Geth >= 1.8.3 can't deploy large contracts over websockets

[cgewecke]

System information

Geth version: >= 1.8.3
OS & Version: OSX
Commit hash : (if develop)

Expected behaviour

Should deploy contracts of any (legal) size over websockets.

Actual behaviour

If the data sent has a length > 16416 the websocket connection fails and closes - all subsequent calls receive the error message:

Error: CONNECTION ERROR: Couldn't connect to node on WS.

Steps to reproduce the behaviour

Deploy a large contract over websockets to Geth 1.8.2 (Succeeds)
Deploy a large contract over websockets to Geth >= 1.8.3. (Errors)

Example of a contract that fails can be found at ethpm/escape-truffle where we are trying to run tests in CI using geth --dev but larger deployments like this one which consumes +/- 3 million gas trigger the error.

This problem is also being tracked at web3 here because web3 crashes on the geth response.

@cz3kit discovered the data size limit mentioned above and may have more reproduction info.

[jacekv]

I deployed the following contract using geth 1.8.9
contract Test{ string public test; function setString(string _msg) public { test = msg; } }
When I call the function setString with up to 8009 times 'a', everything is fine. But as soon I send 8010 'a', geth gives the following message:
read error unexpected EOF

As soon I repeat the same test with geth 1.8.2, all is fine.

[ekryski]

And I don't think this is necessarily even to do with large contracts solely. I think there have been regressions in some of the events when websocket code was rewritten. cc/ @karalabe any insight into this? Any way we can help to fix?

[ekryski]

We're seeing websocket connections constantly getting killed. Seemingly at random. My hunch is that it is related to too large a frame size for web3. Any insight here would be great.

[mahjiang]

+1

[djvs]

Likely related - trying to send a 28kb whisper message over WS is giving:

Error: Failed to send direct message: Error: CONNECTION ERROR: Couldn't connect to node on WS.

The max message size of course being at the standard 1MB.

[djvs]

Some kind of issue with socket buffers overflowing? A hard-set message limit?

Hope this gets fixed soon, it's gonna require some difficult workarounds if not.

[ekryski]

So in web3 a patch came in that now allows you to pass config options to the websocket provider but it's for NodeJS only. Won't work in the browser. web3/web3.js#1631.

As a result if this is where you are affected you can increase the frame buffer size as a temporary workaround like this: web3/web3.js#1217 (comment).

[jrainville]

We got the same issue (embarklabs/embark#1028).

We currently use web3 beta 34 since 36 has issues with deploying some contracts, so the current workaround for us is to either use RPC (yuck), use Ganache-cli or use Parity.

[eggplantzzz]

I get this issue while using geth 1.8.17-stable, migrating with Truffle and a web3@1.0.0-beta.37 WebsocketProvider. I can successfully deploy a contract with bytecode that is 16216 characters (including "0x") long. If you add one more character I get the above behavior. Does anyone have any insight into this?

More specifically I think the call that was failing was a web3Contract.estimateGas call.

[eggplantzzz]

Truffle issue #1699 references this issue.