Getting "metadata" "too large" from the archive node

Question

We're running a node instance version v15.0, with --history-mode=archive and --metadata-size-limit=unlimited" options.

Yet, when getting a block from late March 2022 we're getting "too large" value for metadata for some operations:

curl http://$TEZOS_NODE/chains/NetXdQprcVkpaWU/blocks/2240121/
{
    "protocol": "PtHangz2aRngywmSRGGvrcTyMbbdpWdpFKuS4uMWxg2RaH9i1qx",
    "chain_id": "NetXdQprcVkpaWU",
    "hash": "ooo7ZWqAG5xBtVdNTRDtRmk5GGmBBQ9MhaGP3gtaAkeUV8JP5wP",
    "branch": "BKpp5XDo6uGiPXgU9Qp4YMU2rKDbiZJUCPtBoNBFSZJAUQWeBYW",
    "contents": [
        {
            "kind": "transaction",
            "source": "tz1Ki8rFnjmTpCQTpL7zXqBdekoKxSSkuZVk",
            "fee": "2645",
            "counter": "56397722",
            "gas_limit": "23406",
            "storage_limit": "1000",
            "amount": "10000000",
            "destination": "KT1EpGgjQs73QfFJs9z7m1Mxm5MTnpC2tqse",
            "parameters": {
                "entrypoint": "buy",
                "value": {
                    "int": "73280"
                }
            }
        }
    ],
    "signature": "sigmyrkNQ38CXLsDo7LEPJEKBY8AP7eEFFWwK4hpCozq5ydVAp74jmHRuFU6j5B5DdB1REttzMcr5cnEJDfSS6jcYQu5uHtz",
    "metadata": "too large"
}

I wonder if there's some other config that we might tune in order to get the omitted metadata.

Any hint is appreciated.

Answer 1

This can happen if, at some point, your node was running without the "--metadata-size-limit=unlimited" command line option. It is likely that your node wrote, one day, a block on you storage that was above the limit define at this point.

You can ask your node to recompute the metadata by adding &metadata=always to your RPC call. See http://tezos.gitlab.io/active/rpc.html#get-block-id (same for operations) Thus, the metadata will be recomputed, at each RPC calls, if the data cannot be found in the storage.