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Emergency Release: RAK Hotspot Fix

· 2 min read

The team has prepared an emergency weekend release, tagged 2020.10.31.0. This release addresses a software issue that affects only the RAK Hotspot Miner where they were unable to witness challenges or build witness lists.

For folks who have a RAK Hotspot Miner purchased from Cal-Chip, they would have noticed that their Hotspot has no witnesses but there are potentially valid hotspots in their area. On the bright side, the RAK Hotspot Miners have been issuing challenges and maintaining blockchain sync.

Helium Hotspots are not affected by this issue.

Advisory for RAK Hotspot Miner Owners

Despite this fix, there's a non-zero chance that some RAK Hotspot Miners may fail to update to the new release 2020.10.31.0. If an operator notices no Proof-of-Coverage Witness or Challengee Participant activity, we request them to manually power cycle their Hotspot after waiting ~30 minutes. The failure to update to the GA seems to happen due to mis-configuration of boot pins on the RAK Hotspot Miners, the team is actively investigating this and will prepare another release mid next week to address whether we can fix this issue in software.

Plan

We are currently beta testing 2020.10.31.0 and we will release to GA imminently. Current ETA for GA is 11:30 AM PST, October 31st 2020.