8ball Node Snapshot

Our 8ball Snapshot Server Setup

We take a node snapshot every day. We then delete all the previous snapshots to free up the space on the file server.

The snapshot is designed for node opeartors to run an efficient validator service on 8ball chain. To make the snapshot as small as possible while still viable as a validator, we use the following setting to save on the disk space. We suggest you make the same adjustment on your node too. Please notice that your node will have very limited functionality beyond signing blocks with the efficient disk space utilization. For example, your node will not be able to serve as a RPC endpoint (which is not suggested to run on a validator node anyway).

Since we periodically state-sync our snapshot nodes, you might notice that sometimes the size of our snapshot is surprisingly small.

app.toml

# Prune Type
pruning = "custom"

# Prune Strategy
pruning-keep-recent = "100"
pruning-keep-every = "0"
pruning-interval = "10"

config.toml

indexer = "null"

How To Process 8ball Snapshot

Install lz4 if needed

sudo apt update
sudo apt install snapd -y
sudo snap install lz4

Download the snapshot

wget -O 8ball_1632859.tar.lz4 https://snapshots.polkachu.com/snapshots/8ball/8ball_1632859.tar.lz4 --inet4-only

Stop your node

sudo service 8ball stop

Reset your node. WARNING: This will erase your node database. If you are already running validator, be sure you backed up your priv_validator_key.json prior to running the the command. The command does not wipe the file. However, you should have a backup of it already in a safe location.

# On some tendermint chains
8ball unsafe-reset-all

# On other tendermint chains
8ball tendermint unsafe-reset-all --home $HOME/.8ball --keep-addr-book

Decompress the snapshot to your database location. You database location will be something to the effect of ~/.8ball depending on your node implemention.

lz4 -c -d 8ball_1632859.tar.lz4  | tar -x -C $HOME/.8ball

If everything is good, now restart your node

sudo service 8ball start

Remove downloaded snapshot to free up space

rm -v 8ball_1632859.tar.lz4

Make sure that your node is running

sudo service 8ball status
sudo journalctl -u 8ball -f

ADVANCED ROUTE: The above solution requires you to download the compressed file, uncompressed it and then delete the original file. This requires extra storage space on your server. You can run the following combo command to stream the snapshot into your database location. For advanced users only:

curl -o - -L https://snapshots.polkachu.com/snapshots/8ball/8ball_1632859.tar.lz4 | lz4 -c -d - | tar -x -C $HOME/.8ball

ALTERNATIVE ROUTE: We also have 8ball state-sync service to help you bootstrap a node.