Boost

Boost is a tool for Filecoin storage providers to manage data storage and retrievals on Filecoin.

See the docs at https://boost.filecoin.io to get started.

Table of Contents

• Building and Installing Boost
• Running Boost for development
• Running Boost devnet in Docker
• License

Building and Installing Boost

Compile and install using the instructions at the Building and installing section in the docs.

Running Boost for development

To run Boost on your development machine, you will need to set up a devnet:

1. Remove any existing Lotus and Boost repositories

rm -rf ~/.lotusmarkets ~/.lotus ~/.lotusminer ~/.genesis_sectors
rm -rf ~/.boost

2. Build Lotus in debug mode

The version of lotus needs to match the version in Boost's go.mod

cd lotus
git checkout <tag>
make debug

3. Install Lotus

The devnet script uses the installed lotus and lotus-miner binaries to run the miner and daemon.

make install
install -C ./lotus-seed /usr/local/bin/lotus-seed

4. Build Boost in debug mode

Double check if environment variables are set:

export LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/homebrew/lib
export PATH="$(brew --prefix coreutils)/libexec/gnubin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH"

Build and install

cd boost
make debug
make install

5. Start the devnet

The following command will use the binaries that you built and installed above, and will run lotus, lotus-miner and lotus-seed. The lotus version must match the version in Boost's go.mod.

cd boost
./devnet

The first time you run it, it will download the Filecoin proof parameters. It will take at least 10 minutes depending on your connection speed. You may need to restart the command multiple times as your terminal will probably timeout before it finishes downloading everything.

The devnet isn't designed to be restartable. After it has been successfully run once, you'll have to clear out the previous data before re-running ./devnet:

rm -rf ~/.lotusmarkets && rm -rf ~/.lotus && rm -rf ~/.lotusminer && rm -rf ~/.genesis_sectors

6. Wait for lotus-miner to come up (through the command above)

Unset these variables as they interfere with the lotus-miner command.

unset MINER_API_INFO
unset FULLNODE_API_INFO

Then repeatedly run this command until it succeeds:

lotus-miner auth api-info --perm=admin

7. Get the authentication tokens to connect to the lotus daemon and miner:

export ENV_MINER_API_INFO=`lotus-miner auth api-info --perm=admin`
export ENV_FULLNODE_API_INFO=`lotus auth api-info --perm=admin`

export MINER_API_INFO=`echo $ENV_MINER_API_INFO | awk '{split($0,a,"="); print a[2]}'`
export FULLNODE_API_INFO=`echo $ENV_FULLNODE_API_INFO | awk '{split($0,a,"="); print a[2]}'`

echo MINER_API_INFO=$MINER_API_INFO
echo FULLNODE_API_INFO=$FULLNODE_API_INFO

8. Create the wallets needed for Boost

export DEFAULT_WALLET=`lotus wallet list | tail -1 | awk '{print $1}'`
export COLLAT_WALLET=`lotus wallet new bls`
export PUBMSG_WALLET=`lotus wallet new bls`
export CLIENT_WALLET=`lotus wallet new bls`

9. Add funds to the wallets

lotus send --from $DEFAULT_WALLET $COLLAT_WALLET 10
lotus send --from $DEFAULT_WALLET $PUBMSG_WALLET 10
lotus send --from $DEFAULT_WALLET $CLIENT_WALLET 10

Run this command repeatedly until each wallet you created has 10 FIL:

lotus wallet list

This should take about 10 seconds.

10. Set the Publish Message Wallet as a control address on the miner

lotus-miner actor control set --really-do-it $PUBMSG_WALLET

11. Add funds into the Market Actor escrow for the client and Collateral wallets

lotus wallet market add --from $DEFAULT_WALLET --address $CLIENT_WALLET 5
lotus wallet market add --address $COLLAT_WALLET 5

12. Initialize Boost / Create Boost repository

boostd -vv init \
  --api-sealer=$MINER_API_INFO \
  --api-sector-index=$MINER_API_INFO \
  --wallet-publish-storage-deals=$PUBMSG_WALLET \
  --wallet-deal-collateral=$COLLAT_WALLET \
  --max-staging-deals-bytes=2000000000

