`ipfs-cluster-service`

IPFS cluster peer launcher

ipfs-cluster-service runs a full IPFS Cluster peer.

Usage

Usage information can be obtained with:

$ ipfs-cluster-service -h

Initialization

Before running ipfs-cluster-service for the first time, initialize a configuration file with:

$ ipfs-cluster-service init

Cluster secret

As long as the CLUSTER_SECRET environment variable is not set, you will be prompted to enter a cluster_secret value for your configuration. Two peers will be in the same cluster if and only if they share the same cluster_secret value. When initializing a cluster service, the following conditions are checked (in the order shown) and determine how cluster_secret is set:

If the --gen-secret flag is passed to ipfs-cluster-service init, then a cluster_secret value will be automatically generated.
If the CLUSTER_SECRET environment variable is set in your current shell instance, its value will be read and used as the cluster_service value.
If neither of the above conditions were ture, then you will be prompted to enter a cluster_secret during the initialization.

The cluster_secret must be a 64-character string with only hexadecimal characters ([0-9a-f]).

TODO: Explain adding peers/sharing cluster secret once that functionality is implemented.

Configuration

After initialization, the configuration will be placed in ~/.ipfs-cluster/service.json by default.

You can add the multiaddresses for the other cluster peers the bootstrap variable. For example, here is a valid configuration for a single-peer cluster:

{
    "id": "QmXMhZ53zAoes8TYbKGn3rnm5nfWs5Wdu41Fhhfw9XmM5A",
    "private_key": "<redacted>",
    "cluster_secret": "<redacted>",
    "cluster_peers": [],
    "bootstrap": [],
    "leave_on_shutdown": false,
    "cluster_multiaddress": "/ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/9096",
    "api_listen_multiaddress": "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/9094",
    "ipfs_proxy_listen_multiaddress": "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/9095",
    "ipfs_node_multiaddress": "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/5001",
    "consensus_data_folder": "/home/user/.ipfs-cluster/data",
    "state_sync_seconds": 60,
    "replication_factor": -1,
    "monitoring_interval_seconds": 15
}

The configuration file should probably be identical among all cluster peers, except for the id and private_key fields. Once every cluster peer has the configuration in place, you can run ipfs-cluster-service to start the cluster. See the additional docs section for detailed documentation on how to build a cluster.

Clusters using `cluster_peers`

The cluster_peers configuration variable holds a list of current cluster members. If you know the members of the cluster in advance, or you want to start a cluster fully in parallel, set cluster_peers in all configurations so that every peer knows the rest upon boot. Leave bootstrap empty. A cluster peer address looks like: /ip4/1.2.3.4/tcp/9096/<id>.

Clusters using `bootstrap`

When the cluster_peers variable is empty, the multiaddresses bootstrap can be used to have a peer join an existing cluster. The peer will contact those addresses (in order) until one of them succeeds in joining it to the cluster. When the peer is shut down, it will save the current cluster peers in the cluster_peers configuration variable for future use.

Bootstrap is a convenient method, but more prone to errors than cluster_peers. It can be used as well with ipfs-cluster-service --bootstrap <multiaddress>. Note that bootstrapping nodes with an old state (or diverging state) from the one running in the cluster may lead to problems with the consensus, so usually you would want to bootstrap blank nodes.

Debugging

ipfs-cluster-service offers two debugging options:

--debug enables debug logging from the ipfs-cluster, go-libp2p-raft and go-libp2p-rpc layers. This will be a very verbose log output, but at the same time it is the most informative.
--loglevel sets the log level ([error, warning, info, debug]) for the ipfs-cluster only, allowing to get an overview of the what cluster is doing. The default log-level is info.

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