TF Grid 3.9: Farmer Bot on QAnet

Dear friends,

After some initial testing on devnet, we deployed TFGrid 3.9 on qanet. This version includes the Farmerbot feature where:

  • farmers can define their configuration in an easy markdown format
  • the nodes in the farm can be turned on and off through WOL machines
  • the farmerbot can wake a node when required
  • the farming manager checks which nodes can be turned off

Some of the farmers in the community have expressed their excitement and willingness to help us test this, so we are happy to announce that this is possible now on our qanet and would like to take this opportunity to thank the TF community for their patience and effort.

On the farmerbot section of the manual you can find more information on what it is exactly, how it works, and how to use it.

For more information on how to prepare your farmerbot with WOL, please visit this forumpost. Keep in mind that everything needs to be tested on qanet.

If there are any issues or questions, feel free to open a ticket on the Github repo.

There will be plenty more exciting fixes and features coming to the TFGrid soon, so make sure to follow the forum and Telegram channel!

Kind regards,
The ThreeFold Team

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Huge thank you to everyone on the team that was involved - it’s very much appreciated!

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Great news! Thanks to the team who worked on farmerbot. Now: let’s go, testing community! :facepunch:

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Thanks for all the work to the team and continued progress.
Is there a period of time that has been set to monitor the feature and then move it to the next stage if no major bugs are found? Is qa net the dev net or is it even a station before that?

The more people that can test on qanet, the more confident we will be to resolve possible bugs and move to testnet.

TFGrid 3.9 has been on devnet first, now it is moved to qanet. We will update the community as soon as we move this to testnet (and eventually mainnet of course!).

Hi @sabrinasadik

I think I read somewhere on the TF github that it is currently not possible to create a farm on QA net.

Is this resolved?
How can a farmer create a farm on QA net as of now?

Thank you!

That issue is now completely resolved with an upgraded dashboard.

Thank you @linkmark

If I may ask, which zero-os version should farmers download then?

There is no QA version, but only test, dev and main. Perhaps I am missing something.

firstly I assumed if im on https://dashboard.qa.grid.tf/other/bootstrap I can just download QA… but it isn’t as i assumed :smiley:
I think indeed you are right the button for downloading the QA files isn’t there…

Suggestion to the Devs: I think its enough to just download the file from that NET where you are connected to. So the 3 buttons are obsolete. Instead: If im on qa im only able to download qa files,if im on dev im only able to download dev files… and so on.
https://dashboard.qa.grid.tf/other/bootstrap -> qa Files
https://dashboard.dev.grid.tf/other/bootstrap -> dev Files
https://dashboard.grid.tf/other/bootstrap -> Prod Files
…

But you can hack around if you enter following address in your browser if you want for example a uefi file:
https://bootstrap.grid.tf/uefi/qa/<FarmNumber>

Change the “uefi” and the FarmNumber to something you want.
it should immediately dowdnload the files.

i try it now with pxe to set all up.

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If you want to use ipxe you can use the same trick or just download the script for testnet and change follwing parts in the script:

from
echo Release.....: testing (v3)
to
echo Release.....: qa-network (v3)

and from

imgfetch --name zos https://bootstrap.grid.tf/kernel/zero-os-development-zos-v3-generic.efi nomodeset 
version=v3 runmode=test farmer_id=158 || goto download_retry
imgstat zos

to

imgfetch --name zos https://bootstrap.grid.tf/kernel/zero-os-development-zos-v3-generic.efi nomodeset 
version=v3 runmode=qa farmer_id=158 || goto download_retry
imgstat zos
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Thanks @flowmotion

That is a big help right there for farmers that want to go to QA net and set the farmerbot.

Thanks so much for those advice @flowmotion

Just so everyone reading this thread knows, there is a guide for the farmerbot available here: Farmerbot: Basic Guide for QA Net

This guide is based on many good advice from @flowmotion and others.

Thanks everyone.

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Nice catch! This seems to be because qa-net was only intended to be an internal testing environment for the qa team. We requested to add a qa-net button to the list.

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Already resolved: https://dashboard.qa.grid.tf/other/bootstrap

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I’ll update the guide then. Thanks!

but may i ask. im confused… whats the difference between qa and testnet?

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Good question.

Let me try a guess: it’s an environment for the TF team to test internally. But they opened it for the farmerbot.

I think QA means: quality assurance. " Quality assurance (QA) is any systematic process used to determine if a product or service meets quality standards." (techtarget.com)

If I’m wrong, please someone correct me!

That’s exactly what it is :slight_smile:

Qa-net is a completely separate instance of the grid with it’s own blockchain and grid backend. This also goes for dev, test and mainnet. They are completely separate to each other.
Qa-net is not closed in any way, it was just not announced to the community to be used since it’s purpose is to have a separate place for QA to do all the tests that happen each release. So it’s the same as other nets, only a separate instance to run tests against. QA-net TFT also has no value, like the TFT on devnet
TFT on testnet and mainnet do have value and can be exchanged.

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Thank you for this information, is there a schedule when to expect farmerbot moving from qa net to test net?
Can we get an update how the testing in qa net is going?