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GenLayer Validator Systemd Config and Log Reporting

Then we create a systemd service for the validator. Note that this should be done by a sudo user. In our setup, we have created a dedicated user genlayer to run the genlayernode service. You need to change the name in the service definition accordingly if this is not your case.

sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/genlayer-validator.service

[Unit]
Description=Genlayer Validator Node
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=genlayer
WorkingDirectory=/home/genlayer/genlayer-node-linux-amd64
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c '/home/genlayer/genlayer-node-linux-amd64/bin/genlayernode run -c /home/genlayer/genlayer-node-linux-amd64/configs/node/config.yaml --password "$GENLAYERNODE_PASS"'
Restart=always
RestartSec=3
EnvironmentFile=/home/genlayer/.env

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

# reload the daemon and start the service
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now genlayer-validator.service

As now the validator service is running as a systemd service, you can use journalctl to check the logs. For examples:

# show the latest 100 lines of logs and tail the new logs
sudo journalctl -n 100 -f -u genlayer-validator.service
# show today's logs
sudo journalctl --since="today" -u genlayer-validator.service
# show the logs from 2025-04-30 00:00:00 to 2025-05-06 23:59:59
sudo journalctl --since="2025-04-30" --until="2025-05-06" --no-pager -u genlayer-validator.service

As mentioned in the Google doc: “For the first few weeks please keep a copy of the stdout logs and send them once a week to the GenLayer Foundation until we have better tools for metrics and monitoring”. We can create a cronjob that exports the logs as a tar file so that we can easily scp and submit it.

Create a bash file with the following content, for example, vim ~/export-validator-logs.sh.

#!/bin/bash

# Configuration
SERVICE_NAME="genlayer-validator.service"
BASE_DIR="/tmp"
OWNER_AND_GROUP="root:root"

# Calculate date range (excluding today)
# xxx_ISO format is used for journalctl commands while the other pair is used for folder and tar file names
END_DAY_ISO=$(date -d "yesterday" +%Y-%m-%d)
START_DAY_ISO=$(date -d "$END_DAY_ISO - 6 days" +%Y-%m-%d)
END_DAY=$(date -d "yesterday" +%Y%m%d)
START_DAY=$(date -d "$END_DAY_ISO - 6 days" +%Y%m%d)

# Temporary directory for logs
TEMP_DIR="$BASE_DIR/validator-logs-$START_DAY-$END_DAY"

# Check if the temporary directory exists, and remove it if it does
if [ -d "$TEMP_DIR" ]; then
  echo "Removing existing temporary directory: $TEMP_DIR"
  rm -rf "$TEMP_DIR"
fi

# Create the temporary directory
mkdir -p "$TEMP_DIR"

# Extract the logs for each day (excluding today)
for ((i=0; i<=6; i++)); do
    LOG_DATE_ISO=$(date -d "$START_DAY_ISO + $i days" +%Y-%m-%d)
    journalctl -u "$SERVICE_NAME" --since "$LOG_DATE_ISO 00:00:00" --until "$LOG_DATE_ISO 23:59:59" > "$TEMP_DIR/$(date -d "$START_DAY + $i days" +%Y%m%d).log"
    if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
        echo "Failed to extract logs for $LOG_DATE"
        exit 1
    fi
done

# Create a compressed tar file
TAR_FILE="$BASE_DIR/validator-logs-$START_DAY-$END_DAY.tar.gz"
tar -czf "$TAR_FILE" -C "$BASE_DIR" "validator-logs-$START_DAY-$END_DAY"

# Cleanup
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "Logs archived successfully: $TAR_FILE"
    chown -R $OWNER_AND_GROUP $TEMP_DIR
    chown $OWNER_AND_GROUP $TAR_FILE
    echo "Changing the generated files ownership to $OWNER_AND_GROUP"
else
    echo "Failed to create tar file"
    exit 1
fi

Change the mod of this script and then add it to the root user’s cronjob list (because journalctl requires sudo access).

chmod +x ~/export-validator-logs.sh
sudo cronjob -e

# execute the script at 01:00 on Friday, adjust the time if you need
0 1 * * 5 /absolute/path/to/export-validator-logs.sh

You can also run the script directly to generate the log collection tar file when you need:

sudo ./export-validator-logs.sh
# output:
Logs archived successfully: /home/genlayer/validator-logs-20250507-20250513.tar.gz
Changing the generated files ownership to genlayer:genlayer

ls validator*
# output:
validator-logs-20250507-20250513.tar.gz

validator-logs-20250507-20250513:
20250507.log  20250508.log  20250509.log  20250510.log  20250511.log  20250512.log  20250513.log