DISABLE_BLOCK_INGESTOR does not disable block ingestion

Do you want to request a feature or report a bug?
Report a bug

What is the current behavior?
If the DISABLE_BLOCK_INGESTOR is set to true, 'true', or "true" the subgraph writer / block ingestion is still started when running graph-node

If the current behavior is a bug, please provide the steps to reproduce and if possible a minimal demo of the problem.

Reproduction steps:
Using the v.0.27.0 build or image from docker hubgraphprotocol:graph-node:v0.27.0

• Set DISABLE_BLOCK_INGESTOR=true and start the graph node
• Check the logs and see that the block ingestion and indexing still occurs.

What is the expected behavior?
The expected behavior is that the graph node starts in 'query' only mode with block ingestion and indexing disabled.

Further Digging

I've found that the correct way to disable block ingestion is to set the env var node_id to something other than 'default'. If node_id is not provided, the node name is set to default and the graph-node assumes it needs to ingest and index. This can be verified by setting node_id=default.

Setting node_id to anything else start the graph-node with block ingestion and indexing disabled. Looking at the docker start script, you can also pass node_role=query-node which is sugar for setting DISABLE_BLOCK_INGESTOR=true. This has no effect either and leaving node_role unset has no effect on whether the node starts in query or indexing mode.

Proposed Fixes

Either update the env var readme and remove DISABLE_BLOCK_INGESTOR and describe the node_id behavior.

Respect DISABLE_BLOCK_INGESTOR flag.

I'm happy to open a PR to update the README if this should be the fix.

Start by checking docs/environment-variables.md and the Docker start script for how DISABLE_BLOCK_INGESTOR and node_role are documented and passed through. Trace the startup path that selects query-only versus indexing mode, then verify the expected behavior by running the v0.27.0 image with DISABLE_BLOCK_INGESTOR=true and confirming that block ingestion and indexing do not start.