# Running in production
# Database
By default, Tendermint uses the syndtr/goleveldb package for its in-process
key-value database. If you want maximal performance, it may be best to install
the real C-implementation of LevelDB and compile Tendermint to use that using
make build TENDERMINT_BUILD_OPTIONS=cleveldb. See the install
instructions for details.
Tendermint keeps multiple distinct databases in the $TMROOT/data:
blockstore.db: Keeps the entire blockchain - stores blocks, block commits, and block meta data, each indexed by height. Used to sync new peers.evidence.db: Stores all verified evidence of misbehaviour.state.db: Stores the current blockchain state (ie. height, validators, consensus params). Only grows if consensus params or validators change. Also used to temporarily store intermediate results during block processing.tx_index.db: Indexes txs (and their results) by tx hash and by DeliverTx result events.
By default, Tendermint will only index txs by their hash and height, not by their DeliverTx result events. See indexing transactions for details.
Applications can expose block pruning strategies to the node operator. Please read the documentation of your application to find out more details.
Applications can use state sync to help nodes bootstrap quickly.
# Logging
Default logging level (log_level = "main:info,state:info,statesync:info,*:error") should suffice for
normal operation mode. Read this
post (opens new window)
for details on how to configure log_level config variable. Some of the
modules can be found here. If
you're trying to debug Tendermint or asked to provide logs with debug
logging level, you can do so by running Tendermint with
--log_level="*:debug".
# Write Ahead Logs (WAL)
Tendermint uses write ahead logs for the consensus (cs.wal) and the mempool
(mempool.wal). Both WALs have a max size of 1GB and are automatically rotated.
# Consensus WAL
The consensus.wal is used to ensure we can recover from a crash at any point
in the consensus state machine.
It writes all consensus messages (timeouts, proposals, block part, or vote)
to a single file, flushing to disk before processing messages from its own
validator. Since Tendermint validators are expected to never sign a conflicting vote, the
WAL ensures we can always recover deterministically to the latest state of the consensus without
using the network or re-signing any consensus messages.
If your consensus.wal is corrupted, see below.
# Mempool WAL
The mempool.wal logs all incoming txs before running CheckTx, but is
otherwise not used in any programmatic way. It's just a kind of manual
safe guard. Note the mempool provides no durability guarantees - a tx sent to one or many nodes
may never make it into the blockchain if those nodes crash before being able to
propose it. Clients must monitor their txs by subscribing over websockets,
polling for them, or using /broadcast_tx_commit. In the worst case, txs can be
resent from the mempool WAL manually.
For the above reasons, the mempool.wal is disabled by default. To enable, set
mempool.wal_dir to where you want the WAL to be located (e.g.
data/mempool.wal).
# DOS Exposure and Mitigation
Validators are supposed to setup Sentry Node Architecture to prevent Denial-of-service attacks.
# P2P
The core of the Tendermint peer-to-peer system is MConnection. Each
connection has MaxPacketMsgPayloadSize, which is the maximum packet
size and bounded send & receive queues. One can impose restrictions on
send & receive rate per connection (SendRate, RecvRate).
The number of open P2P connections can become quite large, and hit the operating system's open
file limit (since TCP connections are considered files on UNIX-based systems). Nodes should be
given a sizable open file limit, e.g. 8192, via ulimit -n 8192 or other deployment-specific
mechanisms.
# RPC
Endpoints returning multiple entries are limited by default to return 30 elements (100 max). See the RPC Documentation (opens new window) for more information.
Rate-limiting and authentication are another key aspects to help protect against DOS attacks. Validators are supposed to use external tools like NGINX (opens new window) or traefik (opens new window) to achieve the same things.
# Debugging Tendermint
If you ever have to debug Tendermint, the first thing you should probably do is check out the logs. See How to read logs, where we explain what certain log statements mean.
If, after skimming through the logs, things are not clear still, the next thing
to try is querying the /status RPC endpoint. It provides the necessary info:
whenever the node is syncing or not, what height it is on, etc.
/dump_consensus_state will give you a detailed overview of the consensus
state (proposer, latest validators, peers states). From it, you should be able
to figure out why, for example, the network had halted.
There is a reduced version of this endpoint - /consensus_state, which returns
just the votes seen at the current height.
If, after consulting with the logs and above endpoints, you still have no idea
what's happening, consider using tendermint debug kill sub-command. This
command will scrap all the available info and kill the process. See
Debugging for the exact format.
You can inspect the resulting archive yourself or create an issue on Github (opens new window). Before opening an issue however, be sure to check if there's no existing issue (opens new window) already.
# Monitoring Tendermint
Each Tendermint instance has a standard /health RPC endpoint, which responds
with 200 (OK) if everything is fine and 500 (or no response) - if something is
wrong.
Other useful endpoints include mentioned earlier /status, /net_info and
/validators.
Tendermint also can report and serve Prometheus metrics. See Metrics.
tendermint debug dump sub-command can be used to periodically dump useful
information into an archive. See Debugging for more
information.
# What happens when my app dies
You are supposed to run Tendermint under a process supervisor (opens new window) (like systemd or runit). It will ensure Tendermint is always running (despite possible errors).
Getting back to the original question, if your application dies, Tendermint will panic. After a process supervisor restarts your application, Tendermint should be able to reconnect successfully. The order of restart does not matter for it.
