Topic: Armory 0.96.3 stuck in "Organizing Blockchain" (Read 490 times)

Hi again! Thank you achow101 your reply. I'm back with an update:

- The good news is that I got Armory to finish initializing! (It actually took 30+ hours to get past "Organizing Blockchain", and then after a short while it got stuck again in "Parsing Tx Hashes" and that took another 30+ hours...).

- The bad news is that when I gently stopped Armory, and later started it again, it seemed to have "forgotten" everything and just started from scratch. So basically I need to wait 60+ hours (2-3 days!) every time I want to use Armory (and that's on an i7 SSD workstation). So I'd be very grateful for any ideas on how to make Armory "remember" its work once its finished, and/or help it complete that work faster.

- Another piece of bad news is that once Armory is loaded, and I start bitcoin-qt next to it, Armory still says "Node offline (142630 blocks)". I'd love to get it online, because I've made a small BTC transfer to a new wallet and I'd feel a lot safer if I was able to see if the coins arrived.

Some more logs to help with troubleshooting:
- dbLog.txt: https://colle.delire.party/?eac4bc80f39ac513#a8t0+YtgH0+mH3d7fF/WRLI4d9feTG2+Wvi/bSzAns8=
- armorycpplog.txt: https://colle.delire.party/?8c20a05f20c8284e#Sk180dzSHxRekgE7LLOLi5JOY1ogLLuujiwHnTNlIWE= (it's really just that one line)
- armorylog.txt: https://colle.delire.party/?e39468fe77f2870a#Q2LHN1SmToOVZyQ2CE8jR0qifYpZpb5jQpzqxfy8xCo=

> Do this, but instead of killing it, start ArmoryQt. Also remove --cookie from your command.

Thank you for this suggestion! Unfortunately I wasn't able to try it.

> According to your logs, it was able to parse all of the data but for some reason everything it did was not saved to the database. You may have killed the process too early before everything was done.

I'd love to find out why the database wasn't saved, even after Armory was done initializing itself.

- Could it be because my .armory and .bitcoin folders are on different disks? (1 SSD and 1 rotating disk with more space).

- Do you know any steps I can take to investigate the "unsaved database" issue, or to profile Armory's "Organizing Blockchain" and "Parsing Tx Hashes" steps?

Many thanks!

You are not understanding correctly. The previous system was much much slower than the current one. Just because you are experiencing this issue does not mean that everyone else is too and that the process must be slow for everyone. The original design was way worse and performed horribly compared to the current system.

Do this, but instead of killing it, start ArmoryQt. Also remove --cookie from your command.

According to your logs, it was able to parse all of the data but for some reason everything it did was not saved to the database. You may have killed the process too early before everything was done.

Hi all, it's now my turn to ask for help around this infamous symptom.

Side note: Huge thanks to goatpig for maintaining this amazing software! I can't begin to imagine how hard it must be to be the only maintainer of a widely used critical piece of software. Please don't burn yourself out.

I installed Armory 0.96.3 and Bitcoin 0.15.0.1 on an Ubuntu 16.04 system, and let Bitcoin download the entire blockchain (using `bin/bitcoin-qt`, it took a few days and downloaded 149 GB to my hard drive. Phew!)

Then I tried to start Armory, but I don't think I've ever got past the infamous "Organizing Blockchain" step that goes on forever (side note: If I understand things correctly, Armory added this horribly slow step in order not to copy over the entire blockchain. Personally, I was happy with the duplicated blockchain from before, because it was fast and I have disk space).

I've read through many posts describing similar issues, and tried various things, but to no avail. One workaround had an interesting result though:

- I ran `bin/bitcoin-qt` on its own, letting it sync.
- I then ran the ArmoryDB command line on its own (without starting Armory itself):

> ArmoryDB --db-type="DB_FULL" --cookie --satoshi-datadir="/home/user/.bitcoin/blocks" --datadir="/home/user/.armory/" --dbdir="/home/user/.armory/databases"

This command printed a bunch of "parsed block file #", and then nothing at all for a very long time (20h or so), and then it seemed to have finished. I got excited, killed the process, and started Armory itself, but it seemed to start re-processing every block from the beginning, and got stuck on "Organizing Blockchain" again.

I've now let it run for more than 24h, in `htop` I see two `ArmoryDB` processes running at 100% CPU (one says 21h26 and the other 22h08), but nothing else seems to be happening (side note: I have 8 cores available, is there a way to make ArmoryDB use more than 2 cores?)

- Here is my (entire*) dbLog.txt: https://colle.delire.party/?c59b5393c5cb4ab6#0sJLcMSUkQ08kSq93tczo7ENOVaWxB+kxr/+liBjzjY=
- Here is my (entire) armorycpplog.txt: https://colle.delire.party/?4037db3d7ab7ad31#lTv0nOL01fjpjPmLUqv7GUcKifLUc68z+Qs/47h8DRo=
- Here is my (entire*) armorylog.txt: https://colle.delire.party/?52d01a402310804a#tVayjf1EAnBdt7HiBrg3ehCjv/uIJSmom+SO6zV8+DU=

(* as you can see, I've run Armory many times. I'm pasting the entire log in case it helps troubleshoot my issue and/or reveal other issues)

Could you please help me resolve this issue? I'd love to be able to 1) get past the "Organizing Blockchain" step in order to use Armory, and 2) hopefully not get stuck 24h+ on this step every time I run the software.

Thanks!