Running indexer and block_scout_web on different pods

[eduardonunesp]

We're running the Dockerized image of the blockscout, however, we would like to run the indexer on a docker host and the web interface on another docker host, I wonder if is possible to run the web interface without call the indexer and run the indexer alone on a different host.

I did a few experiments on the terminal, so in order to run the indexer only:

# If run without the iex -S mix the indexer process will not hold the process
mix cmd --app indexer iex -S mix

However when running a similar command for the web interface on another terminal like

mix cmd --app block_scout_web mix phx.server

Looks like the indexer is running twice, I would like to know how to run those process separately and running only one if necessary on different machines, thanks :)

[vbaranov]

@eduardonunesp

Looks like the indexer is running twice

Why do you think so?

This way, that you've run indexer and web application, is absolutely correct for separate launch. When you stop indexer, the web application should work and no news blocks should appear in the db. This is what I see in my test with this setup.

[eduardonunesp]

Actually, the indexer isn't running twice using the configuration above, I noticed that when run mix cmd --app block_scout_web mix phx.server on macOS even with Ctrl+C to cancel the process it still needs some killall beam.smp to completely remove the process.

So the configuration above works to run both separately, just a small thing that I noticed is when running both separately (index and web interface) the web interface blocks didn't update automatically, looks like the WebSocket is inactivated

[eduardonunesp]

Hey @vbaranov thanks for your answer, are you able to reproduce the issue above?

[vbaranov]

@eduardonunesp yes, I can confirm that websocket doesn't work in a separate launch. I've created an issue. We will try to fix a websocket in this case.

[eduardonunesp]

@vbaranov that's great thanks for the feedback

[vbaranov]

The issue with websocket was fixed #2449. Now it is possible to divide indexer and web application. It is managed by env vars:

To run web application without indexer:

export DISABLE_INDEXER=true

To run indexer only (without web app):

export DISABLE_WEBAPP=true

Reference https://app.gitbook.com/@poa/s/blockscout/for-developers/information-and-settings/env-variables