Modifying services.json in local docker cluster

Help IPFS Cluster
1

Im currently setting up a local docker cluster and am running into some problems with the configuration of each node. For the container setup I’ve followed this docker-compose.yml and it works well in default config. However, I want to use the replication_factor (max and min) settings and also set leave_on_shutdown = true on each node and am unsure about how to do this properly.

Currently I start then cluster nodes with a shell script , stop them, edit the service.json file and restart the containers. It’s a bad approach and doesn’t really work, because I have to use loads of sleep in my shell script to prevent raft from throwing errors. Also, I cant restart all cluster containers at the same time, as raft looses its leader and is unable to elect a new one (not sure why exactly)

So I’m wondering how to initialise the ipfs-cluster-service and override the config defaults or change the settings while the container is running. Would be great to get some insight on how to do this.

2

Hi! You can override the service.json configuration values using environment variables (for the main section and the restapi section only though):

In yout case CLUSTER_LEAVEONSHUTDOWN=true and CLUSTER_REPLICATIONFACTORMIN=x (and MAX) should do it.

3

Must have missed that in the docs! For some reason this doesn’t work though. This is included in my docker-compose:

environment:
  CLUSTER_SECRET: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.... 
  CLUSTER_REPLICATIONFACTORMIN: 3
  CLUSTER_REPLICATIONFACTORMAX: 3
  CLUSTER_LEAVEONSHUTDOWN: 'TRUE'

When I inspect the environment variables in the container, they’re set properly but the values for replication_factor and leave_on_shutdown dont show in the service.json (while the secret does, works as expected). Is there anything else I’m missing?

4

Right, so they don’t overwite the service.json values in the file, but they do take effect in the cluster-service when it’s launched. So when you pin an item it should use the environment values for replication factor instead of the ones in service.json.

5

I see. Somewhat confusing that the secret is updated in service.json, but the other values aren’t. I created an issue in the website repo, maybe someone can add a warning or something like that. Thanks a lot for your help!

6

Ah right, the cluster secret is used during init but the other variables only override an existing config. Maybe we should change this and have them used on init too.

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