13. Build the Web UI

make react

14. Edit config to set a fixed listen address

Edit ~/.boost/config.toml

Set the port in the ListenAddresses key to 50000

[Libp2p]
  ListenAddresses = ["/ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/50000", "/ip6/::/tcp/0"]

15. Run Boost

boostd -vv run

Note the peer ID of the boost instance:

2022-06-10T09:32:28.819Z        INFO    boostd  boostd/run.go:114       Boost libp2p node listening     {"maddr": "{12D3KooWQNNWNiJ1mieEk9EHjDVF2qBc1FSjJGEzwjnMJzteApaW: [/ip4/172.17.0.2/tcp/50000 /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/50000]}"}

In this example: 12D3KooWQNNWNiJ1mieEk9EHjDVF2qBc1FSjJGEzwjnMJzteApaW

14. Set the peer ID and multi-address of the miner on chain

lotus-miner actor set-peer-id <peer id>
lotus-miner actor set-addrs /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/50000

16. Open the Web UI

Open http://localhost:8080 to see the Boost UI

Make a deal with Boost

1. Initialize the Boost client

boost init

This will output the address of the wallet (it's safe to run the init command repeatedly).

2. Send funds to the client wallet

lotus send --from=$DEFAULT_WALLET <client wallet> 10

3. Follow the guide at https://boost.filecoin.io/tutorials/how-to-store-files-with-boost-on-filecoin

Note that above you already ran a command to export FULLNODE_API (and point it to your local devnet lotus daemon).

Note also that the provider address is t01000 and you will need to supply an appropriate --storage-price when using boost deal since the devnet has a minimum price. Alternatively, using "Settings" in the Boost web UI to set the deal price to zero.

Running Boost devnet in Docker

Building Docker images

1. Build images

make docker/all

If you need to build containers using a specific version of lotus then provide the version as a parameter, e.g. make docker/all lotus_version=1.17.0. The version must be a tag name of Lotus git repo without v prefix. Or you can build using a local source of lotus - make docker/all lotus_src_dir=<path of lotus source>. Also, before starting devnet, you need to update versions in the .env file.

Start devnet docker stack

1. Run

cd docker/devnet
docker compose up -d

It will spin up lotus, lotus-miner, boost, booster-http and demo-http-server containers. All temporary data will be saved in ./data folder.

The initial setup could take up to 20 min or more as it needs to download Filecoin proof parameters. During the initial setup, it is normal to see error messages in the log. Containers are waiting for the lotus to be ready. It may timeout several times. Restart is expected to be managed by docker.

2. Try opening the Boost GUI http://localhost:8080 . Devnet is ready to operate when the URL opens and indicates no errors on the startup page.

You can inspect the status using docker compose logs -f.

Start monitoring docker stack

docker plugin install grafana/loki-docker-driver:latest --alias loki --grant-all-permissions

cd docker/monitoring
docker compose up -d

Connect monitoring stack to devnet stack

docker network connect devnet tempo
docker network connect devnet prometheus

Explore Grafana / Tempo and search for traces

http://localhost:3333

Making a deal

The boost container is packed with boost and lotus clients. You can connect to the container with the command docker compose exec boost /bin/bash and follow instructions for storing files with Boost guide. But the recommended startup is to follow the semi-interactive demo first:

# Attach to a running boost container
docker compose exec boost /bin/bash

# Execute the demo script /app/sample/make-a-deal.sh
root@83260455bbd2:/app# ./sample/make-a-deal.sh

Accessing Lotus from localhost

By default the docker-compose.yaml does not expose any port of the lotus container. To access the lotus from a local machine:

1. You can either expose 1234 in docker-compose.yaml or find the IP of the lotus container using docker inspect lotus | grep IPAddress command.
2. Get the FULLNODE_API_INFO

docker exec -it lotus lotus auth api-info --perm=admin
FULLNODE_API_INFO=eyJ...ms4:/dns/lotus/tcp/1234/http

3. Change the dns/lotus/tcp/1234/http to ip4/<127.0.0.1 or container's IP>/tcp/1234/http for the use in FULLNODE_API_INFO.

Cleaning up

To stop containers and drop everything:

docker compose down --rmi local

rm -rf ./data

rm -rf ~/.cache/filecoin-proof-parameters

License

Dual-licensed under MIT + Apache 2.0