Weekly Dev Update #52

11 June 2019 —Admin

Hey Y’all,

Today’s our 52nd Dev Update, which means we have been doing them for a year now !!!!

This week a lot more work happened in Loki Core in preparation for some of the interactions that will need to happen between lokid and the Loki Storage Server. We also continued work on the Loki Messenger and the Loki Storage Server to support the Loki Messenger Alpha, which sends messages on clearnet instead of through Lokinet.

Additionally, our iOS wallet was released through Testflight for public testing: https://testflight.apple.com/join/GTzgsBwC If you want to test it, please only use small amounts of Loki – and let us know how you go, we’d love some feedback! We‘re now in the final stages before we submit it to Apple for general release.

Loki Core

Service Node Checkpointing, add more reliable transportation of Quorum votes and prune old checkpoints:
https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/632
Don’t access array OOB when parsing fractions in staking:
https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/636
Require Storage Server to be running to continue sending uptime proofs:
https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/631
Make –Service-node failure more verbose:

https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/630
Integration test fixes for Service Node Checkpointing:

https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/628
Print IP and Port numbers with print_sn command:
https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/627
Add debug_mine_singular_block command enabled in integration tests to allow mining of exactly one block at a time:
https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/625
Enforce miner tx version:
https://github.com/loki-project/loki/pull/623

Loki Launcher

The Loki Launcher is a node js package that will allow for the independent management of all the components required to run a full Service Node. This includes managing Lokinet, lokid and the Loki Storage Server. When Loki Service Nodes begin to route data and store messages for Lokinet and Loki Messenger, the Loki Launcher will need to be run on every single Service Node.

Right now the Launcher is in a testing phase, so you should only use it on Testnet and Stagenet – though feedback/issues and pull requests would be greatly appreciated!

What’s going on this week with Loki Launcher:

Lots of change here. We’re getting ready to do an initial release so we can get a production version into the hands of Service Node operators before making it the default for Hefty Heimdall 4.0. After some additional research into installation/packaging options, we have come up with a new easier-to-use command line interface and have removed the need for a configuration file. We also added a bunch of features, such as a check, to make sure your server meets the requirements of being a Service Node, and to simplify software updates.

Changelog:

Implement SNBench, a Service Node prequalification tool that has been internally discussed for a bit:
Change default of requiring Lokinet (network) and Storage Server to not required
Lokinet.js allow disabling of rpc, count how many restarts, fix log path, allow disabling profiling/nat
Set up npm
Refactor most of the existing index.js into start.js
Create new user facing CLI to improve ux
Convert daemon.js to use new CLI ux
Deployed a central testing server and make SNBench use it
Make SNBench use portable df to measure disk space
Add CLI script as bin to npm
If storage is enabled but network is off, use clearnet mode for storage server
Include user-agent for httpGet to make Github API requests work
Refactor process management library locations
Bind Storage Server without Lokinet to default outgoing interface (NAT support)
Add download-binaries scripts to automatically get the latest Lokid binary
Update README.md documentation
Run loki-launcher in any directory fixes
Remove default launcher.ini
Internalise default launcher config
Change paths and order in which it looks for config files (. then /etc)
Add status mode to loki-launcher CLI ux
Publish npm to non-org
Implement prefix_path and var_path to help drive defaults and easier configuration
Add check-systemd migrator mode
Make sure lib.js handles pid files
Add “stop” mode to loki-launcher CLI ux
Update docker file for automated testing
Set up Travis CI

Github Pulse: Excluding merges, 2 authors have pushed 71 commits to master and 71 commits to all branches. On master, 18 files have changed and there have been 1,742 additions and 937 deletions.

Lokinet

If you’re on our Discord you might catch Jeff or Ryan, the developers of LLARP, live streaming as they code: https://www.twitch.tv/uguu25519, https://www.twitch.tv/neuroscr.

What’s going on this week with Lokinet:

Lokinet reliability continues to be our focus. Jeff attempted to check libuv against our current event loop to see if we have any potential issues in our event loop layer. Tom has been working with Jeff to implement new helpful protocol errors and speed ups which led to the discovery of a major flaw in HasSessionTo. Michael has continued to improve the metrics system, so we can use existing tools to help debug what’s going across multiple routers. We have decided against a 0.4.4 release while we continue to improve things.

Changelog:

Create memFn to make binding callbacks easier:
https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/638
HasSessionTo() actually search inbound and outbound instead of just checking optional whitelist:
https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/641
Update contrib/cluster-shell to make sure cluster is configured as routers not client
Work on new LR_StatusMessage continues in:
https://github.com/tewinget/loki-network/tree/path-build-failure-messages

Pull Requests:

Started a port to libuv:
https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/639
Metric tweaks:
https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/640

Loki Wallets

Loki iOS Wallet

Last week we released the Testflight version of the Loki Wallet for public testing so we could gather feedback on any issues users were experiencing. We are on track for the wider release this week, pending Apple’s approval of our final build.

iOS Wallet may be released this week (pending Apple Store approval). You can see our up-to-date work now in master here:

https://github.com/loki-project/loki-ios-wallet

Loki Electron GUI Wallet

A new Loki Electron GUI Wallet release is coming up soon, which will include a number of quality-of-life changes and a Portuguese translation.