# Monitoring a Validator

## Check Gossip

The **identity pubkey** for your validator can also be found by running:

```bash
solana-keygen pubkey ~/validator-keypair.json
```

From another console, confirm the IP address and **identity pubkey** of your validator is visible in the gossip network by running:

```bash
solana-gossip --entrypoint testnet.solana.com:8001 spy
```

## Check Vote Activity

The vote pubkey for the validator can be found by running:

```bash
solana-keygen pubkey ~/validator-vote-keypair.json
```

Provide the **vote pubkey** to the `solana show-vote-account` command to view the recent voting activity from your validator:

```bash
solana show-vote-account 2ozWvfaXQd1X6uKh8jERoRGApDqSqcEy6fF1oN13LL2G
```

## Check Your Balance

Your account balance should decrease by the transaction fee amount as your validator submits votes, and increase after serving as the leader. Pass the `--lamports` are to observe in finer detail:

```bash
solana balance --lamports
```

## Check Slot Number

After your validator boots, it may take some time to catch up with the cluster. Use the `get-slot` command to view the current slot that the cluster is processing:

```bash
solana get-slot
```

The current slot that your validator is processing can then been seen with:

```bash
solana --url http://127.0.0.1:8899 get-slot
```

Until your validator has caught up, it will not be able to vote successfully and stake cannot be delegated to it.

Also if you find the cluster's slot advancing faster than yours, you will likely never catch up. This typically implies some kind of networking issue between your validator and the rest of the cluster.

## Get Cluster Info

There are several useful JSON-RPC endpoints for monitoring your validator on the cluster, as well as the health of the cluster:

```bash
# Similar to solana-gossip, you should see your validator in the list of cluster nodes
curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1, "method":"getClusterNodes"}' http://testnet.solana.com:8899
# If your validator is properly voting, it should appear in the list of `current` vote accounts. If staked, `stake` should be > 0
curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1, "method":"getVoteAccounts"}' http://testnet.solana.com:8899
# Returns the current leader schedule
curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1, "method":"getLeaderSchedule"}' http://testnet.solana.com:8899
# Returns info about the current epoch. slotIndex should progress on subsequent calls.
curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1, "method":"getEpochInfo"}' http://testnet.solana.com:8899
```

## Validator Metrics

Metrics are available for local monitoring of your validator.

Docker must be installed and the current user added to the docker group. Then download `solana-metrics.tar.bz2` from the Github Release and run

```bash
tar jxf solana-metrics.tar.bz2
cd solana-metrics/
./start.sh
```

A local InfluxDB and Grafana instance is now running on your machine. Define `SOLANA_METRICS_CONFIG` in your environment as described at the end of the `start.sh` output and restart your validator.

Metrics should now be streaming and visible from your local Grafana dashboard.

## Timezone For Log Messages

Log messages emitted by your validator include a timestamp. When sharing logs with others to help triage issues, that timestamp can cause confusion as it does not contain timezone information.

To make it easier to compare logs between different sources we request that everybody use Pacific Time on their validator nodes. In Linux this can be accomplished by running:

```bash
sudo ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles /etc/localtime
```
