Docs: "ZN without ZN"

[kianenigma]

What are exactly the tricks that ZN does under the hood? are these documented somewhere?

for example, I can't get a rococo local spec to run locally with

$ polkadot --chain rococo-local.json --tmp --bob --validator --unsafe-force-node-key-generation --insecure-validator-i-know-what-i-do
$ polkadot --tmp --chain rococo-local.json --validator --unsafe-force-node-key-generation --insecure-validator-i-know-what-i-do --alice --bootnodes /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/30333/p2p/12D3KooWBtdHddFucYNhaY6rA8K5qFYhwjFqv8Ue9mxL3PHpBfwW

but it works with ZN, so I assume it is doing more magic under the hood.

As a user, I like the abstraction, but I also would like to know what is going on.

[turuslan]

Hello.

--tmp creates new directory without $DATA/chains/$CHAIN/network/secret_ed25519 file.
--unsafe-force-node-key-generation generates new libp2p private key.
Peer id is public key which is derived from private key.
Peer id is passed to --bootnodes (or chainspec json) and checked.

Please check if peer id from Local node identity is matches one passed to --bootnodes.

Zombienet generates libp2p private key and passes it to --node-key.
This way peer id is predictable and doesn't change.
You can see --node-key and other flags in zombienet_data/alice.yaml.

zombienet spawn --dir zombienet_data --provider native network.toml

[kianenigma]

I stumbled upon this again. I think it would be fantastic to know which storage items ZN is tweaking under the hood. It seems to be touching validator_count, Session::validators, and a few others.

Not knowing what ZN exactly does causes confusion. For example, I might set Staking.validator_count to 10 in my genesis config, but ZN is overriding it another value.

[kianenigma]

Hello.

--tmp creates new directory without $DATA/chains/$CHAIN/network/secret_ed25519 file. --unsafe-force-node-key-generation generates new libp2p private key. Peer id is public key which is derived from private key. Peer id is passed to --bootnodes (or chainspec json) and checked.

Please check if peer id from Local node identity is matches one passed to --bootnodes.

Zombienet generates libp2p private key and passes it to --node-key. This way peer id is predictable and doesn't change. You can see --node-key and other flags in zombienet_data/alice.yaml.

zombienet spawn --dir zombienet_data --provider native network.toml

This is mostly explaining which CLI args ZN is setting, which I can see in the logs. While useful, it is not the main concern I have. I suggest all "under the hood magic" that ZN does esp. in storage items to become more transparent to the user.