Topic: Advice on Raspberry pi hardware for running full BTC node - page 5. (Read 3198 times)

You can try the branded endurance cards. I think both Samsung and Sandisk have "Endurance" rated micro SD cards meant for such uses as dash cams that continuously record video.


Imagine if you stick in a 1500 VA UPS to power it. That should last days with no power. You'd just need to replace the battery every 5 years or so. Sooner if you want to be preemptive, (as in before it actually breaks down and stops working, have a spare ready.)

It could also be something made the RPi think that the card was removed in the middle a read / write.

Also, to expand on SD cards.

Cheap SD cards are not reliable.
Mid-Range SD cards are not that reliable.
Good high end SD cards are somewhat reliable.
Industrial SD cards are mostly reliable. But they are slower and expensive as hell.

http://www.industrialflashcards.com/products/delkin-secure-digital-sd-slc/-se04tfphl-c6000-d-17107.html

-Dave

this

raspbian will have a default root password set already, and it's usually something obvious like what DaveF is suggesting (which you should change to something secure)



hmmm, maybe something happened to corrupt the root password, and Raspbian has locked the root account.


quick search suggests an issue like this:

https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/73716/strange-problem-on-startup-cannot-open-access-to-console

you might well have done nothing wrong, and it's simply the SD card crapping out on you (manifested as the password stored for root account being corrupted).

So you can probably save your current install by manually editing the password entry in /etc/shadow manually on the SD card using a different computer. SD cards are not reliable.

I have a BTC node...that went 'phooey'.

It was the 'lazy' way to get a BTC node..just buy it.

It is a Bitseed BTC Node with 1TB HD. (Maybe it went phooey because 1TB is not enough?

Now that the place is out of business, not even sure if the site is still up. I tried www.bitseed.org

and such is dead. Anyway, suggestions on doing a rebuild with the PI and the 1TB in this beastie. I THINK

the PI is a Model 2, but unsure.

So, anyone else in this boat. Also my LINUX to build such consists of following detailed instructions line by line,

er...NONE.

Thanks

Brad

Nope. I mean this:



Netbooks consume so little electricity a battery like this can keep them up for hours.

Did you mean you got a UPS for it? Or some sort of power bank charger thing? Or an actual netbook battery meant for it?

I'd get one of those branded UPS, even a small one should last you several more hours or days, depending on netbook power consumption.

Laptops are also not designed to run 24/7. If you have the space, you should get the smallest refurb mini tower / desktop / rack server you can get.

I believe a 1U server stuck in a corner of your house would run 5 years straight with very little maintenance, has 4 to 8 to 16 GB RAM, add a large enough SSD, and cost as low as $150 (without the SSD, that's the most expensive part.)

I have been out of this thread and off the board since Tuesday because of work. So if I missed it while going through this thread sorry about the re-posting but did you try
pi/raspberry?

-Dave

Few days ago I was also trying to setup bitcoin core on my raspberry before i figure out how to use raspiblitz with wifi and it was one problem after another. I fixed one and the other came up.

I installed the berkeley db 4.8 but the when I get to the step "./configure", no matter what i did I couldn't make it install the wallet with GUI. And I wanted the GUI on my pi. I don't want the daemon bitcoin which runs in the background without the wallet feature.

Always some dependency or repository or library (or all of them :9) was missing. Finally I got them all but then it didn't like my berkeley db version and I was pretty sure I installed the correct version. Then I almost lost my mind because I failed to remove the current berkeley db and install it again. Who knows how many unnecessary crap I installed one after another and how much incompatibility they caused.

In the end I gave up

If you are unexperienced with linux like me, it will ruin your world while trying to figure things out.

You will eventually but it is going to eat away your soul.

Download raspiblitz.

