On my computer, this takes approximately 0.3 seconds, which is clearly
a deal-breaker. In retrospect, this is an obvious problem because
of key derivation function use.
Solution: unlock accounts permanently.
This cut down time to sign one transaction is 0.0001 or so.
This means that the node has to sign the transaction itself.
It might be acceptable in a localized setup, but can't be used
with untrusted setups. For example, once HTTP RPC is supported,
we can't really use infrastructure like INFURA to send transactions.
Solution: switch to signing transactions in bridge
This absolutely requires separating the accounts used by validators
and administrative tasks as this will otherwise interfere with
management of nonces.
As a part of the original feature request, there was a need
for the bridge to be able to sign its own transactions. However,
this didn't fully materialize in the original patch, and only
configuration parameters were implemented.
Solution: remove these last conflated bits
and make this a pure transport change patch.
RPC patch has introduced a separate basic test that, on the surface
of it, is not too dissimilar from the basic deposit and withdrawal
test already defined in integration tests.
Solution: make sure integration tests run and remove newly introduced test
Using IPC means bridge has to run alognside the node
on the same machine. This, at times, presents problems
in terms of efficiency or coupling of deployment.
Solution: switch to RPC
Upon startup, bridge produces the following warning:
```
WARN:bridge::bridge::deposit_relay: foreign contract balance is unknown
```
This happens because the RPC response from the node might
not come/get processed immediately.
By itself this warning means that the deposit_relay won't
perform any operations.
Solution: don't commence operations until balances are retrieved
Also, indicate when balances are retrieved:
```
INFO:bridge::bridge: Retrieved home contract balance
INFO:bridge::bridge: Retrieved foreign contract balance
```
This shows us that the balances are successfully retrieved and
bridge can commence its operations.
Currently there are two possible situations related to low balance on
the account which is used for bridge operations:
1. The account which is used to sign transactions to be addressed by
ForeignBridge contract has low balance. So, the bridge is not able to do
deposit_relay and withdraw_confirm.
2. The account which is used to sign transactions to be addressed by
HomeBridge contract has low balance. So, the bridge is not able to do
withdraw_relay.
In both cases bridges hangs silently at the moment of sending
transactions and does not proceed with further actions even the
operation is intended to be performed in opposite direction (e.g. the
bridge hangs at the moment to perform withdraw_relay, so deposit_relay
cannot be performed either).
Solution: make bridge track its balance and hande insufficient
Bridge will crash with ERR_INSUFFICIENT_FUNDS (code 4) so that
supervisor can decide what should happen next. It will also log the
condition.
P.S.Make sure to run the tests with `--test-threads=1` to avoid
other test conflicting with this one. A better solution to this
issue must be devised later, however.
It is impossible to tell whether the bridge
is being shut down intentionally or because of
an error. This is particularly important
for supervising the process, both in development
and production.
Solution: handle SIGINT and SIGTERM as a special case
and designate a separate status code (3) for intentional
shutdowns.
Also, include an example supervisor for development
mode (examples/suprevisor). Simply prepend it before
the invocation of bridge to supervise it.
Currently, bridge will try to handle errors in some
way in order to attempt to restore its functionality.
However, this limits as to how the errors can be handled
as every time a change in handling is needed, a patch
for bridge will needed.
Overtime, this will inevitably grow into a full-fledged
supervisor.
However, there are already supervisor programs out there
(starting from all-encompassing systemd down to small
supervision utilities)
Solution: revert the handling of errors to the old behaviour
but (very importantly) make bridge return meaningful error
codes for all known error types so that the supervisor
can make a proper decision as to what has to be done
(restart, delayed restart, permanent shutdown, notification,
etc.)
Steps to reproduce:
Run two Parity-based nodes responsible for Home and Foreign chains.
Run bridge: RUST_LOG=info bridge --config ... --database ....
Kill parity process responsible for Foreign chain.
Expected results:
The bridge handles gracefully death of Parity node: warns about the
connection lose, shutdowns all operations (deposit_relay,
withdraw_confirm and withdraw_relay) for a while, waits when the
connection appears and runs all operations after that.
Actual results:
After killing Parity process the following appear in the terminal where
the bridge is running:
WARN:<unknown>: Unexpected IO error: Error { repr: Os { code: 32,
message: "Broken pipe" } }
No messages appear from withdraw_confirm and withdraw_relay.
Then after some time (few seconds or few minutes) the following appear
on the terminal and the bridge dies:
Request eth_blockNumber timed out
Solution: once "Broken pipe" error is caught, attempt to
reconnect repeatedly with a pause of 1 second between attempts.
When other errors are caught, simply restart the bridge,
as there is no indication that the connection has been severed.
Fixes#22
Yurii Rashkovskii
Edward Mack
Alexander Kolotov
Roman Storm
snd