When launching a GETH node to Ropsten do I have to define the --bootnodes flag?

Question

These commands work for me I was just wondering if there is a way not to hardcode the enode addresses into the shell script. Here is what I am using and its working:

geth --testnet --syncmode "fast" --ipcpath /home/ubuntu/.ethereum/geth.ipc --rpc --rpcapi db,eth,net,web3,personal --cache=2048 --rpcport 8545 --rpcaddr 127.0.0.1 --rpccorsdomain "*" --rpcapi "db,eth,net,web3,personal" --bootnodes "enode://20c9ad97c081d63397d7b685a412227a40e23c8bdc6688c6f37e97cfbc22d2b4d1db1510d8f61e6a8866ad7f0e17c02b14182d37ea7c3c8b9c2683aeb6b733a1@52.169.14.227:30303,enode://6ce05930c72abc632c58e2e4324f7c7ea478cec0ed4fa2528982cf34483094e9cbc9216e7aa349691242576d552a2a56aaeae426c5303ded677ce455ba1acd9d@13.84.180.240:30303,enode://94c15d1b9e2fe7ce56e458b9a3b672ef11894ddedd0c6f247e0f1d3487f52b66208fb4aeb8179fce6e3a749ea93ed147c37976d67af557508d199d9594c35f09@192.81.208.223:30303" --verbosity=6 --port "30303" --networkid 3

Is there a flag that will enable dynamic handling of enode admin peers?

Answer 1

You shouldn't need to manually specify these - they're hard-coded as part of the Geth binary. As long as you're using --testnet, which defaults to Ropsten, it should just work.

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Also, It looks like you might be (manually) using the old bootnodes (I'm assuming from this page, which looks out of date). Here's a snippet of the relevant code from the end of last year, showing that the old hard-coded nodes are the same as the ones you've added manually (from bootnodes.go):

// TestnetBootnodes are the enode URLs of the P2P bootstrap nodes running on the
// Ropsten test network.
var TestnetBootnodes = []string{
    "enode://6ce05930c72abc632c58e2e4324f7c7ea478cec0ed4fa2528982cf34483094e9cbc9216e7aa349691242576d552a2a56aaeae426c5303ded677ce455ba1acd9d@13.84.180.240:30303", // US-TX
    "enode://20c9ad97c081d63397d7b685a412227a40e23c8bdc6688c6f37e97cfbc22d2b4d1db1510d8f61e6a8866ad7f0e17c02[email protected]:30303", // IE
}

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Here's the current version of the same file (i.e. this version of bootnodes.go):

// TestnetBootnodes are the enode URLs of the P2P bootstrap nodes running on the
// Ropsten test network.
var TestnetBootnodes = []string{
    "enode://30b7ab30a01c124a6cceca36863ece12c4f5fa68e3ba9b0b51407ccc002eeed3b3102d20a88f1c1d3c3154e2449317b8ef95090e77b312d5cc39354f86d5d606@52.176.7.10:30303",    // US-Azure geth
    "enode://865a63255b3bb68023b6bffd5095118fcc13e79dcf014fe4e47e065c350c7cc72af2e53eff895f11ba1bbb6a2b33271c1116ee870f266618eadfc2e78aa7349c@52.176.100.77:30303",  // US-Azure parity
    "enode://6332792c4a00e3e4ee0926ed89e0d27ef985424d97b6a45bf0f23e51f0dcb5e66b875777506458aea7af6f9e4ffb69f43f3778ee73c81ed9d34c51c4b16b0b0f@52.232.243.152:30303", // Parity
    "enode://94c15d1b9e2fe7ce56e458b9a3b672ef11894ddedd0c6f247e0f1d3487f52b66208fb4aeb8179fce6e3a749ea93ed147c37[email protected]:30303", // @gpip
}