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Enabling Fast Component Initialization

IFW_FAST_COMPONENT_INIT is an environment variable that enables a faster component initialization to shorten the startup time when starting or restarting Iguana.

The enabling of fast component initialization was disabled in some patches of IguanaX because of a very specific edge case that can cause a crash by clearing queues in old log formats. Please read the “ Important Upgrade Consideration” section for a detailed explanation of this edge case and determine if the crash case is non-applicable before adding this environment variable.

To enable fast component initialization, follow these steps:

STEP 1: Navigate to Settings → Environment

On IguanaX, navigate to the Settings tab and go to Environment.

STEP 2: Create a new environment variable

Click “CREATE” to create a new environment variable, and add “ IFW_FAST_COMPONENT_INIT”. The value can be set to anything, i.e. “1”. Click “SAVE” to save this variable.

Important Upgrade Consideration​

There is a known edge case affecting systems that were upgraded from IguanaX 10.1.113 or earlier to IguanaX 10.1.114 or later. The logs in 10.1.114 and later use a new logs format and are not backwards compatible.

The crash can occur when all of the following are true:

  • DATA messages were queued by a source component and written in the old log format because the instance version is IguanaX 10.1.113 or earlier.

  • After upgrading to IguanaX 10.1.114 or later, that source component has not yet queued a new DATA message in the newer log format

  • IFW_FAST_COMPONENT_INIT is enabled through the patch version or the environment variable.

In this situation, Iguana may not detect the older unprocessed messages in the queue during initialization. If the queue is then cleared, Iguana will crash.

To word more simply, if there are messages sitting in the queue of a component before the upgrade from 10.1.113 or earlier to 10.1.114 or later, clearing the queue will cause a crash if no new messages were queued after the upgrade. This crash edge case is very unlikely to affect a production system, since it is not expected that you will want to clear a production queue.