Cosmovisor Installation & Upgrades

Details of how to install cosmovisor and handle upgrades with it

Install Cosmovisor

go install github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/cosmovisor/cmd/cosmovisor@latest

Confirm installation with:

which cosmovisor
####The output should be a path to the cosmovisor binary:
####/home/<user>/go/bin/cosmovisor

Add environment variables to shell

echo 'export DAEMON_NAME=quicksilverd' >> $HOME/.bash_profile
echo 'export DAEMON_HOME=$HOME/.quicksilverd' >> $HOME/.bash_profile
echo 'export DAEMON_DATA_BACKUP_DIR=$HOME/.quicksilverd/data_backup' >> $HOME/.bash_profile

Directory structure

Cosmovisor expects the following directory structure in $DAEMON_HOME/cosmovisor:

.
├── current -> genesis or upgrades/<name>
├── genesis
│   └── bin
│       └── $DAEMON_NAME
└── upgrades
    └── <name>
        └── bin
            └── $DAEMON_NAME

current is a symlink that will be created by cosmovisor.

Create the target directory structure with the following:

mkdir -p $DAEMON_HOME/cosmovisor/genesis/bin
mkdir -p $DAEMON_HOME/cosmovisor/upgrades

Set the genesis binary

Cosmovisor requires the genesis binary to be set. Do this by copying the quicksilverd binary to $DAEMON_HOME/cosmovisor/genesis/bin/$DAEMON_NAME

# find quicksilverd binary
which quicksilverd

# copy binary to cosmovisor genesis using output from above command, e.g.
cp build/quicksilverd $DAEMON_HOME/cosmovisor/genesis/bin/$DAEMON_NAME

Configure cosmovisor as a system service

sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/cosmovisor.service > /dev/null <<EOF
[Unit]
Description=cosmovisor
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=$USER
ExecStart=/home/$USER/go/bin/cosmovisor run start
Restart=always
RestartSec=3
LimitNOFILE=4096
Environment="DAEMON_NAME=quicksilverd"
Environment="DAEMON_HOME=/home/$USER/.quicksilverd"
Environment="DAEMON_ALLOW_DOWNLOAD_BINARIES=false"
# Set buffer size to handle:
# https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/pull/8590
Environment="DAEMON_LOG_BUFFER_SIZE=512"
Environment="DAEMON_RESTART_AFTER_UPGRADE=true"
Environment="DAEMON_POLL_INTERVAL=300ms"
Environment="DAEMON_DATA_BACKUP_DIR=${HOME}/.quicksilverd"
# Set to true if disk space is limited:
Environment="UNSAFE_SKIP_BACKUP=true"
Environment="DAEMON_PREUPGRADE_MAX_RETRIES=0"

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

EOF

IMPORTANT: If you have limited disk space please set UNSAFE_SKIP_BACKUP=true. This will avoid an upgrade failure due to insufficient disk space when the backup is created.

Enable and start the cosmovisor service:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable cosmovisor
sudo systemctl restart cosmovisor

Check that the service is running:

sudo systemctl status cosmovisor
sudo journalctl -u cosmovisor -f -u cat

sudo systemctl stop quicksilverd
sudo systemctl disable quicksilverd

sudo systemctl enable quicksilverd
sudo systemctl restart quicksilverd

sudo systemctl stop cosmovisor
sudo systemctl disable cosmovisor