# Signal handling
We catch SIGINT and SIGTERM and try to clean up nicely. For other signals we use the default behavior in Go: Default behavior of signals in Go programs (opens new window).
# Corruption
NOTE: Make sure you have a backup of the Tendermint data directory.
# Possible causes
Remember that most corruption is caused by hardware issues:
- RAID controllers with faulty / worn out battery backup, and an unexpected power loss
- Hard disk drives with write-back cache enabled, and an unexpected power loss
- Cheap SSDs with insufficient power-loss protection, and an unexpected power-loss
- Defective RAM
- Defective or overheating CPU(s)
Other causes can be:
- Database systems configured with fsync=off and an OS crash or power loss
- Filesystems configured to use write barriers plus a storage layer that ignores write barriers. LVM is a particular culprit.
- Tendermint bugs
- Operating system bugs
- Admin error (e.g., directly modifying Tendermint data-directory contents)
(Source: https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Corruption (opens new window))
# WAL Corruption
If consensus WAL is corrupted at the latest height and you are trying to start Tendermint, replay will fail with panic.
Recovering from data corruption can be hard and time-consuming. Here are two approaches you can take:
- Delete the WAL file and restart Tendermint. It will attempt to sync with other peers.
- Try to repair the WAL file manually:
Create a backup of the corrupted WAL file:
Use
./scripts/wal2jsonto create a human-readable version:Search for a "CORRUPTED MESSAGE" line.
By looking at the previous message and the message after the corrupted one and looking at the logs, try to rebuild the message. If the consequent messages are marked as corrupted too (this may happen if length header got corrupted or some writes did not make it to the WAL ~ truncation), then remove all the lines starting from the corrupted one and restart Tendermint.
After editing, convert this file back into binary form by running:
# Hardware
# Processor and Memory
While actual specs vary depending on the load and validators count, minimal requirements are:
- 1GB RAM
- 25GB of disk space
- 1.4 GHz CPU
SSD disks are preferable for applications with high transaction throughput.
Recommended:
- 2GB RAM
- 100GB SSD
- x64 2.0 GHz 2v CPU
While for now, Tendermint stores all the history and it may require significant disk space over time, we are planning to implement state syncing (See this issue (opens new window)). So, storing all the past blocks will not be necessary.
# Validator signing on 32 bit architectures (or ARM)
Both our ed25519 and secp256k1 implementations require constant time
uint64 multiplication. Non-constant time crypto can (and has) leaked
private keys on both ed25519 and secp256k1. This doesn't exist in hardware
on 32 bit x86 platforms (source (opens new window)), and it
depends on the compiler to enforce that it is constant time. It's unclear at
this point whenever the Golang compiler does this correctly for all
implementations.
We do not support nor recommend running a validator on 32 bit architectures OR the "VIA Nano 2000 Series", and the architectures in the ARM section rated "S-".
# Operating Systems
Tendermint can be compiled for a wide range of operating systems thanks to Go language (the list of $OS/$ARCH pairs can be found here (opens new window)).
While we do not favor any operation system, more secure and stable Linux server distributions (like Centos) should be preferred over desktop operation systems (like Mac OS).
# Miscellaneous
NOTE: if you are going to use Tendermint in a public domain, make sure you read hardware recommendations (opens new window) for a validator in the Cosmos network.
# Configuration parameters
p2p.flush_throttle_timeoutp2p.max_packet_msg_payload_sizep2p.send_ratep2p.recv_rate
If you are going to use Tendermint in a private domain and you have a private high-speed network among your peers, it makes sense to lower flush throttle timeout and increase other params.
mempool.recheck
After every block, Tendermint rechecks every transaction left in the
mempool to see if transactions committed in that block affected the
application state, so some of the transactions left may become invalid.
If that does not apply to your application, you can disable it by
setting mempool.recheck=false.
mempool.broadcast
Setting this to false will stop the mempool from relaying transactions to other peers until they are included in a block. It means only the peer you send the tx to will see it until it is included in a block.
consensus.skip_timeout_commit
We want skip_timeout_commit=false when there is economics on the line
because proposers should wait to hear for more votes. But if you don't
care about that and want the fastest consensus, you can skip it. It will
be kept false by default for public deployments (e.g. Cosmos
Hub (opens new window)) while for enterprise
applications, setting it to true is not a problem.
consensus.peer_gossip_sleep_duration
You can try to reduce the time your node sleeps before checking if theres something to send its peers.
consensus.timeout_commit
You can also try lowering timeout_commit (time we sleep before
proposing the next block).
p2p.addr_book_strict
By default, Tendermint checks whenever a peer's address is routable before saving it to the address book. The address is considered as routable if the IP is valid and within allowed ranges (opens new window).
This may not be the case for private or local networks, where your IP range is usually
strictly limited and private. If that case, you need to set addr_book_strict
to false (turn it off).
rpc.max_open_connections
By default, the number of simultaneous connections is limited because most OS give you limited number of file descriptors.
If you want to accept greater number of connections, you will need to increase these limits.
Sysctls to tune the system to be able to open more connections (opens new window)
The process file limits must also be increased, e.g. via ulimit -n 8192.
...for N connections, such as 50k:
The similar option exists for limiting the number of gRPC connections -
rpc.grpc_max_open_connections.