I've never set or changed the root password, if there is a default one then perhaps I'm in luck? Not sure if this will be useful but
On the boot load screen just before I press enter it says "cannot open access to console, the root account is locked. See sulogin    ( 8 ) man page for more details."

as long as you know the password to the root account, this problem cannot happen again (e.g. if you know the root password now, you can get back in to your Pi without starting again)

It's frustrating, I fully appreciate that. You were literally 1 or 2 steps away from getting it setup when this setback happened though!

And the systemctl/bitcoind.service stuff is only there for... guess what reason? To make your life easier fwiw, I'm not a big fan of the way systemctl/systemd works, and avoid using it when possible


persistence always wins with these things, finding out things that don't work is an important (yet annoying) part of the learning experience

come back and ask more questions, we're all checking the thread

 
negative, no such file exists.  Tried to reboot and try again but now all accounts are locked out with a red bar under login saying failed to authenticate. Typing in my correct password fails to log me in. I have sudo (or I did before this happened)
 Just before this happened I unlocked pi's password with sudo passwd -u hoping to give the login screen another try that popped up earlier.
Looks like I'll have to start over with a fresh copy of raspbian or perhaps raspblitz like mindrust suggests?

Damn, I like learning but this is indeed becoming an exercise in futility as judypug1956 put it  

hmmm, you need that root password. It sounds like the user Icygreen is not sudo capable, which means the only super user is the root user (sudo means superuserdo)

have you used sudo when logged into Icygreen account before? I would assume so, if the previous steps completed ok.


This may all be a red herring though. I think perhaps I told you wrong, maybe try this:

then try:



Be sure to do the mv command and not cp this time.

It is the same thing in the background but from what I see raspblitz does everything automatically.

**I am pretty new to the world of software developers&linux so I may say some stupid stuff from now on.**

Raspiblitz (the one I got from the ISO in the first link) is basically a modified raspbian.

It downloads the bitcoin blockchain from a torrent file which is a lot faster than syncing with the network.

You can use your pre-downloaded blockchain too.

You need to try it yourself to see what I'm talking about...

The only stuff I didn't like was having to use a LAN cable but I figured out it is as easy as adding a simple "wpa_supplicant.conf" file to your sd card and when you boot, it automatically connects to your modem.

Then you open the port 22 for your rpi's ip, connect to the rpi with putty(windows) or terminal ssh (linux) and it takes care of the rest.

If you'll eventually install LN, don't waste time. Start directly with raspiblitz. I am downloading the files right now.

LN is next but probably best to focus on core install first. Thanks for the link. Is raspiblitz different from raspbian or related somehow ?
I'll eventually get a laptop specifically for nodes but for now committed to the Rpi4.

Daym I was struggling with so many unncessary crap for the last 2 days.

If you were too like me, start following this tutorial:

https://github.com/rootzoll/raspiblitz

It does everything automatically.

You can even install btcpay on raspiblitz:

https://gist.github.com/normandmickey/6d6e74ebb6b3ddbd317bc1450f48f08e

If your only aim is to run a full node, then maybe this is too much but It would be more cool if you run a LN along with your full node.

None that I'm aware of although I don't t know how to check for this.  Are you suggesting to check for a firewall between my hard drive and the pi?
Please post instructions on how to check if you think it's relevant.

I am currently syncing my full node on a netbook and trying the same thing on a rpi3. The ultimate goal is setting up my own LN node and BTCpay server eventually.

Raspberry looks so cool with a 3.5" screen but it is a pain in the ass to install the bitcoin core wallet.

My netbook on the other hand has an atom processor and 2gb of ram and it is working like a boss. I even bought a battery for $5 and it can keep the system running for hours without electricity so the database won't be hurt. Installation of the core wallet was easy as you do it with windows and syncing without any problems. It is probably even cheaper than a rpi3 right now if you can find a used one. It is basically computer junk but it works.

And yes, the bitcoin core you see on the .org website isn't download and install.

You'll have to compile your own. There are many guides but it takes lots of time.

There was a guide which was explaining to move the sd files to a hdd and boot rpi3 from there so your sd won't die faster.

