Atleta Network Deployment

Testnet

We have 10 validators at the moment. 3 of them predefined in the chainspec. While the others are normally generated accounts.

Additionally we have a boot node.

The session keys for both types of validators configured differently:

• for predefined set of validators the session keys are generated in the chain spec, so we insert the keys (author_insertKeys) into the keystore of the node using add_session_keys.sh script;
• for the normal validators, we first generate the keys using author_rotateKeys, then we add the generated keys using session.setKeys extrinsic call.

The private keys for the normal accounts should be defined on the CD level and exported into config.env file, which then uploaded to the server. From this file we get needed information to sign the extrinsics.

The whole content of config.env file is:

PRIVATE_KEY=<key in hex>
DOCKER_IMAGE=<image name>
BOOTNODE_ADDRESS=<node address in libp2p form>

We also expect chainspec.json to be uploaded to the same directory, where the scripts are located.

WARNING: the normal validators should also be configured on the runtime level (i.e. appropriate extrinsics should be called) as they are not predefined in the chainspec. Thus the accounts should be prefunded with enough balance to become validators. And you need to run a dedicated script to prepare everything. Also, the validators should be nominated afterwards.

Deployment

The workflow is defined in .github/workflows/deploy-testnet.yml.

The predefined validators (i.e. from the genesis configuration) are deployed on a single server. The job is called deploy_technical_validators.

Each of the rest of the validators is deployed on a dedicated server. The job is called deploy_validators.

While the setup of the session keys is automated for the genesis validators, we manually run the script validate.sh to add the keys for the normal validators. The script runs the node and adds the keys to the keystore. After keys are added, the node should be stopped and restarted using a normal run script (i.e. run-validator.sh). Luckily, it should be done only once in normal circumstances. And the validators should be updated via setCode in the feature. But anyway, we should improve this workflow and automate what's currently done manually.