Frequently Asked Questions
This section of the documentation will cover common questions and common encounters by users and developers.
Developer Tooling
Python Distutils
When using the yarn command, some MacOS users may experience this error if they are running Python 3.12+. The distutils module has been removed from the standard Python library via PEP 632 which deprecates and eliminates distutils in favor of other tools like setuptools.
For MacOS, there is no direct equivalent package to Linux's python3-distutils. Therefore, the solution is to install the python-setuptools package via Homebrew: brew install python-setuptools
Yarn Package Manager
Lodestar relies on Corepack and associated packageManager value to manage its package manager version.
Make sure corepack is correctly enabled if you encounter some package manager related issues:
corepack enable
Troubleshooting Lodestar
Running a beacon node
Lodestar beacon node requires at least 8GB of heap space. While the lodestar script and the official docker image correctly sets the appropriate value, it might be necessary to manually set it for some specific scenario.
The simplest way to achieve this is via the NODE_OPTIONS environment variable or by passing --max-old-space-size directly to the node binary
NODE_OPTIONS: --max-old-space-size=8192
Using Kubernetes
Lodestar reads all environment variables prefixed with LODESTAR and will try to parse
them similar to command line arguments, meaning any unknown argument will cause an error.
✖ Unknown arguments: servicePort, servicePortEthConsensusP2p,
port9000Tcp, port9000TcpPort, port9000TcpProto, port9000TcpAddr, serviceHost
The extra arguments are present because Kubernetes automatically
adds environment variables
to the Pod based on the name (metadata.name) defined in the associated Service.
To resolve the issue, this name has to be changed to something that does not start with lodestar.
Reference Issue: #6045