Mukan Erkin Törük
ef24c0b67e
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35 lines
1.4 KiB
Markdown
35 lines
1.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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order: 6
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---
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# WAL
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Consensus module writes every message to the WAL (write-ahead log).
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It also issues fsync syscall through
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[File#Sync](https://golang.org/pkg/os/#File.Sync) for messages signed by this
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node (to prevent double signing).
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Under the hood, it uses
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[autofile.Group](https://github.com/cometbft/cometbft/blob/af3bc47df982e271d4d340a3c5e0d773e440466d/libs/autofile/group.go#L54),
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which rotates files when those get too big (> 10MB).
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The total maximum size is 1GB. We only need the latest block and the block before it,
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but if the former is dragging on across many rounds, we want all those rounds.
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## Replay
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Consensus module will replay all the messages of the last height written to WAL
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before a crash (if such occurs).
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The private validator may try to sign messages during replay because it runs
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somewhat autonomously and does not know about replay process.
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For example, if we got all the way to precommit in the WAL and then crash,
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after we replay the proposal message, the private validator will try to sign a
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prevote. But it will fail. That's ok because we’ll see the prevote later in the
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WAL. Then it will go to precommit, and that time it will work because the
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private validator contains the `LastSignBytes` and then we’ll replay the
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precommit from the WAL.
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Make sure to read about [WAL corruption](https://github.com/cometbft/cometbft/blob/v0.38.x/docs/core/running-in-production.md#wal-corruption)
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and recovery strategies.
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