Hi Steemian friends! :)
This is my Witness Update, going through all the latest details about my Witness challenges, and for those of you who don't know me yet, here is a photo without my long beard! :)
I am a life long Software Developer, working on Blockchain for last years on several projects, but I am also a DJ and Electronic Music Producer, my alter-ego "Kolatz" that you can browse for if interested... :)
I am the creator of DSound, which was the first and still the only completely decentralized sound platform in the world, that continues helping musicians and sound creators around the globe to monetize their content besides the state of the crypto economy actually, and the next release will be the first "beta" release with loads of new features! :)
If you got curious about DSound, please check it out: https://dsound.audio
Update after HF21/HF22
Yes, this last month has not been easy. Hard Fork 21 came about and with it loads of challenges to all the witnesses as usual! ;)
The update to HF21 was not an easy task, I tried to do it and all my nodes got stuck at the replay stage... Never ending story...
Also it was the first time I decided to experiment with MIRA, the implementation of RocksDB data layer for the Blockchain state, that allows a node to use mostly disk instead of RAM for the state. This was definitely something that I would love to use, since it will free up RAM resources in my bare metal servers to possibly make a dedicated full node for DSound.
MIRA configuration
For a 16GB node I used the default configuration, as suggested by Steemit Inc. My database.cfg
looks like this:
{
"global": {
"shared_cache": {
"capacity": "5368709120"
},
"write_buffer_manager": {
"write_buffer_size": "1073741824"
},
"object_count": 62500,
"statistics": false
},
"base": {
"optimize_level_style_compaction": true,
"increase_parallelism": true,
"block_based_table_options": {
"block_size": 8192,
"cache_index_and_filter_blocks": true,
"bloom_filter_policy": {
"bits_per_key": 10,
"use_block_based_builder": false
}
}
}
}
A special note on MIRA: thank you @steemit for the great work on implementing this. My nodes are running great after I found out the correct configuration (details below). A big shout out to you guys! :D
Steem Blockchain code and compilation
On my nodes I always compile the source code from GitHub.
I think that it is a very important responsibility of a Witness to check the code and the changes introduced in a new version of the blockchain code. I do it all the time an update comes about, and only after that I decide if I will upgrade to it or not.
Then I build it from source and do the necessary actions to upgrade the nodes to the new version built by me, without any docker or images from thirdparties. I like to have my nodes configured by me completely, so I know what is going on at all times.
Steemd daemon and Linux systemd
On all my nodes I configure a systemd daemon for running steemd
.
This allows me to login and out without any trouble with screen
sessions or needing other thirdparty tools to manage the lifecycle of the blockchain daemon. It also makes the management of Steem daemon as easy as any other service on the Linux box.
If you would like to try this configuration yourself, my steemd.service
is like this now:
[Unit]
Description=STEEM daemon
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=simple
User=steem
LimitNOFILE=65536
WorkingDirectory=/home/steem/
ExecStart=/usr/bin/steemd
Restart=always
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Hunt for the "Too many open files" limits issue
Thanks to @guiltyparties having a brainstorm about this limits issue, I got in the correct path to identify what was going on... Great help mate! :)
The problem was that, as my nodes are configured with a systemd
service to start/restart steemd
daemon, the regular session limits are not applied to daemon sessions...
Daemon limits need to be explicitly defined in the systemd service configuration with a line like LimitNOFILE=65536
, as you can see above.
So when we use a systemd service to run steemd, all other config files like /etc/security/limits.conf
or others are pointless, only the line in the service configuration matters...
This issue took me days in so many unsuccessful replays of the Steem blockchain... uff... ;)
The final glory
It has been a week and all nodes are upgraded to HF22 version 0.22.1, running MIRA and producing blocks like a swiss watch! Great improvement to Steem blockchain! :)
What I am working on
I am currently working on DSound first "beta" release, that will be out soon, and a complete new business model and economy for DSound... Loads of news very soon, so keep tuned my friends! ;)
We are building the evolution of DSound while the crypto winter has pushed away so many great people from our 9000+ community, and also gave us more indicators to re-think our vision, business strategy and the path we want to go to achieve our goals as a team and community leaders...
