What is the best practice for restarting a node that lost its status?

Node Operators troubleshooting
1

Hi all,
after almost three years of continous uptime, four disks of my node broke all within a few days. I tried to recover, cloned disks, did everything I could, but I lost the databases beyond repair and I suspect I lost many pieces stored in the node.
Basically, I lost my status.

What is the best practice for keeping the same hardware, wiping everything, and start anew? Is there a way for keeping the same node identity and signaling the system “hey system, I need to start over”.

Thanks

2

Hi @niccotnt
An identity lives and dies with the data. If the data is lost then you should discard the identity as well. A node operator can have multiple nodes and each should have a distinct identity so you should make a new identity if you are starting over.

You don’t mention specifics about your setup so it’s hard to advise on the steps to start over, but as long as the old data, old identity and any old configuration files are gone then you can start anew.

3

Please note, if you lost only databases - it is not the end of the node (you may start the same node, if it’s still has all data in place), databases will be recreated, you just need to follow this guide: https://support.storj.io/hc/en-us/articles/4403032417044-How-to-fix-database-file-is-not-a-database-error
But if you lost data, you will be forced to remove remained data and its identity and start over - generate a new identity, sign it with a new authorization token and start with a clean storage.

4

Thanks I formatted the volume and restarted a new node with a new identity.
Happy storjng!

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