How to check your Virtual Node

There are few things you can do to check when in doubt your vNode is actually working.

First Check

  • Go to the Node tab of the Incognito wallet app
  • Check if earnings are being displayed

If earnings show up, you are connected. The information on Node earnings is collected from the main system.

Second Check
Log in to your server and use docker commands to determine whether or not the vNode software is still running

  • (sudo) docker ps
  • (sudo) docker stats

stats will show an overview similar to this one:
image
You will see the CPU % increase and decrease.

ps will show an overview similar to this one:
image

Third Check
Is your vNode accessible to the network?

Use this website: https://www.adminkit.net/telnet.aspx

image

  • Enter your vNode IP address
  • Enter port 9334 (adjust when you are using other ports)
  • Tap Connect

The results will be displayed in blue (connected successfully), in red (not able to connect)

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If status time is not same for all containers, is this a problem?

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Different status time for containers is not a problem.

However, if one or more containers show recent timestamps on several occasions, there might be a problem. It would mean those containers keep restarting. This shouldn’t happen.

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When I run Sudo Docker Stats, I get stats for inc_mainnet and eth_mainnet, but not for inc_logshipper. I’ve never seen inc_logshipper in there. Is that some kind of flaw in my node or program?

My node still connects when I check the Telnet web tool, and it shows as “Waiting” in Kieran’s Tool.

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There is no problem. inc_mainnet & eth_mainnet are preconditions. New data comes with no inc_logshipper image.

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Another question about the virtual node…

If the node is not reaching full block height, does that mean that it wont be considered as a validator? For some reason both of my my nodes hosted by GoogleCloud are not reaching full block height, although both appear to be connected when I check. One has even earned but not sure how.

Fully synced with the beacon height is the requirement. You might have validator’s rewards in this case because the 2/3 mechanism is working. I think you need to restart the Nodes. Please pm me your Node’s IP addresses to check first.

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Question… I am moving a validator key from one IP to another.

I am wondering to what extent I need to go to stop or delete the data from the old node?

Right now, both IP addresses have the node running from one validator key. How is that even possible and what could that result in? Surely both nodes can’t run at the same time with the same validator key?

Hi Mike,

These are the commands to remove the data from the server:
rm -rfv data

ps -ef | grep run.sh

kill -9

docker stop $(docker ps -aq)

docker system prune -a

However, when you delete the server in the VPS, all the data will be gone, too.
About your 2nd concern, it incurs in duplicating the data. As using the same validator key (both server A and server B), you will get identical rewards in the app. When you withdraw the earnings in server A, the earnings in server B will disappear too.

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I had to restart my nodes to connect them to a UPS. Its been over 24hrs, and it doesn’t look like the nodes are updating their Beacon Chain Height. Both nodes have been in committees prior to this change, but right now they are stuck on Block 302,869 and the Beacon Chain is 304.572 with all Shards being between 303,614- 306,381. Is this normal, or do I need to do something to get it syncing again after the restart?

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Did you try to install completely new after removing the data?

I just shut down the vNodes and plugged them back in and restarted… I didn’t change machines, just hooked them up to a UPS (uninterruptible power supply)… I just don’t think they started back up properly

If it is a vNode, let’s remove the data, kill the process, stop the docker. And install it newly again. The commands to use are mentioned above.

Ok, I removed the data and restarted the run.sh script… The commands you had listed above didn’t quite work for me, but I was able to get it done… but in case others need to do this.

All docker commands needed sudo permissions

caused an error

I broke this down into two steps:

did the docker ps -aq first, then did docker stop on the results manually.

Then started the run script using sudo bash run.sh, which now shows both nodes syncing blocks

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DOes this look normal? RUnning two vnodes

CONTAINER ID NAME CPU % MEM USAGE / LIMIT MEM % NET I/O BLOCK I/O PIDS
90931d9da7e8 inc_mainnet_2 0.16% 216.6MiB / 7.79GiB 2.71% 892MB / 149MB 0B / 0B 17
eba063e416d6 inc_mainnet 0.18% 217.1MiB / 7.79GiB 2.72% 1.32GB / 217MB 0B / 0B 17
0c2d5bb172f3 eth_mainnet 1.20% 96.75MiB / 7.79GiB 1.21% 2.86GB / 2.22GB 0B / 0B 44

Looks normal to me

Hi @Jamie ,

Any tips for a Linux newbie on how to check firewall settings to see if ports are open/closed?

I believe things are running fine on my PC, here are my docker stats…

CONTAINER ID NAME CPU % MEM USAGE / LIMIT MEM % NET I/O BLOCK I/O PIDS
33486265caef inc_mainnet 45.76% 512.7MiB / 14.24GiB 3.52% 429MB / 5.71MB 67.1MB / 185GB 15
f8fca2faa9db eth_mainnet 0.38% 103.7MiB / 14.24GiB 0.71% 630MB / 54.9MB 40.1MB / 5.24GB 39

I suspect ports 9334 and/or 9335 (are the default ports I need open to run an Incognito node) are blocked on my PC.

I need to figure out how to open these ports, are you able to assist?

Excellent Tips @Jamie, these came in super handy when I was building and testing my Incognito Virtual Node.

I incorporated some of your tips in my post below :-
Step-by-Step: How I built my Virtual Node on the World’s Smallest Mini PC ($170 USD)

Thanks heaps for all your help.

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Hey @doc, I am still relatively new to Linux and I have successfully deployed my vNode a few months ago (thanks for your help along the way).
What command or website/tool did you use to check the Block height of your vNode?
Thanks in advance.

use this command in your terminal (change your IP and port to match your vNode):

curl 'http://192.168.1.127:9334' --data-binary '{"jsonrpc":"1.0","method":"getmininginfo","params":"","id":1}'

In the response you should see a json with BeaconHeight

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