auto-validator

---

Bittensor Auto-validator initiative.

See issues for more information what is being worked on.

Auto-Validator Service

WIP, click details for development setup info.

Base requirements

• docker with compose plugin
• python 3.11
• pdm
• nox

Setup development environment

./setup-dev.sh
docker compose up -d
cd app/src
pdm run manage.py wait_for_database --timeout 10
pdm run manage.py migrate
pdm run manage.py runserver

Setup production environment (git deployment)

This sets up "deployment by pushing to git storage on remote", so that:

• git push origin ... just pushes code to Github / other storage without any consequences;
• git push production master pushes code to a remote server running the app and triggers a git hook to redeploy the application.

Local .git ------------> Origin .git
                \
                 ------> Production .git (redeploy on push)

---

Use ssh-keygen to generate a key pair for the server, then add read-only access to repository in "deployment keys" section (ssh -A is easy to use, but not safe).

# remote server
mkdir -p ~/repos
cd ~/repos
git init --bare --initial-branch=master auto-validator.git

mkdir -p ~/domains/auto-validator

# locally
git remote add production root@<server>:~/repos/auto-validator.git
git push production master

# remote server
cd ~/repos/auto-validator.git

cat <<'EOT' > hooks/post-receive
#!/bin/bash
unset GIT_INDEX_FILE
export ROOT=/root
export REPO=auto-validator
while read oldrev newrev ref
do
    if [[ $ref =~ .*/master$ ]]; then
        export GIT_DIR="$ROOT/repos/$REPO.git/"
        export GIT_WORK_TREE="$ROOT/domains/$REPO/"
        git checkout -f master
        cd $GIT_WORK_TREE
        ./deploy.sh
    else
        echo "Doing nothing: only the master branch may be deployed on this server."
    fi
done
EOT

chmod +x hooks/post-receive
./hooks/post-receive
cd ~/domains/auto-validator
sudo bin/prepare-os.sh
./setup-prod.sh

# adjust the `.env` file

mkdir letsencrypt
./letsencrypt_setup.sh
./deploy.sh

Deploy another branch

Only master branch is used to redeploy an application. If one wants to deploy other branch, force may be used to push desired branch to remote's master:

git push --force production local-branch-to-deploy:master

Cloud deployment

AWS

Initiate the infrastructure with Terraform: TODO

To push a new version of the application to AWS, just push to a branch named deploy-$(ENVIRONMENT_NAME). Typical values for $(ENVIRONMENT_NAME) are prod and staging. For this to work, GitHub actions needs to be provided with credentials for an account that has the following policies enabled:

• AutoScalingFullAccess
• AmazonEC2ContainerRegistryFullAccess
• AmazonS3FullAccess

See .github/workflows/cd.yml to find out the secret names.

For more details see README_AWS.md

Vultr

Initiate the infrastructure with Terraform and cloud-init:

• see Terraform template in <project>/devops/vultr_tf/core/
• see scripts for interacting with Vultr API in <project>/devops/vultr_scripts/
  • note these scripts need vultr-cli installed

For more details see README_vultr.md.

Backups

Click to for backup setup & recovery information

Setting up periodic backups

Add to crontab:

# crontab -e
30 0 * * * cd ~/domains/auto-validator && ./bin/backup-db.sh > ~/backup.log 2>&1

Set BACKUP_LOCAL_ROTATE_KEEP_LAST to keep only a specific number of most recent backups in local .backups directory.

Configuring offsite targets for backups

Backups are put in .backups directory locally, additionally then can be stored offsite in following ways:

Backblaze

Set in .env file:

• BACKUP_B2_BUCKET_NAME
• BACKUP_B2_KEY_ID
• BACKUP_B2_KEY_SECRET

Email

Set in .env file:

• EMAIL_HOST
• EMAIL_PORT
• EMAIL_HOST_USER
• EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD
• EMAIL_TARGET

Restoring system from backup after a catastrophical failure

1. Follow the instructions above to set up a new production environment
2. Restore the database using bin/restore-db.sh
3. See if everything works
4. Set up backups on the new machine
5. Make sure everything is filled up in .env, error reporting integration, email accounts etc

cookiecutter-rt-django

Skeleton of this project was generated using cookiecutter-rt-django. Use cruft update to update the project to the latest version of the template with all current bugfixes and features.