[bug] Unable to parse settings.json

[kn0wmad]

2022-04-25T15:52:54.203097Z Apr 25 16:52:54.202 ERROR embassy::manager: service just started. not issuing crash notification
2022-04-25T15:52:54.203540Z Apr 25 16:52:54.203 ERROR embassy::manager: service crashed: 1: Error updating blockchain info: error: timeout on transient error: Could not connect to the server 127.0.0.1:8332
2022-04-25T15:52:54.203540Z Make sure the bitcoind server is running and that you are connecting to the correct RPC port.
2022-04-25T15:52:54.203540Z Error: Failed loading settings file:
2022-04-25T15:52:54.203540Z - Unable to parse settings file /root/.bitcoin/settings.json

EDIT by @ProofOfKeags: Solution here is to disable its use since it is solely for Bitcoin Core GUI functionality.

[chrisguida]

What symptoms are you seeing, other than the error message?

[kn0wmad]

None of the Bitcoin stack works without Bitcoin. Most specifically he is trying to use LND

[chrisguida]

What is LND doing, specifically?

[ProofOfKeags]

This has nothing to do with LND. This is an issue where the settings.json file was corrupted for some reason. I suspect there was a SIGKILL issued during a write which caused this. The fix was very straight forward, but I don't know how it happened in the first place or whether the solution we employed for the fix is always safe/good.

[chrisguida]

I'm trying to determine what is breaking here. Sometimes an error message is benign.

[ProofOfKeags]

I'm trying to determine what is breaking here. Sometimes an error message is benign.

I addressed this last week with @kn0wmad out of band. But to catch you up. If the settings.json file is not parseable, bitcoind will not start up. That is the last log message before it crashes in a loop. Everything you expect to break downstream of that breaks the way you would expect.

[chrisguida]

Do you know what settings.json is for? I've actually never noticed it before. It appears to be blank on my system:

# cat settings.json 
{
   }

[ProofOfKeags]

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/15935/files#diff-583f605f372805d0bc87ebfc893f835b3f66746f560611e682bd917de17586d2R61

[chrisguida]

Thanks. Do you know why it would become unparseable? Perhaps we should simply disable it, we're not using it anyway.

[ProofOfKeags]

Thanks. Do you know why it would become unparseable?

My guess is that it was killed in the middle of an overwrite and truncated or something

Perhaps we should simply disable it, we're not using it anyway.

I completely support this. It seems to only be for the GUI which we don't/can't make use of.

[kn0wmad]

Have been unable to try the fix as the user now has hardware issues that are being debugged. I suppose this ticket can stay open if disabling the file in question sounds like the solution