release-notes.1.4.0.md

vspd 1.4.0

vspd v1.4.0 contains all development work completed since v1.3.2 (November 2023). All commits included in this release can be viewed on GitHub.

Downgrade Warning

This release contains a backwards incompatible database upgrade. The new database format is not compatible with previous versions of the vspd software, and there is no code to downgrade the database back to the previous version.

Making a copy of the database backup before running the upgrade is suggested in order to enable rolling back to a previous version of the software if required.

Dependencies

vspd 1.4.0 must be built with go 1.23 or later, and requires:

• dcrd 2.0.6
• dcrwallet 2.0.6

Always use release versions of all binaries when deploying vspd to production. Neither vspd nor its dependencies should be built from master when handling mainnet tickets.

Recommended Upgrade Procedure

The upgrade procedure below includes vspd downtime, during which clients will not be able to register new tickets, check their ticket status, or update their voting preferences. You may wish to put up a temporary maintenance webpage or announce downtime in public channels. Voting on tickets already registered with the VSP will not be interrupted.

1. Build vspd from the release-v1.4.0 tag, and build dcrwallet and dcrd from their release-v2.0.6 tags.
2. Stop vspd.
3. Make a backup of the vspd database file in case rollback is required.
4. Stop the instance of dcrd running on the vspd server.
5. Install new dcrd binary on the vspd server and start it to begin any required database upgrades. You can proceed with the following steps while the upgrades run.
6. Upgrade voting wallets one by one so at least two wallets remain online for voting at all times. On each server:
   1. Stop dcrwallet.
   2. Stop dcrd.
   3. Install new dcrd binary and start.
   4. Wait for any dcrd database upgrades to complete.
   5. Check dcrd log file for warnings or errors.
   6. Install new dcrwallet binary and start.
   7. Wait for any dcrwallet database upgrades to complete.
   8. Check dcrwallet log file for warnings or errors.
7. Ensure dcrd on the vspd server has completed all database upgrades.
8. Check dcrd log file for warnings or errors.
9. Install new vspd binary and start it.
10. Check vspd log file for warnings or errors.
11. Log in to the admin webpage and check the VSP Status tab for any issues.

Notable Changes

• A new executable named vspadmin has been added to the repository.

  vspadmin is a tool to perform various VSP administration tasks such as initializing new databases and creating default config files for fresh vspd deployments. It also enables operators of existing VSPs to change the extended public keys (xpub) used for collecting fees, something which was previously not possible.

  Full documentation for vspadmin can be found on GitHub.

• The current and any historic fee xpub keys are listed on a new tab in the admin page.

• Fee calculation now takes the new block reward subsidy split from the activation of DCP-0012 into consideration. In practice, this means that VSPs will begin charging marginally higher fees.

Config Changes

• The vspd flag --feexpub is now deprecated and does nothing. The equivalent functionality has been moved into the createdatabase command of the new vspadmin executable.

• The vspd flag --configfile is now deprecated and does nothing. It is still possible to run vspd with config in a non-default location using the --homedir flag.

API changes

• After being deprecated in release 1.3.0, the revoked ticket count has now been removed from /vspinfo. The number of revoked tickets can be calculated by adding the number of missed and expired tickets.

Bug Fixes

• Don't run upgrades unnecessarily on brand new databases (#477).
• Don't initialize databases with private keys, only public (#478).
• Various minor GUI improvements and bugfixes (#495).