--history.state value doesn’t seem to be taken into account

[bgiegel]

Hello !

I’m using the latest v1.6.3 version of BNB geth.

I am starting it with the following options : 

exec /usr/bin/geth
--http
--mainnet
--config /configs/geth.toml
--state.scheme=path
--history.state=4000000
--datadir.ancient=/var/lib/geth-ancient

and this in the geth.toml

[Eth]
SyncMode = "snap"
NetworkId = 56
TrieTimeout = 150000000000 # 1 minute

The node synced correctly in like a day. But somehow when I run a query like the following :

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" --data '{
"jsonrpc": "2.0",
"method": "eth_getBalance",
"params": [
"0x38944092685a336cb6b9ea58836436709a2adc89",
"0x4121AEC"
],
"id": 1
}' http://localhost:8545

I get the following error :  state histories haven't been fully indexed yet

Which is surprising to me I was expecting the node to hold at least 4M blocksd like specified in the history.state flag. Also given the documentation this param should work in path based storage : 

    --history.state value               (default: 600000)                  ($GETH_HISTORY_STATE)
          Number of recent blocks to retain state history for, only relevant in
          state.scheme=path (default = 90,000 blocks, 0 = entire chain)

But this documentation seems outdated because I looked into the code and the real default is not 90k block but 600k like mentioned in (default: 600000).

Do I need to fallback to hash storage scheme to keep the history of the blocks ?  Or is there a bug ? Or maybe I missed something in the documentation  ?

By doing some tests I noticed that the node is actually keeping the history of only the last 128 blocks.

Note : I already tried the discord but I got scammed so I just left.

[bgiegel]

Ok looking at the code it seems like despite what is mentioned in the node documentation, gcmode=archive is mandatory to sync index the state of the blocks.

EnableStateIndexing: cfg.ArchiveMode, I found this and this : 

	if db.indexer != nil && db.freezer != nil && db.config.EnableStateIndexing {
		db.indexer.close()
		db.indexer = newHistoryIndexer(db.diskdb, db.freezer, db.tree.bottom().stateID())
		log.Info("Re-enabled state history indexing")
	}

And apparently this indexer is needed for answering calls like eth_getBalance.

Can you confirm ?

If I am right can we update the documentation : 

    --gcmode value                      (default: "full")                  ($GETH_GCMODE)
          Blockchain garbage collection mode, only relevant in state.scheme=hash ("full",
          "archive")

and remove the "only relevant in state.scheme=hash"