Upgrade your node#

This document describes the upgrade procedure of a exchaind full-node to a new version.

Software upgrade#

First, stop your instance of exchaind. Next, upgrade the software:

cd exchain
git fetch --all && git checkout <new_version>
make install

NOTE: If you have issues at this step, please check that you have the latest stable version of GO installed.

See the testnet repo for details on which version is needed for which public testnet, and the OKTC release page for details on each release.

Your full node has been cleanly upgraded!

Upgrade genesis file#

If the new version you are upgrading to has breaking changes, you will have to restart your chain. If it is not breaking, you can skip to Restart

To upgrade the genesis file, you can either fetch it from a trusted source or export it locally.

Fetching from a trusted source#

If you are joining a public testnet, fetch the genesis from the appropriate testnet in the testnet repo. Otherwise, fetch it from your trusted source.

Save the new genesis as new_genesis.json. Then replace the old genesis.json with new_genesis.json

cd $HOME/.exchaind/config
cp -f genesis.json new_genesis.json
mv new_genesis.json genesis.json

Then, go to the reset data section.

Exporting state to a new genesis locally#

If you were running a node in the previous version of the network and want to build your new genesis locally from a state of this previous network, use the following command:

cd $HOME/.exchaind/config
exchaind export --for-zero-height --height=<export-height> > new_genesis.json

The command above take a state at a certain height <export-height> and turns it into a new genesis file that can be used to start a new network.

Then, replace the old genesis.json with new_genesis.json.

cp -f genesis.json new_genesis.json
mv new_genesis.json genesis.json

Reset data#

If the version <new_version> you are upgrading to is not breaking from the previous one, you should not reset the data. If it is not breaking, you can skip to Restart

If you are running a validator node on the mainnet, always be careful when doing exchaind unsafe-reset-all. You should never use this command if you are not switching chain-id.

Make sure that every node has a unique priv_validator.json. Do not copy the priv_validator.json from an old node to multiple new nodes. Running two nodes with the same priv_validator.json will cause you to get slashed due to double sign !

First, remove the outdated files and reset the data. If you are running a validator node, make sure you understand what you are doing before resetting.

exchaind unsafe-reset-all

Your node is now in a pristine state while keeping the original priv_validator.json and config.toml. If you had any sentry nodes or full nodes setup before, your node will still try to connect to them, but may fail if they haven’t also been upgraded.

Restart#

To restart your node, just type:

exchaind start