Resolving Failed to Find Sector Errors

Problem ##

There are multiple reasons why a Storage Provider may need to remove sectors. If you are running lotus-miner sectors list with the Linux watch command or using a dashboard such as Farcaster you may find the following error appear in you daemon logs:

{"level":"warn","ts":"2022-05-07T05:36:03.984-0700","logger":"rpc","caller":"go-jsonrpc@v0.1.5/handler.go:279","msg":"error in RPC call to 'Filecoin.StateSectorExpiration': failed to find sector 379:\n    github.com/filecoin-project/lotus/chain/actors/builtin/miner.(*state7).GetSectorExpiration\n        /home/scaseye/lotus/chain/actors/builtin/miner/v7.go:194"}

Environment ##

• Mainnet
• Calibnet

Resolution ##

The failed to find sector is informational only and non-critical. Your Storage Provider will not be adversely affected by the presence of this error warning message.

Step 1: Compact Partitions ##

The lotus-miner sectors remove command will update the sector information on-chain but will not remove the sector information from your local Lotus databases.

In order to also remove the sector locally Lotus provides the lotus-miner sectors compact-partitions command. Invoking the compact partitions command will remove the sector locally and stop the failed to find sector message for the sector in question permanently.

Example ##

You are running watch -n 60 "lotus-miner sectors list" in a terminal in order to monitor sector progress. This command will result in the failed to find sector warning messaage appearing in your logs every 60 seconds for every removed sector. In our example the sector number triggering the warning message is 379 which resides in deadline 0 and partition 0. Running the following command will remove the sector locally and permanently stop the warning message from reappearing:

lotus-miner sectors compact-partitions --deadline 0 --partitions 0 --really-do-it

Extras ##

You can find more information about partition compaction at the following link.