nuts-foundation / nuts-foundation/nuts-node

Network notifiers fail to start, causing node to shut down

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#4,162 1 comment 0 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

@reinkrul is already working on this.

Since Apr 9, 2026.

bug
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Go
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1d 10h
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Description

Lots of network chatter (new transactions from many nodes) in combination with slower disk I/O can cause a Nuts node to fail to start:

  • network.connectToKnownNodes() causes syncing of the network, which can many transactions from many nodes
  • this leads to lots of write transactions, which block read transactions
  • then the network notifiers are Run() in Start(), but they fail due to lock time-outs
  • then the node stops because it couldn't start the network module
"Could not start the server" error="unable to start Network: failed to start notifiers: unable to obtain BBolt read lock: database error: context deadline exceeded

Mitigations:

  • don't let Start() return an error when it can't start a notifier; do it in a goroutine instead, retrying if it failed
  • limit the number of parallel TransactionList queries

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