Witness Essentials: Watcher (Docker & Signing-Key Support)
Witness Essentials: Watcher received an update, which includes:
- Docker Support (incl. PM2 for 24/7 uptime)
- Private Signing-Key Support
- .env file has been removed and config.json refactored
Github: https://github.com/witness-essentials/watcher
Commits (1st Nov. 2018): https://github.com/witness-essentials/watcher/commits/master
What is Witness Essentials?
Witness Essentials is a collection of important tools for witnesses.
Github Organization: https://github.com/witness-essentials
More Info: Witness Essentials Explained
Watcher Overview
Witness Essentials: Watcher is a script that watches over a given witness account and in case of missed blocks, failsover to backup-nodes or disables the witness. Besides that, it can also rotate between the given nodes/keys and alert via multiple services.
To sum the features up:
- Transaction signing either via private signing-key or private active-key
- Rotation between keys supported
- Multiple alert options available (TELEGRAM, SMS <NEXMO, TWILIO>, EMAIL)
- RPC Failover
- Robust error handling
Getting Started
The easiest way to get started is to use Docker:
git clone https://github.com/witness-essentials/watcher.git
cd watcher
chmod +x run.sh
./run.sh install_docker
./run.sh build
./run.sh start
For Telegram Alerts: You can create a new telegram-bot through botfather https://core.telegram.org/bots#6-botfather.
For more detailed installation instructions (incl. manually with node) check out the repository:
Github: https://github.com/witness-essentials/watcher
Update Instructions
If you're upgrading from an old version, make sure to edit the config accordingly.
The .env-file has been removed and the private active-key has to be added to the config now. But only if you're not using the private signing-key feature AND/OR if the witness is disabled.
If you find problems or have feature requests, feel free to leave a comment or create an issue on Github.
Sincerely,
Wolf
Do you believe that my work is valuable for Steem? Then please vote for me as witness.

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Thanks for the evaluation!
To test missed blocks, you could do something like this
https://github.com/witness-essentials/watcher/blob/master/src/index.ts#L36
Thank you for your review, @helo! Keep up the good work!
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