TypeError: Cannot read property 'api' of undefined

[jeroenroodnat]

I upgraded from 2.0.1 to 2.1.2 docker image. Alerter is not connecting anymore. Found below in the general log file. My API server is running. The "TypeError: Cannot read property 'api' of undefined" concerns me. I am running container in k8s.

11/09/2020 01:00:42 PM - general - INFO - Trying to retrieve data from the API of polkadot-private-node 11/09/2020 01:00:42 PM - general - ERROR - TypeError: Cannot read property 'api' of undefined 11/09/2020 01:00:42 PM - general - INFO - Failed to retrieve data from the API of polkadot-private-node

[jeroenroodnat]

using shell into container I check connectivity to the Node as well as API server and that is all working as expected.

[dillu24]

Can you confirm whether the api/rpc/sytem/chain endpoint works from the API server using postman or curl?

This issue is occurring when the alerter starts, and the endpoint above is the only API call that is called on startup. Can you also answer the following questions?:

• Are your failing nodes Polkadot nodes?
• Are your nodes running on the latest version?
• Is the API server the latest version?
• Did you generate the docker image yourself using docker-compose up --build -d alerter or by downloading from DockerHub?

[jeroenroodnat]

It looks like it is an issue with the API-server.

curl -X GET http://localhost:3000/api/pingNode?websocket=ws://polkadot-private-node-0.polkadot-private-node.ksm.svc.cluster.local:9944

{"error":"TypeError: Cannot read property 'api' of undefined"}

Use latest version of API server. Dockerhub image. Polkadot nodes is running 0.8.23.

If I change the websocket url to the IP I get the following error, which makes sense as config is not setup.

{"error":"An API for ws://10.42.2.44:9944 needs to be setup before it can be queried"}

my node config is:

[node_1] node_name = polkadot-private-node ws_url = ws://polkadot-private-node-0.polkadot-private-node.ksm.svc.cluster.local:9944

[jeroenroodnat]

Changed my node config to have an IP in the ws_url and not a hostname. This works. Not sure why yet.

For k8s this is suboptimal as the IP might change so you really want to use hostname

[jeroenroodnat]

I reverted API server back to 1.18.1 and this works with hostname in ws://. So it seems it is a API server issue in 1.23.1

[dillu24]

Sorry for the delay.

There is no logic in the API server which refuses connections with the host name. In fact whenever I use a public node like wss://kusama-rpc.polkadot.io/ to connect the API server with, it is always successful.

Can you perform the following tests?:

• Can you re-test with a manually built docker image for the API server rather than using the one from dockerhub? (Checking if the dockerhub image is invalid)
• Can you check if your connection needs to be wss:// instead of ws://?
• Can you check the API server logs to see if the connection is being established to your node?

It could also be that there was a change in the underlying polkadot-js/api, which the API server uses.

[dillu24]

Another important note is that the latest version of PANIC is no longer compatible with version 1.18.1 of the API server.