Skip to main content
Version: next 🚧

Test Commands

This page aims to give guidance on the causes, and potential for troubleshooting or improvement, of failed tests or low test scores from the Charon Test commands.

Running test commands​

Below are sample invocations for each deployment method, using test peers as the worked example because it needs access to your .charon files (the cluster file and the ENR private key), which is why the Docker examples mount a volume. Other test commands take endpoint flags instead (e.g. --beacon-endpoints, --endpoints) and generally don't need the volume mount. For each command's flags refer to the Test a Cluster page.

info

Only the peers command uses your cluster files to identify peers. There is no default value for these flags, so you must specify them explicitly: if you have completed DKG use --lock-file; if you have only created a cluster definition use --definition-file. For test all the equivalents are --peers-lock-file and --peers-definition-file. The beacon, validator, mev and infra commands do not accept these flags: beacon, validator and mev target the endpoints you pass them, while infra tests the local machine and internet connection.

If you are using the CDVN or LCDVN repo, run test commands with Docker from within the repo directory.

# Run from within the charon-distributed-validator-node/ directory
docker run --rm -u $(id -u):$(id -g) -v "$(pwd):/opt/charon" obolnetwork/charon:v1.10.0 alpha test peers \
  --lock-file="/opt/charon/.charon/cluster-lock.json" \
  --private-key-file="/opt/charon/.charon/charon-enr-private-key"
  # add any other flags here, e.g. --timeout=1h or --keep-alive=30m

Peers​

Charon Peers​

Ping​

  • Peers might have not started their nodes or are not reachable.

PingMeasure​

  • Peer might be too far away (geographically) from you.
  • If the connection to the peer is indirect, the route is from your node, to the relay, to the peer. Meaning you are measuring the travel time from you to the relay, and from the relay to the peer: (your node -> relay -> peer). This means, even if your peer's node is right next to yours, if the connection is being transmitted through a relay far away, the latency between your nodes might be too high to be effective.
  • Your general network latency to the public internet might be high. Verify with the charon test infra tests.
  • If the connection to the peer is indirect, there is a potential that the relay might be overloaded or under-resourced, consider adding alternative relays, or preferably opening charon's p2p port to the internet to establish direct peer to peer connections.

PingLoad​

Same causes as PingMeasure test apply here.

DirectConn​

  • Your or your peer's port might not be publicly exposed.
  • Your or your peer's port might be behind a firewall.
  • Your or your peer's port might be behind a strict NAT gateway.

Charon Relays​

PingRelay​

  • Relay might be down or uncontactable for other reasons.

PingMeasureRelay​

  • Relay might be under heavy load.
  • Your network latency might be high. Verify with the charon test infra tests.

Self​

Libp2pTCPPortOpen​

  • This test only performs a real check when you pass --p2p-tcp-address (there is no default). If you omit the flag, the test has no address to dial, so it is effectively skipped but still reports OK — do not read that as a successful port check. Always provide --p2p-tcp-address when you want the port-open check to actually run.
  • The port specified in --p2p-tcp-address might already be in use by another process, or be blocked by a firewall.
  • The process might have died.

Beacon​

Ping​

  • Beacon node might not be started or is not reachable.

PingMeasure​

  • Beacon node might be too far away (geographically) from you.
  • Your network latency might be high. Verify with the charon test infra tests.

Version​

  • This test fetches and records the beacon node's version string; it does not assess compatibility with charon. A failure means the version endpoint could not be reached or its response could not be parsed.

Synced​

  • Beacon node is not synced to the network.

PeerCount​

  • Beacon node does not have enough peers. This may result in slower fetching and broadcasting of slots and duties.

PingLoad​

This is a load test, to enable it add the --load-test flag.

Same causes as PingMeasure test apply here.

Simulate1, Simulate10, Simulate100, Simulate500, Simulate1000​

These are load tests, enabled by adding the --load-test flag. Each test simulates the workload for the number of validators in its name. (Setting --simulation-custom=<N> runs an additional simulation for N validators, reported as Simulate<N>.)

Same causes as PingMeasure test apply here and additionally:

  • The infrastructure on which the beacon node runs (amount of RAM, disk IOPS) might not be enough to handle the number of simulated validators supplied in this test.

Validator​

Ping​

  • Validator client might not be started or is not reachable.

PingMeasure​

  • Validator client might be too far away (geographically) from the Charon client. Generally a low latency between a validator client and its Charon client is important for timely signing.

PingLoad​

Same causes as PingMeasure test apply here.

MEV​

Ping​

  • MEV relay might not be started or is not reachable.

PingMeasure​

  • MEV relay might be too far away (geographically) from you.
  • Your network latency might be high. Verify with the charon test infra tests.

CreateBlock​

Same causes as PingMeasure test apply here and additionally:

  • MEV relay might be too slow in block production.
  • Setting --number-of-payloads greater than 1 requests that many blocks; the result is still reported under the CreateBlock name.

Infra​

DiskWriteSpeed​

DiskWriteIOPS​

DiskReadSpeed​

DiskReadIOPS​

AvailableMemory​

  • Your available memory (RAM) is not enough to run Charon. The minimum available memory should be 2GB, the recommended available memory is 4GB. Note that this test is a best estimate, as memory availability can be hard to predict, particularly if the command is run in a virtualized environment (i.e.: a Docker container).

TotalMemory​

  • Your total memory (RAM) may not be enough to run a full validating node. The recommended minimum total memory is 16GB. Specialized, or optimized deployments can use less RAM than the recommended minimum, but may require some monitoring to assert sufficient stability and performance. Read more in our Deployment Best Practices

InternetLatency​

  • Your internet latency to the nearest server is too high. Latency is expected to be at least less than 50ms and at best less than 20ms.

InternetDownloadSpeed​

  • Your internet download speed from the nearest test server is too low. Download speed is expected to be at least above 15Mb/s and at best above 50Mb/s.

InternetUploadSpeed​

  • Your internet upload speed to the nearest test server is too low. Upload speed is expected to be at least above 15Mb/s and at best above 50Mb/s.