Description

This role provisions a Nimbus installation on MacOS hosts.

Introduction

The role will:

• Checkout a branch from the nimbus-eth2 repo
• Build it using the build.sh Bash script
• Schedule regular builds using Launchd Scheduled Jobs
• Start a node by defining a Launchd Job

Ports

The service exposes three ports by default:

• 9000 - LibP2P peering port. Must ALWAYS be public.
• 9200 - JSON RPC port. Must NEVER be public.
• 9900 - Prometheus metrics port. Should not be public.

Installation

Add to your requirements.yml file:

- name: infra-role-beacon-node-macos
  src: git@github.com:status-im/infra-role-beacon-node-macos.git
  scm: git

Configuration

The crucial settings are:

# branch which should be built
beacon_node_repo_branch: 'stable'
# ethereum network to connect to
beacon_node_network: 'mainnet'
# optional setting for debug mode
beacon_node_log_level: 'DEBUG'
# WebSocket or HTTP URLs for execution layet Engine API
beacon_node_exec_layer_urls:
  - 'wss://erigon.internal.example.org:8551'
  - 'http://geth.internal.example.org:8552'

The order of WebSocket URLs matters. First is the default, the rest are fallbacks.

Most non-sensitive configuration resides in conf/config.toml file in service directory.

Management

Directories

Each service folder consists of the following contents:

• build.sh - Script that is executed to create a new build. The resulting binaries can be found in repo/build/
• rpc.sh - Script to make it easier to interact with the beacon node JSON RPC API.
• data/ - Data created by the beacon node process.
• repo/ - Clone of the nimbus-eth2 repo.
• logs/ - Node and build logs.
• logs/build.log - Build logs generated by the Launchd scheduled job.
• logs/service.log - Node logs rotated according to the logrotate.conf file.

Service

To see service status use:

 > sudo launchctl list status.beacon-node-mainnet-stable
{
	"StandardOutPath" = "/Users/nimbus/beacon-node-mainnet-stable/logs/service.log";
	"LimitLoadToSessionType" = "System";
	"StandardErrorPath" = "/Users/nimbus/beacon-node-mainnet-stable/logs/service.log";
	"Label" = "status.beacon-node-mainnet-stable";
	"OnDemand" = false;
	"LastExitStatus" = 0;
	"PID" = 6347;
	"Program" = "/Users/nimbus/beacon-node-mainnet-stable/repo/build/nimbus_beacon_node";
	"ProgramArguments" = (
		"/Users/nimbus/beacon-node-mainnet-stable/repo/build/nimbus_beacon_node";
		"--network=mainnet";
...

To restart the node use:

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/status.beacon-node-mainnet-unstable.plist
sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/status.beacon-node-mainnet-unstable.plist

Note that the Launchd config has the keepalive value set to true and running launchctl stop will immediately restart the node process.

Builds

Build scheduled with a Launchd Scheduled Job can be also managed using launchctl:

sudo launchctl start status.build-beacon-node-mainnet-stable
sudo launchctl stop status.build-beacon-node-mainnet-stable

The build logs can be seen in the logs/build.log. The job simply runs the buils.sh Bash script which can be run by hand:

 > sudo -u nimbus /Users/nimbus/beacon-node-prater-stable/build.sh 
 >>> Build Start: 2021-10-26T10:37:52Z
 >>> Fetching changes...
HEAD is now at 9e8081e4 Merge branch 'stable' into unstable
 >>> Binary already built. Run with --force flag to override
 >>> SUCCESS

Cleanup

When removing a deployment make sure to stop and delete the launchd daemons:

# stop the beacon node
cd /Library/LaunchDaemons
sudo launchctl unload status.beacon-node-mainnet-unstable.plist
rm status.beacon-node-mainnet-unstable.plist

# unload the periodic build job
sudo launchctl unload status.build-beacon-node-mainnet-unstable.plist
rm status.build-beacon-node-mainnet-unstable.plist

# delete the repo, data and logs
rm -rf ~/beacon-node-mainnet-unstable

# delete logrotate config
rm /opt/homebrew/etc/logrotate.d/beacon-node-mainnet-unstable.conf