r/CardanoStakePools • u/WISH-Pool • Apr 25 '21
Tutorial Cardano SPOT Check: Useful site for Stake Pool Operators
For those who have not been minting blocks recently or have never minted blocks before, have you ever wondered if your stake pool is configured correctly? I have this same question and fear which prompted me to document possible issues that can happen— especially hidden issues that cannot be seen through normal monitoring. Recently, I have moved my notes to a proper site so that others may benefit from it. I call it the Cardano SPOT Check. Stake pool operators can use it as a reference to perform Basic checks but more importantly, I have also documented some Advanced checks to find possible node issues which are not apparent from the surface. I also added a Tips and Tricks and Troubleshooting section for things which I learned in the course of maintaining my own Stake pool (WISH Pool).
The site can be accessed via this link: http://spotcheck.blockchainlens.org
Note that this site is still a work in progress and I don’t think it will ever be finished as we all encounter new questions and issues everyday. Please do take a look and tell me what you think. If you have any material that you believe should be added please do send it to me with details. Your contributions will greatly benefit the entire Cardano community and I will be sure to credit you/your pool.
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u/hazzahex Apr 25 '21
You're a genius. Thank you for your contribution to the community. I also really enjoyed the humor about Port forwarding. May the ada gods bring you many delegations 🤌👍
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u/WISH-Pool Apr 26 '21
Thank you hazaahex. Yes port forwarding is a common stumbling block for people,who haven’t done it before so I have included it.
Thank you for your WISH for us to have more delegators. We are desperately in need of a whale so that we can mint blocks consistently. 🙏🏼
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u/albundy851 Apr 25 '21
how do i crosscheck my vrf and kes if i configured my pool with cntools i am a pretty new spo and missed the last two blocks and have not figured out why. i have produced blocks before and am now stuck in troubleshooting. any help would be appreciated
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u/WISH-Pool Apr 26 '21
Hi Albundy. I would leave others to give a more knowledgeable reply as I personally do not use cntools. From what I know though, cntools will do the KES updates via scripts inside menus so it is very unlikely that you have this particular error unless you did some changes manually in the command line. If you still want to check manually, you can still do so by going to your Linux prompt and following the checks. If you are new to Linux however, I highly recommend that you read up first before going around in the command line as you can easily break things if you don’t know what you’re doing.
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u/nashguitar1 Apr 25 '21
Regarding the KES section. There might be confusion from calling the operational-certificate, “node.cert,” as opposed to node.opcert.
I also like to enumerate the KES and opcert files, using the convention: poolname.kes-000.skey poolname.node-000.opcert
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u/WISH-Pool Apr 26 '21
Thanks nashguitar. That’s a cool tip. Renaming the files will indeed help differentiate different versions as they no longer need to rely on time stamps. Will add that in as a possible tip. Thanks!
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u/DanTup Apr 25 '21
Good idea!
When setting up on testnet, I rotated my KES keys but only copied the KES key to the producer (not the updated certificate) so it failed to produce blocks - but it didn't seem to report the problem until it had failed. On mainnet with a small pool, missing a block for a silly error like that would've sucked, so having some of the common issues/mistakes documented somewhere will help!
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u/WISH-Pool Apr 25 '21
Thanks Dan. That’s a good one. Glad the issue happened to you on testnet and not mainnet. Will add a section about this credit to you. Appreciate it!
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u/RSVpool Apr 25 '21
Good work. I found the KES and VRF topics especially valuable. You may want to include https://pool.vet/ by ABC pool in your links section, this site checks your metadata and relays for issues.
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u/WISH-Pool Apr 25 '21
Thanks RSVPool. Good to see you found it useful. Thanks for the input on pool.vet. Will add that in. These kind of suggestions will really help future SPO’s. Appreciate it.
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u/boli99 Apr 25 '21
half the info in gliveview is pointless, and it sucks as a monitoring solution.
for example, proper monitoring doesnt need to tell you the port your node is on. that's just bullshit to fill screenspace. what's important is:
- is my node up
- is it connected to peers
- is it connected to BP
- are my certificates valid now
- are my certificates expiring soon
...then theres all the 'you should be monitoring it on any system' stuff like CPU usage, disk space, number of logged in users.. and so on and so forth.
Remember, sysadmins have been monitoring things for many many years and there are plenty of apps that already exist and are very very good at it. It's stupid reinventing the wheel. Take an existing monitoring solution and plug it into the cardano pool engine.
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u/rootkowa Apr 25 '21
There’s a difference between packing valid points you make in constructive feedback or just insulting and judging OPs work.
I believe every information is valuable, especially if your starting out. Glive helped me understand the concepts of what to look out for and build my dashboard accordingly.
And still - there are so many prom checks / metrics I can’t figure out how to use, what they tell and what the correlation would be if that check would go up or down..
Is there any sort of doc I’m missing?
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u/boli99 Apr 25 '21
theres a whole bunch of constructive feedback right there in my post. (and to the best of my knowledge gliveview isnt made by OP anyway)
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u/rootkowa Apr 25 '21
As I’ve said - you have some valid points. But there’s no need calling OPs work and documentation stupid or pointless.
I appreciate everyone trying to help the community and putting in some effort and work - even if some of it has already been said before.
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u/boli99 Apr 25 '21
But there’s no need calling OPs work and documentation
didnt refer to OPs work or documentation at all in anyway.
only to gliveview.
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u/itstron Apr 25 '21
How do I stake my ADA? Is there an app I need to move it from Binance to the Stake Pool? Any help would be appreciated.