How to prevent automatic `start()` of canton nodes?

I have many participants that connect to the same domain.

For these participants, I want to have a shared configuration file (rather that one per participant). This is mainly to keep config tidy:

• I don’t need to repeat the domain config for each participant
• It’s easy to ensure that there are no overlaps in the ports, if I’m running the participants on the same host

However, when I start the canton console, it appears that the domain or participants are automatically started (I get a address already bound error). Is there a way to inhibit this behaviour? I want to manually call domain.start() or participant1.start()?

I’ve read through the operations guide but can’t find a config item for this.

Hi Luciano,

There is a --manual-start option for the canton binary to do exactly that.

Kind Regards,
Mate

Alternatively, there is also a configuration option for this:

canton.parameters.manual-start = true