Worker

Worker#

The OpenLambda worker is the core server-side component of a node. It listens for incoming HTTP requests, manages container lifecycle, and returns responses to callers.

Overview#

Each worker is a standalone Go binary that exposes a single HTTP endpoint:

POST /runLambda/<lambda-name>

When a request arrives the worker:

Checks whether the lambda’s container image is already present on the node; if not, pulls it from the registry.
Starts a Linux container from the image.
Passes the request payload to the lambda function running inside the container.
Waits for the function to return a result, then forwards that result back to the caller.
Optionally keeps the container warm for a short period to reduce cold-start latency on subsequent calls.

Configuration#

The worker is configured via a JSON file (default config.json) in the working directory. Key fields:

Field	Description	Default
`worker_port`	Port the HTTP server listens on	`8080`
`registry`	URL of the lambda registry	`""`
`sandbox`	Container backend (`docker` or `sock`)	`docker`
`log_output`	Where to write logs (`stdout` or a file path)	`stdout`

Starting the Worker#

# From the repo root after building:
./bin/worker --config config.json

The worker prints its listening address on startup. You can verify it is running with:

curl -w "\n" localhost:8080/status

Deploying Multiple Workers#

Workers are stateless with respect to routing — each one operates independently. To scale horizontally, start one worker process per node and place a standard HTTP load balancer (Nginx, HAProxy, or similar) in front of them. No coordination between workers is required.

Note

A centralized boss component for cluster-wide management is currently under development. Until then, manual deployment behind a load balancer is the recommended approach for multi-node setups.