Management or JSON-RPC API Enhancement: determine the current sync mode

[jpitts]

Background

geth CLI users as well as dapp browsers depending on geth may wish to get more feedback during the initial download / synchronization.

Enhancement

Add the ability to determine the current type or mode of synchronization to the Management or JSON-RPC API.

Additionally, add a synchronization status code and message. Status codes could include 'syncing' or 'error'. The status code and message would act as a pair. This pair should be expected to change once the underlying condition has changed.

Possible approach using the Management API:

> admin.downloaderStatus

Result:

{ syncMode: 'fast', syncStatus: 'error'. syncMessage: 'Something just went wrong', startingBlock: 0, currentBlock: 0, highestBlock: 0,
}

Possible approach using JSON-RPC:

> eth.syncing

Result:

{ syncMode: 'fast', syncStatus: 'error'. syncMessage: 'Something just went wrong', startingBlock: 0, currentBlock: 0, highestBlock: 0 }

References

Management APIs

JSON-RPC API: eth_syncing

Ethereum_Wallet_Syncing_Problems

[evertonfraga]

Adding my 2 wei:

As the wallet uses --syncmode fast, having only currentBlock and highestBlock is not enough. As the >50M state entries take significant time to sync, this API method could also return some data about state entry download progress — or an overall sync %.

[skitzofrenicdev]

:family_man_man_girl_boy::bikini::mother_christmas:

[holiman]

Adding error message doesn't really make sense, geth continuously connects/disconects with peers, and if a problem occur it will reinitiate sync with other peers. Differentiating between the modes "doing fast-sync" and "caught up to head, now doing block-by-block import" (which is what full-sync does from genesis) is already possible: when fast-sync is still catching up, it will also output the number of states downloaded.

[holiman]

As the >50M state entries take significant time to sync, this API method could also return some data about state entry download progress — or an overall sync %.

It's closer to 300M now. The problem is that it's not really possible to know in advance how many state entries there are :( . Hardcoding it will become wrong. It might be possible to guesstimate it based on trie density, but it's flaky

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