rippled Server Won't Start
This page explains possible reasons the rippled
server does not start and how to fix them.
These instructions assume you have installed rippled
on a supported platform.
File Descriptors Limit
On some Linux variants, you may get an error message such as the following when trying to run rippled
:
WARNING: There are only 1024 file descriptors (soft limit) available, which limit the number of simultaneous connections.
This occurs because the system has a security limit on the number of files a single process may open, but the limit is set too low for rippled
. To fix the problem, root access is required. Increase the number of files rippled
is allowed to open with the following steps:
Add the following lines to the end of your
/etc/security/limits.conf
file:* soft nofile 65536 * hard nofile 65536
Check that the hard limit on number of files that can be opened is now
65536
:ulimit -Hn
The command should output
65536
.Try starting
rippled
again.systemctl start rippled
If
rippled
still does not start, open/etc/sysctl.conf
and append the following kernel-level setting:fs.file-max = 65536
Failed to open /etc/opt/ripple/rippled.cfg
If rippled
crashes on startup with an error such as the following, it means that rippled
cannot read its config file:
Loading: "/etc/opt/ripple/rippled.cfg" Failed to open '"/etc/opt/ripple/rippled.cfg"'. Terminating thread rippled: main: unhandled St13runtime_error 'Can not create "/var/opt/ripple"' Aborted (core dumped)
Possible solutions:
Check that the config file exists (the default location is
/etc/opt/ripple/rippled.cfg
) and the user that runs yourrippled
process (usuallyrippled
) has read permissions to the file.Create a config file that can be read by the
rippled
user at$HOME/.config/ripple/rippled.cfg
(where$HOME
points to therippled
user's home directory).Tip: The
rippled
repository contains an examplerippled.cfg
file which is provided as the default config when you do an RPM installation. If you do not have the file, you can copy it from there.Specify the path to your preferred config file using the
--conf
commandline option.
Failed to open validators file
If rippled
crashes on startup with an error such as the following, it means it can read its primary config file, but that config file specifies a separate validators config file (typically named validators.txt
), which rippled
cannot read.
Loading: "/home/rippled/.config/ripple/rippled.cfg" Terminating thread rippled: main: unhandled St13runtime_error 'The file specified in [validators_file] does not exist: /home/rippled/.config/ripple/validators.txt' Aborted (core dumped)
Possible solutions:
Check that the
[validators.txt]
file exists and therippled
user has permissions to read it.Tip: The
rippled
repository contains an examplevalidators.txt
file which is provided as the default config when you do an RPM installation. If you do not have the file, you can copy it from there.Edit your
rippled.cfg
file and modify the[validators_file]
setting to have the correct path to yourvalidators.txt
(or equivalent) file. Check for extra whitespace before or after the filename.Edit your
rippled.cfg
file and remove the[validators_file]
setting. Add validator settings directly to yourrippled.cfg
file. For example:[validator_list_sites] https://vl.ripple.com [validator_list_keys] ED2677ABFFD1B33AC6FBC3062B71F1E8397C1505E1C42C64D11AD1B28FF73F4734
Cannot create database path
If rippled
crashes on startup with an error such as the following, it means the server does not have write permissions to the [database_path]
from its config file.
Loading: "/home/rippled/.config/ripple/rippled.cfg" Terminating thread rippled: main: unhandled St13runtime_error 'Can not create "/var/lib/rippled/db"' Aborted (core dumped)
The paths to the configuration file (/home/rippled/.config/ripple/rippled.cfg
) and the database path (/var/lib/rippled/db
) may vary depending on your system.
Possible solutions:
Run
rippled
as a different user that has write permissions to the database path printed in the error message.Edit your
rippled.cfg
file and change the[database_path]
setting to use a path that therippled
user has write permissions to.Grant the
rippled
user write permissions to the configured database path.
State DB Error
The following error can occur if the rippled
server's state database is corrupted. This can occur as the result of being shutdown unexpectedly, or if you change the type of database from RocksDB to NuDB without changing the path
and [database_path]
settings in the config file.
2018-Aug-21 23:06:38.675117810 SHAMapStore:ERR state db error: writableDbExists false archiveDbExists false writableDb '/var/lib/rippled/db/rocksdb/rippledb.11a9' archiveDb '/var/lib/rippled/db/rocksdb/rippledb.2d73' To resume operation, make backups of and remove the files matching /var/lib/rippled/db/state* and contents of the directory /var/lib/rippled/db/rocksdb Terminating thread rippled: main: unhandled St13runtime_error 'state db error'
The easiest way to fix this problem is to delete the databases entirely. You may want to back them up elsewhere instead. For example:
mv /var/lib/rippled/db /var/lib/rippled/db-bak
Or, if you are sure you don't need the databases:
rm -r /var/lib/rippled/db
Tip: It is generally safe to delete the rippled
databases, because any individual server can re-download ledger history from other servers in the XRP Ledger network.
Alternatively, you can change the paths to the databases in the config file. For example:
[node_db] type=NuDB path=/var/lib/rippled/custom_nudb_path [database_path] /var/lib/rippled/custom_sqlite_db_path
Online Delete is Less Than Ledger History
An error message such as the following indicates that the rippled.cfg
file has contradictory values for [ledger_history]
and online_delete
.
Terminating thread rippled: main: unhandled St13runtime_error 'online_delete must not be less than ledger_history (currently 3000)
The [ledger_history]
setting represents how many ledgers of history the server should seek to back-fill. The online_delete
field (in the [node_db]
stanza) indicates how many ledgers of history to keep when dropping older history. The online_delete
value must be equal to or larger than [ledger_history]
to prevent the server from deleting historical ledgers that it is also trying to download.
To fix the problem, edit the rippled.cfg
file and change or remove either the [ledger_history]
or online_delete
options. (If you omit [ledger_history]
, it uses a default of 256 ledger versions. If you specify the online_delete
field, it must be larger than 256. If you omit online_delete
, it disables automatic deletion of old ledger versions.)
Bad node_size value
An error such as the following indicates that the rippled.cfg
file has an improper value for the node_size
setting:
Terminating thread rippled: main: unhandled N5beast14BadLexicalCastE 'std::bad_cast'
Valid parameters for the node_size
field are tiny
, small
, medium
, large
, or huge
. For more information see Node Size.
Shard path missing
An error such as the following indicates that the rippled.cfg
has an incomplete history sharding configuration:
Terminating thread rippled: main: unhandled St13runtime_error 'shard path missing'
If your config includes a [shard_db]
stanza, it must contain a path
field, which points to a directory where rippled
can write the data for the shard store. This error means the path
field is missing or located in the wrong place. Check for extra whitespace or typos in your config file, and compare against the Shard Configuration Example.
Unsupported shard store type: RocksDB
RocksDB is no longer supported as a backend for history sharding. If you have an existing configuration that defines a RocksDB shard store, the server fails to start.
In this case, the process dies shortly after the log startup command, with a message such as the following appearing earlier in the output log:
ShardStore:ERR Unsupported shard store type: RocksDB
To fix this problem, do one of the following, then restart the server:
- Change your shard store to use NuDB instead.
- Disable history sharding.