Post-setup operations¶

Day-to-day operating commands for a running validator. Everything here runs from ~/linera-artifacts/.

The key thing to remember: the same overlay flags you used at deploy time must be passed every time you docker compose up, or your observability containers won't come back. The deploy script records your choice in .env (as DEPLOYMENT_* metadata) but does NOT replay it for you on subsequent compose commands — that's still manual.

Daily commands¶

cd ~/linera-artifacts/docker

# Check status
docker compose ps

# Tail logs (one service or all)
docker compose logs -f proxy
docker compose logs -f                    # all services

# Stop everything (no data loss)
docker compose -f docker-compose.yml \
               -f docker-compose.alloy.yml \
               down

# Bring it back up — same overlay set you used originally
docker compose -f docker-compose.yml \
               -f docker-compose.alloy.yml \
               up -d

If you used --with-local-monitoring at deploy time, also append -f docker-compose.local-monitoring.yml to every compose command. Both flags? Both files.

Pulling a new linera image¶

Watchtower polls every 30s and rolls labelled containers when a new image digest appears upstream — usually nothing for you to do. To force the pull manually:

docker compose pull
docker compose up -d                      # picks up the new images

Editing `.env` and re-applying¶

Most config changes only require a recreate of the affected service:

# After editing .env:
docker compose up -d                      # noop on unchanged services,
                                          # recreates the ones that changed

For changes that affect resource limits or volumes, restart the specific container:

docker compose restart scylla             # in-place restart, same config
docker compose up -d --force-recreate scylla   # recreate from current .env

Adding new env vars after a release¶

When the artifacts repo adds new variables to .env.production.template, merge them into your existing .env without losing your settings:

cd ~/linera-artifacts
git pull
./scripts/upgrade-env.sh                  # writes a backup; commented-out
                                          # new vars added for review
cd docker
docker compose up -d                      # apply

Switching observability mode after the fact¶

Just bring the stack down with the old overlay set, then up -d with the new one. State is bind-mounted so nothing is lost:

# Was: --with-alloy
docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.alloy.yml down

# Now: --with-alloy AND --with-local-monitoring
docker compose -f docker-compose.yml \
               -f docker-compose.alloy.yml \
               -f docker-compose.local-monitoring.yml \
               up -d

Backup¶

Everything important sits in bind-mounted directories under docker/data/ (Scylla) and docker/{server,genesis,validator-config}.json. Snapshot or rsync the lot:

cd ~/linera-artifacts/docker
docker compose stop scylla                # consistent snapshot
sudo tar czf ~/validator-backup-$(date +%F).tgz \
  data/scylla server.json genesis.json validator-config.toml .env
docker compose start scylla

server.json is the only irreplaceable file — back it up separately, encrypted, off-host.

Full teardown (only if you know what you're doing)¶

cd ~/linera-artifacts/docker
docker compose -f docker-compose.yml \
               -f docker-compose.alloy.yml \
               down -v                    # -v wipes named volumes too
sudo rm -rf data/                         # wipes Scylla / Caddy data
# server.json + .env are NOT deleted — remove manually if rotating keys.