Tips¶

Tendermint Tips¶

Configure Tendermint to create no empty blocks.
Store the Tendermint data on a fast drive. You can do that by changing the location of TMHOME to be on the fast drive.

Refreshing Your Node¶

If you want to refresh your node back to a fresh empty state, then your best bet is to terminate it and deploy a new machine, but if that’s not an option, then you can:

drop the bigchain database in MongoDB using bigchaindb drop (but that only works if MongoDB is running)
reset Tendermint using tendermint unsafe_reset_all
delete the directory $HOME/.tendermint

Shutting Down BigchainDB¶

If you want to stop/kill BigchainDB, you can do so by sending SIGINT, SIGQUIT or SIGTERM to the running BigchainDB process(es). Depending on how you started BigchainDB i.e. foreground or background. e.g. you started BigchainDB in the background as mentioned above in the guide:

$ nohup bigchaindb start 2>&1 > bigchaindb.log &

$ # Check the PID of the main BigchainDB process
$ ps -ef | grep bigchaindb
<user>    *<pid> <ppid>   <C> <STIME> <tty>        <time> bigchaindb
<user>     <pid> <ppid>*  <C> <STIME> <tty>        <time> gunicorn: master [bigchaindb_gunicorn]
<user>     <pid> <ppid>*  <C> <STIME> <tty>        <time> bigchaindb_ws
<user>     <pid> <ppid>*  <C> <STIME> <tty>        <time> bigchaindb_ws_to_tendermint
<user>     <pid> <ppid>*  <C> <STIME> <tty>        <time> bigchaindb_exchange
<user>     <pid> <ppid>   <C> <STIME> <tty>        <time> gunicorn: worker [bigchaindb_gunicorn]
<user>     <pid> <ppid>   <C> <STIME> <tty>        <time> gunicorn: worker [bigchaindb_gunicorn]
<user>     <pid> <ppid>   <C> <STIME> <tty>        <time> gunicorn: worker [bigchaindb_gunicorn]
<user>     <pid> <ppid>   <C> <STIME> <tty>        <time> gunicorn: worker [bigchaindb_gunicorn]
<user>     <pid> <ppid>   <C> <STIME> <tty>        <time> gunicorn: worker [bigchaindb_gunicorn]
...

$ # Send any of the above mentioned signals to the parent/root process(marked with `*` for clarity)
# Sending SIGINT
$ kill -2 <bigchaindb_parent_pid>

$ # OR

# Sending SIGTERM
$ kill -15 <bigchaindb_parent_pid>

$ # OR

# Sending SIGQUIT
$ kill -3 <bigchaindb_parent_pid>

# If you want to kill all the processes by name yourself
$ pgrep bigchaindb | xargs kill -9

If you started BigchainDB in the foreground, a Ctrl + C or Ctrl + Z would shut down BigchainDB.

Member: Dynamically Add or Remove Validators¶

One member can make a proposal to call an election to add a validator, remove a validator, or change the voting power of a validator. They then share the election/proposal ID with all the other members. Once more than 2/3 of the voting power votes yes, the proposed change comes into effect. The commands to create a new election/proposal, to approve an election/proposal, and to get the current status of an election/proposal can be found in the documentation about the bigchaindb election subcommands.

Logging and Log Rotation¶

See the page in the Appendices about logging and log rotation.