

4. Setup cosmovisor

export DAEMON_NAME=tenetd
export DAEMON_HOME=$HOME/.tenetd
export DAEMON_RESTART_AFTER_UPGRADE=true
./cosmovisor init ./bin/tenetd

5. Start and sync node

./cosmovisor run start

6. Create Your Validator

Your node consensus public key (tenetvalconspub...) can be used to create a new validator by staking atenet tokens. You can find your validator pubkey by running:

./tenetd tendermint show-validator

You can generate an account for validator by running:

./tenetd keys add my_val_key

Do not forget to top up created address with sufficient funds

To create your validator on mainnet, just use the following command:

./tenetd tx staking create-validator \
--amount=1000000000000000000atenet \
--pubkey=$(./tenetd tendermint show-validator) \
--moniker="choose a moniker" \
--commission-rate="0.05" \
--commission-max-rate="0.10" \
--commission-max-change-rate="0.01" \
--min-self-delegation="1000000" \
--gas="auto" \
--gas-prices="20000000000atenet" \
--gas-adjustment=1.5 \
--from=my_val_key

Edit Validator Description

You can edit your validator's public description. This info is to identify your validator, and will be relied on by delegators to decide which validators to stake to. Make sure to provide input for every flag below. If a flag is not included in the command the field will default to empty (--moniker defaults to the machine name) if the field has never been set or remain the same if it has been set in the past.

The <key_name> specifies which validator you are editing. If you choose to not include some of the flags below, remember that the --from flag must be included to identify the validator to update.

The --identity can be used as to verify identity with systems like Keybase or UPort. When using Keybase, --identity should be populated with a 16-digit string that is generated with a keybase.io account. It's a cryptographically secure method of verifying your identity across multiple online networks. The Keybase API allows us to retrieve your Keybase avatar. This is how you can add a logo to your validator profile.

./tenetd tx staking edit-validator \
--moniker="choose a moniker" \
--website="https://cosmos.network" \
--identity=6A0D65E29A4CBC8E \
--details="To infinity and beyond!" \
--chain-id="tenet_1559-1" \
--gas="auto" \
--gas-prices="0.0025atenet" \
--from=<key_name> \
--commission-rate="0.10"
Warning

Please note that some parameters such as commission-max-rate and commission-max-change-rate cannot be changed once your validator is up and running.

Note: The commission-rate value must adhere to the following rules:

  • Must be between 0 and the validator's commission-max-rate
  • Must not exceed the validator's commission-max-change-rate which is maximum % point change rate per day. In other words, a validator can only change its commission once per day and within commission-max-change-rate bounds.

Track Validator Signing Information

In order to keep track of a validator's signatures in the past you can do so by using the signing-info command:

./tenetd query slashing signing-info <validator-pubkey>

Unjail Validator

When a validator is "jailed" for downtime, you must submit an Unjail transaction from the operator account in order to be able to get block proposer rewards again (depends on the zone fee distribution).

./tenetd tx slashing unjail \
--from=<key_name>

Confirm Your Validator is Running Your validator is active if the following command returns anything:

./tenetd query tendermint-validator-set | grep "$(./tenetd tendermint show-address)"

You should now see your validator in one of Tenet explorers. You are looking for the bech32 encoded address in the ~/.tenetd/config/priv_validator.json file.

Halting Your Validator

When attempting to perform routine maintenance or planning for an upcoming coordinated upgrade, it can be useful to have your validator systematically and gracefully halt. You can achieve this by either setting the halt-height to the height at which you want your node to shutdown or by passing the --halt-height flag to tenetd. The node will shutdown with a zero exit code at that given height after committing the block.

Common Problems

Problem #1: My validator has voting_power: 0

Your validator has become jailed. Validators get jailed, i.e. get removed from the active validator set, if they do not vote on 500 of the last 10000 blocks, or if they double sign.

If you got jailed for downtime, you can get your voting power back to your validator. First, if tenetd is not running, start it up again:

./tenetd start

Wait for your full node to catch up to the latest block. Then, you can unjail your validator

Lastly, check your validator again to see if your voting power is back.

./tenetd status

You may notice that your voting power is less than it used to be. That's because you got slashed for downtime!

Problem #2: My node crashes because of too many open files

The default number of files Linux can open (per-process) is 1024. tenetd is known to open more than 1024 files. This causes the process to crash. A quick fix is to run ulimit -n 4096 (increase the number of open files allowed) and then restart the process with tenetd start. If you are using systemd or another process manager to launch tenetd this may require some configuration at that level. A sample systemd file to fix this issue is below:

# /etc/systemd/system/tenetd.service
[Unit]
Description=Tenet Node
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=ubuntu
WorkingDirectory=/home/ubuntu
Environment=DAEMON_NAME=tenetd
Environment=DAEMON_HOME=/home/tenet/.tenetd
Environment=DAEMON_RESTART_AFTER_UPGRADE=true
ExecStart=/home/ubuntu/go/bin/cosmovisor start
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=3
LimitNOFILE=4096

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target