Two peers with same Identity

[vmx]

If you create two nodes in parallel, then they end up having the same Identity. When the script below is run you end up with configuration files which contain the same Identity:

$ diff /tmp/peera/config /tmp/peerb/config
4,5c4,5
<       "/ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/4012",
<       "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/4013/ws"
---
>       "/ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/4022",
>       "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/4023/ws"
7,8c7,8
<     "API": "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/5012",
<     "Gateway": "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/9091"
---
>     "API": "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/5022",
>     "Gateway": "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/9092"

I tried this on js-ipfs master (64c3bfb).

I debugged it a bit, but then I hit a dead end. I don't really understand how the initial configuration is created. It seems that some default configuration is written to disk, which is then overridden.

'use strict'

const IPFS = require('ipfs')


const configA = {
  "Addresses": {
    "API": "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/5012",
    "Gateway": "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/9091",
    "Swarm": [
      "/ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/4012",
      "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/4013/ws"
    ]
  },
  "Bootstrap": []
}
const peerA = new IPFS({
  repo: '/tmp/peera',
  config: configA,
  init: {
    emptyRepo: true
  }
})
peerA.on('ready', () => {
  console.log('peerA ready')
})

const configB = {
  "Addresses": {
    "API": "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/5022",
    "Gateway": "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/9092",
    "Swarm": [
      "/ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/4022",
      "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/4023/ws"
    ]
  },
  "Bootstrap": []
}
const peerB = new IPFS({
  repo: '/tmp/peerb',
  config: configB,
  init: {
    emptyRepo: true
  }
})
peerB.on('ready', () => {
  console.log('peerB ready')
})

[Mr0grog]

Oh, geez, I see the problem. In init.js, we pull in the default config as a singleton JSON object, then we proceed to customize it without first making a copy. So any nodes in the same process are making changes to the same singleton.

I wonder if a better solution is to make it a function that returns a new config object. Otherwise every consumer needs to be careful about copying first.

[daviddias]

Excellent catch! Thanks for fixing it @Mr0grog on #1324 👌🏽