Topic: Running a full node is starting to be a pain (Read 7366 times)

This doesn't make sense. Why would you delete the local blockchain, then download exactly the same thing?

If you're using the default directory, delete all the stuff in your /users//appdata/roaming/bitcoin folder make a new bitcoin.conf file. After blockchain is done downloading, change maxconnections, also change listen to 1 (if you want), and maybe you need to change keypool to make a majority of addresses you probably wont need to have your wallet bloating

I suspect someone started downloading the full blockchain off my full node.  Unfortunately, the effect was that my computer came to a screeching halt: moving the mouse and the pressing keys on my keyboard had absolutely no effect for several minutes.  When I regained use of my computer, I looked in the Task Manager and bitcoin-qt was using the most RAM, and a fair amount of processing power was being used as well.  I turned off bitcoin-qt and the problem went away; anecdotally, I'd say that's reason to believe that running the bitcoin-qt client was causing the problem.

So a little bit about my specs, both internet and computer: I'm using an internet connection of 25 Mbps down / 1.5 Mbps up - reasonable download speed (unfortunately I don't live in an area where gigabit internet is available), but not much on the upload front.  My computer has 5 GB of RAM, 250 GB of hard drive space, and a 3 Ghz processor speed.  The only part of my computer itself that I feel is underpowered is the RAM, I plan on eventually upgrading to 20 GB RAM, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

So here's my question: is there something about the way the bitcoin client is built that causes my computer to freeze up when people start to download the blockchain from me?  Or is this just a case of me not having enough upload bandwidth to handle someone downloading a full node from me?  I'd love to be able to support the network by running the bitcoin-qt client regularly, but this is starting to happen semi-regularly as bitcoin becomes more popular and I don't feel like my computer is THAT underpowered.

Lots of things are being done about it, but they're not done yet. Wheres your contribution?

Yeah, I found that discussion a while ago, am a bit frustrated that nothing seems to be done about it.

As a similar stopgap measure, Bitcoin Core provides a Quality of Service bash script for Linux users that will throttle bandwidth usage. https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/tree/master/contrib/qos

It's complicated. TL;DR the consensus is that first we need to fix the inefficiencies in how Bitcoin Core transmits data, as that could alleviate many of the problems. Here's the 3 year long debate on the subject: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/273

I wonder why there isn't more effort put in the direction of implementing QoS mechanisms (like throttling blockchain downloads) in the protocol. After all, the network as a whole does not become more efficient when single nodes hog down other nodes due to misconfigured blockchain downloading.

Exactly.

If everyone did that the entire network would shudder to a halt. This is not good advice.

Start the client with the option "-bind=127.0.0.1". You can connect to another people for download but another people cannot connect and download from you.

FaSan

Start the client with the option "-bind=127.0.0.1". You can connect to another people for download but another people cannot connect and download from you.

Start the client with the option "-bind=127.0.0.1". You can connect to another people for download but another people cannot connect and download from you.

Start the client with the option "-bind=127.0.0.1". You can connect to another people for download but another people cannot connect and download from you.

I suspect someone started downloading the full blockchain off my full node.  Unfortunately, the effect was that my computer came to a screeching halt: moving the mouse and the pressing keys on my keyboard had absolutely no effect for several minutes.  When I regained use of my computer, I looked in the Task Manager and bitcoin-qt was using the most RAM, and a fair amount of processing power was being used as well.  I turned off bitcoin-qt and the problem went away; anecdotally, I'd say that's reason to believe that running the bitcoin-qt client was causing the problem.

So a little bit about my specs, both internet and computer: I'm using an internet connection of 25 Mbps down / 1.5 Mbps up - reasonable download speed (unfortunately I don't live in an area where gigabit internet is available), but not much on the upload front.  My computer has 5 GB of RAM, 250 GB of hard drive space, and a 3 Ghz processor speed.  The only part of my computer itself that I feel is underpowered is the RAM, I plan on eventually upgrading to 20 GB RAM, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

So here's my question: is there something about the way the bitcoin client is built that causes my computer to freeze up when people start to download the blockchain from me?  Or is this just a case of me not having enough upload bandwidth to handle someone downloading a full node from me?  I'd love to be able to support the network by running the bitcoin-qt client regularly, but this is starting to happen semi-regularly as bitcoin becomes more popular and I don't feel like my computer is THAT underpowered.

I also noticed a lag when bitcoind runs on my desktop. It's mostly IO related, and it is
noticeable when opening new programs etc. Sometimes the whole computer freezes for a while.
It's an older i5, 4 [email protected], with 8GB ddr3 ram. Bitcoind eats about 1GB of memory,
which doesn't seem to be that much. I am on linux, btw.

But of course, this is all just a very subjective impression - no idea how to measure it.
I have the impression bitcoind is quite "bursty" in its disk access, regularly going over
60% in iotop. I've been noticing (and complaining about) this since a while, but maybe
I should sit down and try to quantify this one of these days. No idea though how to
do that, suggestions appreciated.