The core developers have tagged a new 2022.01.27.0 miner release. This release is recommended,
but not mandatory, for all Hotspot manufacturers.
This release includes denylist support, adds snapshot polling, and better storage reclamation. The
addition of denylist support allows asynchronous updates to this list independent of miner releases.
Additionally, 2022.01.27.0 improves block sync and fixes some rare crashes.
Reminder: miner Docker image releases are no longer coupled to firmware releases. This release
does not have a corresponding firmware release / updated SD card image (for those running RAKs
and OG hotspots).
Denylist Support
This release includes support for a denylist of Hotspot addresses that limits witnessing and
challenging by the Challenger. More details on how it works are available in the
denylist repository and in the PRs listed below. The
management of the denylist is through a coordinated multisig of the Helium, Inc team and members of
the community. This list can be updated on a separate release cycle from miner and Hotspot
firmware.
Snapshot and Storage Improvements
Several updates have been made to Snapshot management and Hotspot storage of blocks. Notably, a Consensus Group or manually blessed snapshot will now be downloaded if the Hotspot is behind on block sync periodically rather than on startup. This should help reduce the time that a Hotspot is not participating in the network.
Separately, a change to how blocks are stored and garbage collected has been made to reduce the overall storage on disk. This should reduce the number of times a Hotspot needs to be cleared before it can start syncing again. Again, this reduces the amount of time a Hotspot is not transferring data or performing Proof-of-Coverage actions.
We've also made a change to improve block sync speed specifically related to storing PoC records in the ledger.
Other Fixes
We've also fixed a rare crash in miner PoC state management and implemented some JSON-RPC fixes requested by makers.
Related PRs
-
miner#1378: Fix #1377 and other JSONRPC related parameter issues.
-
miner#1390: Be less strict on poc statem load failure clause
-
miner#1361: Add PoC denylist, downloaded from github releases
-
miner#1392: configuring new denylist on docker release profile
-
miner#1394: default denylist in sysconfig, disable explicitly
-
miner#1398: Fix incomplete xorf api refactor
-
blockchain-core#1210: Attempt to make poc records easier to read/write from ledger
-
blockchain-core#1208: Check s3 latest-snap.json in another place
-
blockchain-core#1200: If snapshot file on disk is not deserializeable, remove it
-
blockchain-core#1215: fix snap load
-
blockchain-core#1218: handle undefined snap_info record
-
blockchain-core#1212: continuous block gc
Plan
We have been testing 2022.01.27.0 since Jan 27, 2022 9:35 AM PST. Current ETA for GA is Jan 28,
2022 2:00 PM PST.