Parity Upgrade Guide

Parity may need to be updated to prepare for a hard fork

This guide assumes you are running this playbook from the same machine you used initially deploy of your node. You should already have python and ansible installed, and the correct ssh keypair to root-access the node.

Running the update

1) Clone the poa-devops repository if you haven't done so before

git clone https://github.com/poanetwork/poa-devops.git
cd poa-devops

or pull the latest changes

cd poa-devops
git pull origin master

2) Create group_vars/all file:

cp group_vars/upd-parity-version.example group_vars/all

and change the following variables:

1. poa_role - role of the node on the network (select one of these: bootnode, validator, moc, explorer)

2. GENESIS_BRANCH - either "sokol" or "core" or "dai" or "kovan" depending which network you're updating

DO NOT change other options

3) Create/edit hosts file and put your node's ip address (assuming it's 192.0.2.1) there with the following header:

[upd-parity-version]
192.0.2.1

If you're updating an existing file, make sure you remove other tags [...] and ips.

4) Run the playbook (change user: ubuntu to your user name, if necessary):

ansible-playbook -i hosts upd-parity-version.yml

Error Troubleshooting: 👉 If you get a ssh connection error, try to add option -e 'ansible_ssh_user=ubuntu' and/or --user="ubuntu" to the command line above, substituting ubuntu with correct ssh username, which is usually either ubuntu or root or poa or centos depending on your setup. You may also need to specify exact path to your ssh private key with --key-file=/path/to/private.key cli option.

👉If you are installing an update to the localhost machine, use -c local instead of specifying the private key.

👉If you get an error similar to the following, try adding the--ask-become-pass flag. FAILED! => {“changed”: false, “failed”: true, “module_stderr”: “sudo: a password is required\n”, “module_stdout”: “”, “msg”: “MODULE FAILURE”}

Verifying the update

Playbook run completes without errors.

1) Open network statistic webpage:

• for sokol test network: https://sokol-netstat.poa.network
• for core main network: https://core-netstat.poa.network
• for dai network: https://dai-netstat.poa.network
• for kovan network: https://kovan-netstat.poa.network

check that your node is "green" and is catching new blocks. It may take 5-6 minutes to fully start and reconnect.

2) Connect to the node

ssh root@192.0.2.1

and check parity version (replace bootnode with correct role name ,e.g. validator):

/home/bootnode/parity --version

sample output (version number may be different):

Parity Ethereum
  version Parity-Ethereum/v2.4.6-stable-94164e1-20190514/x86_64-linux-gnu/rustc1.34.1
Copyright 2015-2018 Parity Technologies (UK) Ltd.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

By Wood/Paronyan/Kotewicz/Drwięga/Volf
   Habermeier/Czaban/Greeff/Gotchac/Redmann

3) During the next day check the status of your node on network status webpage and associated functions (e.g. for validators - are block rewards still being sent from your mining key to your payout key?).

Rollback to the previous version (in case of problems)

If you get any errors please consult the POA Team first, most likely it is a minor issue and you don't need to rollback.

1) Connect to the node:

ssh root@192.0.2.1

2) Switch to your home folder (replace bootnode with correct role name):

cd /home/bootnode

3) Stop services:

systemctl stop poa-netstats
systemctl stop poa-parity

4) Locate the backup folder:

ls backups-version

it contains folders labeled by the time backup was created in format<year><month><day>T<hour><minute><second>, e.g.

# ls backups-version
20190311T200132 20190614T214517

copy the version number that corresponds to this day. In the following examples we assume that it's 20180209T214517.

5) Make sure you have your mining key data (keyfile, password, address) available to you.

6) Remove files from the new version:

rm -rf parity_data
rm parity
rm node.toml

7) Restore previous versions of these files from backup (note dots . at the end of each line here, they are important):

cp -a backups-version/20190614T214517/parity .
cp -a backups-version/20190614T214517/parity_data .
cp -a backups-version/20180614T214517/node.toml .

8) Check parity version (must be previous one):

./parity --version

sample output (version number may be different):

Parity Ethereum
  version Parity-Ethereum/v2.3.2-beta-678138f-20190203/x86_64-linux-gnu/rustc1.31.1
Copyright 2015-2018 Parity Technologies (UK) Ltd.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

By Wood/Paronyan/Kotewicz/Drwięga/Volf
   Habermeier/Czaban/Greeff/Gotchac/Redmann

9) Restart services

systemctl restart poa-parity
systemctl restart poa-netstats

10) Open network statistic webpage:

• for sokol test network: https://sokol-netstat.poa.network
• for core main network: https://core-netstat.poa.network
• for dai network: https://dai-netstat.poa.network

Check that your node is "green" and is catching new blocks. It may take 2-3 minutes to fully start and reconnect.