Topic: Bitcoin Core And Bitcoin Armory Newbie Question (Read 3292 times)

Consistency checks and DB initialization take place in parallel. On small wallets (what you and I use for our daily Bitcoin needs) the consistency checks are usually fast enough that it may look like the DB is initialized only after the checks are completed. On massive wallets (10k+ addresses), the DB is usually ready before the check are finished


No, it's the contrary. Once all optimizations are implemented (not all of them will make it for this release), fullnode will achieve acceptable speed on pretty much any PC. Supernode is meant for server backends and will be expectedly slow on any PC. Power users with top of the line CPUs, tons of RAM and SSD raids can expect to get supernode to startup within minutes.

Welcome. Actually you can do it either way. Several versions of Armory ago, you had to first run Bitcoin Core (either graphical or bitcoind, I believe), and only then run Armory. While you can still do that, Armory will now start bitcoind automatically for you in the background. Bitcoind is the non-graphical version of Bitcoin Core. Don't worry if you've already let the graphical version of Bitcoin Core download the entire blockchain. The Armory/bitcoind combo will use exactly the same blockchain files so you won't end up with two copies of the blockchain or something like that.

In addition, however, Armory needs to build its own database files the first time you run it. They will take up roughly the same amount of space as the blockchain files (unless in the upcoming version of Armory you run a supernode, in which case they will take up ~double the space of the blockchain, but that's pretty techy still, so you might not want to worry about that yet). These database files will also take a LOT of time for Armory to generate.

When Armory has its full blockchain and database files ready, subsequent runs of Armory will take a slight while before it's ready. Starting up Armory will do a consistency check on your wallet, then start bitcoind which will, in turn, check for new transactions, download and append those to your local copy of the blockchain ("synchronizing with network"), then Armory will update its database files to match any newly downloaded transactions ("build databases"). On my Intel i7 with 16 GB RAM it takes just over 2 minutes from I launch Armory till it's ready for use, so I generally just leave it running throughout the day.

I am unaware of whether running a supernode (in Armory version 0.93 and above) will speed up startup time?

Fellow Forum Members,
I'm new with Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Armory. I just want to make sure I'm correctly using these two apps together.  Is running Bitcoin Core and getting a "Green Checkmark" required first before running Bitcoin Armory?  Or is it okay to only run Bitcoin Armory without first running Bitcoin Core?

The reason I ask is because my Bitcoin Armory seems to be spending a lot of time in the "Sychronizing with Network" mode and "Build Databases" mode no matter whether I first run Bitcoin Core or not.  Is there a special Bitcoin Armory preference setting I need to make in order to make my Bitcoin Armory application startup go faster?  My understanding is the Bitcoin Armory runs on top of Bitcoin Core, therefore my guess is that first running Bitcoin Core is not a requirement.  Any comments will be greatly welcomed. Thanks.