Retrying a Failed File Data Transaction (Public Unbundled Files Only)

Arweave data upload transactions are split into two phases: transaction posting and chunks uploading. Once the transaction post phase has been completed, you've effectively "paid" the network for storage of the data chunks that you'll send in the next stage.

If your system encounters an error while posting the transaction, you can retry posting the transaction for as long as your tx_anchor is valid ([learn more about tx_anchors here][tx_anchors]). You may retry and/or resume posting chunks at any time after your transaction has posted. The ArDrive CLI allows you to take advantage of this Arweave protocol capability.

Using the CLI, when the transaction post has succeeded but the chunk upload step fails, the data transaction's ID could be lost. There are a few options to recover this ID. If the failed transaction is the most recent one sent from a wallet, the transaction ID can be recovered with the ardrive last-tx -w /path/to/wallet command AFTER the transaction's headers have been mined (It can take 5-10 minutes for the tx-id to become available with the last-tx approach). Other options for finding the partially uploaded transaction's ID include:

• Using an Arweave gateway GQL http endpoint to search for transactions that belong to the wallet. See this [Arweave GQL Guide][gql-guide] for more info.
• Browse the recent transactions associated with the wallet via a block explorer tool like [ViewBlock][viewblock].

In order to re-seed the chunks for an unbundled ArFS data transaction, a user must have the data transaction ID, the original file data, and either a destination folder ID or a valid file ID for the file. Supply that information to the retry-tx command like so:

ardrive retry-tx --tx-id { Data Transaction ID } --parent-folder-id { Destination Folder ID }  --local-path /path/to/file  --wallet-file /path/to/wallet

Note: Retry feature is currently only available for PUBLIC unbundled file transactions. It is also perfectly safe to mistakenly re-seed the chunks of a healthy transaction, the transaction will remain stable and the wallet balance will not be affected.