Better control over the deal-flow

[rjan90]

Based on the discussion in this Slack-thread, I think there is a need for some features in lotus that gives the miner better control over where the deals are stored during sealing, and how they are imported: https://filecoinproject.slack.com/archives/G01KU7G441Y/p1611749361134800.

A couple of concerns for smaller / medium scaled miners:

• When importing data for an offline deal, the fstmp files are placed directly in the LOTUS_MINER_PATH. Github-issue Provide storage miner with configurable path for offline deal data when staging for sealing. #5291.
• .lotusminer/datastore/staging getting really big when doing a lot of storage-deals
• Many smaller/medium-scaled miners are not set-up to handle larger amount of deals when deals go through the LOTUS_MINER_PATH as their disk size might not be large enough. High flow of files and IO on one of the most critical disks is not ideal.
• Computation required when importing deals. High CPU-usage is not ideal for miners that have their Lotus-node & Lotus-miner on the same machine. Miners have lost blocks due to importing deals (especially when winningPoSt is done on CPU).

A couple of possible features to make it easier for smaller/medium scaled miners

• Ability to set your own path to where fstmp files are stored during sealing.
• Ability to "outsource" the deal-handling to a dedicated server/pc such that the Miner doing windowPosT, winningPost, etc, is not too busy doing deals to be able to handle other more critical jobs. Example of a split-miner: https://github.com/moran666666/lotus-1.4.0.

[TippyFlitsUK]

Great suggestions above that would certainly help.

Can I also add a request for a lotus-miner storage-deals cancel function?

We receive many deals that fall for numerous innocent reasons but are constantly re-tried by the miner over and over again. It would be great to have the ability to clean up our storage-deals list and avoid additional unnecessary miner queries.

[rjan90]

Here are two Feature Requests issues for the above discussion:

• Dedicated deal making worker: [Feature Request] Dedicated deal making worker #5576
• Ability to set own deal-path: [Feature Request] Ability to set own path for fstmp and /staging-folder #5591

[rjan90]

So the last update I heard wrt to these issues was that ability to set your own deal-path will come soon (maybe one of the first updates after v1.5). While the ability to have a deal-making worker would require a lot of work, and was not going to happen for at least 3-5 month.