CometBFT bootstrap Ansible role

What is this?

This repository holds an Ansible role designed to generate a CometBFT testnet using the local machine as the bootstrap node (to generate keys and so on).

The testnet is bootstrapped using Docker on the local workstation executing the Ansible playbook.

It then is designed to sync that configuration out to the actual testnet nodes, which presumably are also Ansibilized using our accompanying Ansible role, ansible-role-cometbft.

What's the testnet setup?

We assume 3 validator nodes and 3 sentry nodes.

Each validator can only receive traffic from the sentries.

The sentries can receive traffic from all sentries and validators.

How do I run the Ansible role?

Below are example playbooks. It assumes that your inventory contains:

• A hostgroup called cometbft_bootstrap that most likely has just localhost in it

• A hostgroup called cometbft_validators that has the 3 validator node IPs/hostnames in it

• A hostgroup called cometbft_sentries that has the 3 sentry node IPs/hostnames in it

• Optionally a cometbft group that includes all three (to share common inventory attributes)

The inventory attributes for each group:

cometbft group

# Version
cometbft_version: "v0.38.19"

# Where the node home lives on each machine
cometbft_home: "/opt/cometbft"

# Where to build one-time testnet config on the control node (localhost, usually)
cometbft_testnet_dir: "/tmp/comet-testnet"

# Docker image
cometbft_docker_image: "cometbft/cometbft:{{ cometbft_version }}"

cometbft_validators group

cometbft_role: "validator"

cometbft_sentries group

cometbft_role: "sentry"

The inventory attributes for each validator node would contain something like this:

cometbft_node_index: 0 # incrementing for each other validator node
cometbft_partner: "my-sentry-1" # validator 2 would have sentry 2, etc

The inventory attributes for each sentry node would contain something like this:

cometbft_node_index: 3
cometbft_partner: "my-validator-1"

The playbook to bootstrap (using this role)

---
- name: Bootstrap CometBFT testnet config
  hosts: cometbft_bootstrap
  connection: local
  gather_facts: false
  roles:
    - ansible-role-cometbft-bootstrap

- name: Push node config to each remote node
  hosts: "cometbft_validators:cometbft_sentries"
  become: true
  tasks:
    - name: Ensure cometbft home exists
      ansible.builtin.file:
        path: "{{ cometbft_home }}"
        state: directory
        mode: "0755"

    - name: Sync node{{ cometbft_node_index }} dir to remote CMTHOME
      ansible.posix.synchronize:
        src: "{{ cometbft_testnet_dir }}/node{{ cometbft_node_index }}/"
        dest: "{{ cometbft_home }}/"
        delete: yes

The playbook to configure (post-bootstrap, using ansible-role-cometbft)

---
- name: Set up CometBFT nodes
  hosts: "cometbft_validators:cometbft_sentries"
  become: true
  roles:
    - ansible-role-cometbft