Many improvements have been made on the social media side and to keep "DSound Tribe" Discord healthy... DSound is always improving and our team is growing! :)
Why voting for @prc and @dsound for witnesses
@prc is my personal account and I run my witness nodes since November 28th, 2017. In these near 2 years only 314 blocks were missed by my nodes, mainly due to a chain hang when I was higher in the witness rank, and our top 20 folks got their big chunk of misses as well.
@dsound is the DSound project account and our team runs our project witness nodes since December 11th, 2018. Since then only 36 blocks were missed by our nodes, mainly due to a problem with our power redundancy in our datacenter. This witness helps funding DSound community initiatives and platform development.
All our servers are bare metal boxes, not VPS's on some thirdparty datacenter. We manage our own datacenters, now with 2 separate sites located in Portugal, and state of the art technology.
We are independent, non-related to any other group of people with any other joint agenda.
Our mission on Steem is to help grow the music and sound creators user base and help onboard more to the platform.
We have been around. Our team has more than 30 years of experience in high availability and security, and we are fully committed to crypto and blockchain since 2016.
So If you trust us and approve what have been doing for the Steem ecosystem, please give our Witnesses a vote to help us continue...
Design by @aleister
You can vote here: Vote @prc with SteemConnect - Vote @dsound with SteemConnect
... but if you prefer the oldfashion way, please go to:
https://steemitwallet.com/~witnesses
and vote for @prc
and @dsound
;)
Alternatively you can set @dsound
as your proxy, so that you follow the witnesses we vote as well. This might be interesting for all of you that don't know that well for which witnesses to vote... To do so use this field:
Thanks a lot for your support. :)
I do not understand much about all the tech things, I've been away some time but I just wanted to say you look good without the beard too, it makes you younger! And greetings to you both.
Lots of hugs to you guys as well! Miss you... 😎🤙
Posted using Partiko iOS
Aww thanks, It's been a "rocky" while... I posted a bit of update a few days ago... still on my journey... wish I could explain here more. Trying to slowly harness all my energy to be able to do what I want to do and create and share. One step at a time. Catch me anytime, I try to be a bit more on discord... all here has changed so much and I'm missing all the wee details of mostly everything.
Grande Pedrão!!! full support!
Posted using Partiko Android
Abraço amigo! 🤘 Keep on rocking! 🤙
Posted using Partiko iOS
Voted! 😍
Thanks a lot! 😃
Posted using Partiko iOS
You're welcome, anytime. Great update that'll help out others in turn.
This issue was hard to figure out... hope other guys will find this before having to go through 10 replays, like I did! ahahah 🤣
Posted using Partiko iOS
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This post had received 56.12% upvote from @steemitportugal account!
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Click here to vote
Delegation for daily voting: 10SP-25SP-50SP-100SP-250SP-500SP-1000SP
I'm glad to finally see an update!
I've been wondering if my delegation, even if small because I'm just plankton, has been useless to the whole @dsound cause as it has been useless to me since I haven't received a single, tiny upvote since I started to delegate... 😄
Posted using Partiko Android
The idea of delegations for DSound never was to buy in for upvotes. DSound curation is done by human curators, and if your content didn’t got their attention then no delegation would. More news regarding the future of DSound curation very soon... Cheers 😎🤙
Posted using Partiko iOS
I used to receive some dsound upvotes before you lost the big steemit delegation, then when you've been asking for help with delegations I felt like obliged to continue to give you my small support.... I never asked or begged for dsound upvotes... I know dsound voting power is not enough to support most musician on the steemit platform anymore.... since my posts are more appreciated and a bit more lucrative when not using the dsound dapp, I may keep my delegation with you but I'll stop using it when posting my music until it will be worth it.
Thank you anyway and good luck !!! 😎👍
Great update! Love the project(s)!
Cool! keep the good work my friend! :)
Sounds exciting! I am tuned! ;)
Exciting update :)
Looking forward for the first "beta" release ;)
Keep on the good work
was already voting for dsound but i did prc account too now mate , great to see some updates happening, hope all is well :)
This post has been included in the latest edition of The Steem News - a compilation of the key news stories on the Steem blockchain.
Hey Bro,
Glad to read you're back on track with your nodes.
Thanks for sharing your "bug" hunting story. It might be helpful to others.
PS: Do you come to SF4? I will be happy to see you gain.
Thanks for what you do and for the effort you put into it