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Last update: January 27, 2022

Upgrade GoQuroum

The following information is for upgrading GoQuorum only.

You can have multiple versions of GoQuorum running on the same network, allowing you to perform a rolling (node-by-node) upgrade. Ensure your network maintains full uptime availability when upgrading to provide redundancy and reversibility if anything goes wrong.

Incremental upgrades

Stop the GoQuorum node you wish to upgrade, update the binary to the next version, and restart the node. Check that the node starts without errors and has the latest block from the network.

We don’t recommend jumping versions during an upgrade; some versions require manual intervention. Check the release log for any actions you might need to take.

Upgrade to GoQuorum 22.1.0

There are several significant changes to the underlying Geth 1.10 in the release of GoQuorum 22.1.0. Before you upgrade to this GoQuorum version, consider and prepare for these changes. The main things to be aware of are option deprecations and chain ID enforcement.

Option deprecations

Several command line interface (CLI) options are deprecated in the 1.9.x releases of Geth (first merged into GoQuorum as of version 2.6.0). Support for deprecated options is removed in GoQuorum 22.1.0.

See the full list of deprecated options.

Chain ID enforcement

Signing transactions with a chain ID is enforced as the default behavior in Geth 1.10 and GoQuorum 22.1.0 for raw transactions. This impacts client libraries, tooling, and applications.

You can send signed raw private transactions that include a chain ID to GoQuorum, but when you use sendTransaction for private transactions, GoQuorum continues to sign it using the Homestead signer (that is, without chain ID).

We recommend you sign transactions using the chain ID on your network. If you use a client library, for example, web3j-quorum, you must use the latest QuorumTransactionManager to specify a chain ID. With web3js-quorum you can add the chainId property to the transaction, as seen in the Quorum Developer Quickstart examples.

If you don’t want to make application changes

From version 22.1.0, you can start GoQuorum with the option --rpc.allow-unprotected-txs. This allows you to submit transactions that aren’t signed with a chain ID.

Upgrade to GoQuorum 2.6.0

GoQuorum 2.6.0 upgrades the base Geth version from 1.8.18 to 1.9.7. See Ethereum 1.9.0 for the complete list if new features added as a part of Geth 1.9.7.

Note

Geth 1.9.7 has several enhancements at the database layer which are part of GoQuorum 2.6.0. Once you migrate to 2.6.0, it can’t roll back to an older version of GoQuorum. We recommend backing up the data directory before upgrading to 2.6.0, which you can use to revert back to the older version if necessary.

A node running on GoQuorum 2.6.0 can coexist in a network with other nodes on lower versions of GoQuorum, so you can perform a rolling upgrade to GoQuorum 2.6.0. The following is the recommended upgrade process:

  1. Stop the node you wish to upgrade to GoQuorum 2.6.0. Modify the genesis.json file to include istanbulBlock and petersburgBlock. Set these parameters to an appropriate value in future by when the entire network will be upgraded to GoQuorum 2.6.0.

    Warning

    Setting the milestone blocks is necessary because the gas calculation logic changes in Geth 1.9.7. Not setting these values properly can result in a Bad block error.

  2. GoQuorum 2.6.0 deprecates genesis parameters maxCodeSize and maxCodeSizeChangeBlock. A new attribute maxCodeSizeConfig is added to genesis to allow tracking of multiple maxCodeSize value changes.

    In earlier GoQuorum versions, if the maxCodeSize is changed multiple times, any node joining the network might get a Bad block error. The changes in GoQuorum 2.6.0 enable tracking of historical changes of maxCodeSize in the genesis file and thus allow it to be changed multiple times in the network’s life. When init is executed in GoQuorum 2.6.0, Geth forces use of maxCodeSizeConfig.

    Example

    "config": {
    "homesteadBlock": 0,
    "byzantiumBlock": 0,
    "constantinopleBlock": 0,
    "petersburgBlock": 0,
    "istanbulBlock": 0,
    "chainId": 10,
    "eip150Block": 0,
    "eip155Block": 0,
    "eip150Hash": "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
    "eip158Block": 0,
    "isQuorum": true,
    "maxCodeSizeConfig": [
      {
        "block": 5,
        "size": 35
      },
      {
        "block": 15,
        "size": 24
      },
      {
        "block": 20,
        "size": 35
      }
    ]
  },

  3. Execute geth --datadir path/to/datadir init genesis.json with the modified genesis.json.

  4. Start the node in GoQuorum 2.6.0.

Notes

  • Geth 1.9.7 introduces freezerdb, where block data beyond a certain threshold is moved to a different file-based storage area. Provide the location for freezerdb using the --datadir.ancient Geth command line option.

  • When a node is migrated to this version, Geth by default creates the ancient data folder and starts moving blocks below the immutability threshold (default: 3162240) into the ancient data.

    If you don’t want this movement to happen, use --immutabilitythreshold to set the immutability threshold to an appropriate value when starting Geth.

  • Geth 1.9.7 by default doesn’t allow unlocking keystore-based accounts in the startup process, and crashes if you attempt this. To enable account unlocking, use the --allow-insecure-unlock Geth option.

  • In a GoQuorum 2.6.0 network running with gcmode=full and block height exceeding the immutability threshold (with blocks in freezerdb), if a node is restarted non-gracefully (kill -9/docker kill & start), it can fail to sync up with its peers, generating a missing parent error. This is due to an upstream bug where non-graceful restart causes a gap between leveldb and freezerdb.

    You can avoid this by either running the node with gcmode=archive or restarting the node gracefully (kill / docker stop & start).

    This is fixed in GoQuorum v21.4.0 (from upstream Geth 1.9.20).

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