In the end rpi3 (no idea about 4) isn't exactly the right choice to start a full node. If you are going to keep it up for years.

I'll still try it let you know what I have encountered. Also if you are going to use a rpi3/4 you better download the blockchain on a better pc then copy/paste it. I heard rpi3 would take months to sync it by itself. My netbook says it needs 10 days.

Good luck.

Is there a firewall that's breaking your connection of your pi with the device you are trying to connect?

Have a deeper look into this article and may you find your resolution, please share it here what did you do to get it working as this thread may help lots of newbies set up their first ever full node while trying to set up a pi for the same.

- https://medium.com/@meeDamian/bitcoin-full-node-on-rbp3-revised-88bb7c8ef1d1

Ok, after a couple hours I finally learned a bit and got somewhere but still stuck.
Learned how to copy/past with cp in terminal = success!

I couldn't find exactly the github file you posted a link to but I think this one is correct, ya? https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/contrib/init/bitcoind.service
I copied all 77 lines of the code exactly as it is, pasted in nano,saved it and called the file bitcoind.service Then put it in the directory /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants

Had a tough time figuring out how to change permissions to write to this file outside of nano. Eventually learned how to do it with chmod -R ugo+rw
Not sure if that was correct but it now allows me to change the file and I've replaced /var/lib/bitcoin with the path to the folder containing bitcoin core files on my external HD.

Now I'm stuck at First try returned with bitcoind.service does not exist. Subsequent tries shows a login for pi and root with a password field. It does not show my login 'Icygreen' nor does the default password "raspberry" or my personal password work for pi or root. I get the same result with

I am logged in as Icygreen and pi user has been disabled with -l  Not sure what the root password would be or if I'm even on the right track at this point.
Thanks for your previous helpful instructions. I can feel my brain stretching

I'd prefer to help out and have a few more people out there that can do this sort of stuff. you, me and everyone else helping is actually helping anyone else following along, we're all winning here



I assume you already did tar -xf bitcoin-core-0.19.0.1-aarch64.tar.gz?

you don't have an old version installed on the RPi? If so, find it like this: find /usr -name 'bitcoin'* (so that searches the /usr directory for all files starting "bitcoin", there's 3 or 4 all called e.g. bitcoind or bitcoin-cli)

If none are previously installed, just copy the files. tar has extracted a directory called "bitcoin-core-0.19.0.1" for you, in that directory is a sub-dir called "bin" where the binaries are, that's all you want. so, somehting like sudo cp -a ./bitcoin-core-0.19.0.1/bin/bitcoin* /usr/bin" will do the job.

Then, you want the service file, which you can get from https://github/bitcoin/bitcoin/contrib/init/bitcoind.service (this is the service file format for systemd, which Raspbian uses, other service managers are available...). Get that file onto your RPi, or if that's a pain in the ass, type it out real quick, it's incredibly short (use the "nano" command). Put it in the directory /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants using the "cp" command you used to copy the bitcoin executables to /usr/bin.

Change the bitcoind.service file so that the line saying "-datadir=" has the path of the .bitcoin directory on your external disk in place of /var/lib/bitcoin.

Then, do sudo systemctl enable bitcoind, then sudo systemctl start bitcoind, then tail -f /PathToICYgReeNsExternalDisk/.bitcoin/debug.log

that last command will just let you watch the node catch up with blocks you're probably missing by now. Quit the scrolling output with Ctrl-C.

Now, if you want to add new options to Bitcoin that are part of startup (e.g. bigger dbcache would work for you with 4GB RAM), you can create the file "/etc/bitcoin/bitcoin.conf", and add any options you see from doing bitcoind --help Just remove the "-" (i.e. -dbache=1000 is correct on the cli, but wants to be dbcache=1000 if you add it to the bitcoin.conf file). put one option per line in the bitcoin.conf file.


That's basically it.