Topic: Running a node on a low spec notebook computer. (Read 2645 times)

You are totally true, the problem is that microsoft is too big to fall, and they will deliver such crapy programs for decades.
How is the experiment ? is the node syncing ?

By the way cortana is the best spy i ever saw, and it is known by many people that windows sends screens, audio, and other data, haven't you noticed that sometimes the internet i slow for shady reasons on windows, plus you don't have the possibility to set some params.

No experience with Ubuntu, but my first Microsoft OS was PC-DOS. I actually wrote an OS for an 8085 based system. My Linux experience goes back to SuSe over 20 years ago.

I've had enough experience with Windows to know that it's bloated and insecure, and the latest Windows 10 brought home to me the influence that globalists like Soros are having on our computing. As Bitcoiners, I would have thought that members would be aware of this.

I suspect it will be less work for me to optimise Ubuntu, than constantly having to check Windows to see what Microsoft has done in their latest ( and over-frequent) update. I don't want Cortana, One-drive or Defender. If you stop and think about it, if Microsoft wanted to stop viruses, they would build protection into the basic operating system. I'm amazed that they can still have buffer overrun vulnerabilities - I fixed those back in the 1970s when I was a systems programmer working on some multi-threaded real time systems.

May I ask how much experience you have with Ubuntu? Because Windows 10 may be slower and less secure than a well-configured Linux, but "getting" the right configuration is not an easy task. Due to my occupation, I met alot of cases where Linux servers got hacked because of insufficient configuration and Windows XP that was running for 10+ years without a single successful hacking attempt. So, Ubuntu is better if you know what you are doing, but Windows is the safer if you have doubts. That is my experience, at least and a little warning.

On the face of it, I seem to have got this working.
I had a bit of a hiccup because I didn't build the blockchain in a sub-directory, but I moved it, and re-started core specifying the new directory structure. It now running after a bit of thinking, and it's synchronising with the network. It says it is 23 hours behind, and that's probably about right.

Lets see if that moves before the end of my coffee.

Well this has certainly been an interesting experiment. I started the ftp, but that looked as if it was going to take too long over public wifi, and, of course, it's a double operation.

I decided to do a bit of research into the ssd recognition problem in Windows, and I've now got it transferring files. I'll wait to see if Ubuntu can read them, but hopefully it shouldn't be a problem as the drive was set up by Ubuntu.

what do you mean by windows restrictions ? because normally you shouldn't have a problem.
Your best bet is to use your other computer and the notebook in the same LAN or WLAN and transfer files, i don't think there is a difference in .bitcoin

Send them from your other computer (if on windows) to ubuntu using winscp after downloading it :


Send from your other computer (if on ubuntu) to ubuntu notebook :

It's fairly simple.
I want to run a full node over public wifi on this cheap notebook.
I've removed windows 10 and replaced it with Ubuntu. As it's only got a small internal ssd, I've added an external 256Gb SSD, and I want to copy the blockchain from my other computer onto the external SSD a pain in the exit port, so I'm looking for an easy way to copy the blockchain without introducing Windows restrictiuons on the SSd. I might give up the transfer to the USB stick, and try using Bluetooth tomorrow. The problem with Bluetoth is that it will only transfer files and not directories.

Actually, I've just had another thought. I might use ftp to put it on a server, and pull it back from there.

As i expected the problems never come from ubuntu or linux, but i think you are totally true about the possibles problems comming from windows when you want to use several OSs in the same computer, it acts like jealous and generates random bugs, every time i use a VM of ubuntu i get random errors, and even the error logs are bugged !

I seriously believe that you will end up dumping windows to trash, and leave the place to ubuntu.

Yet i still don't understand what you want to achieve exactly.

It isn't the Ubuntu that's the problem. It took about a minute to run the sudo to install the drivers. I'm not sure why they aren't in the basic installation, but they are easy to add, and they seem to work perfectly. Windows 10 is a different matter. It seems to be deliberately difficult if you want to communicate with a different world. I might dump it from the main computer when this one is stable.

It shouldn't be that hard to make a drive to work with a ubuntu distro, have you tried to boot on it ? if so, why not installing ubuntu natively on the laptop ?

Well this was going well, and I bought the Samsung SSD drive. It's preformatted for exfat, and I gather that is the best format for an external ssd. Ubuntu didn't like that, but a quick run of a sudo command soon fixed it, and now it likes the drive. Windows 10 is a different matter - it wants to reformat the drive. I gather that I may be able to get windows to recognise it if I reformat under Ubuntu, and set a partition flag (I forget which one). I'm inclined to forget the idea of using the drive to switch machines, and I'll just use it with the Linux book. Already I prefer the Ubuntu, and I haven't started to customise anything.

The plan now is to copy the blockchain onto a memory stick, and to copy that onto the SSD. Then I can install the Bitcoin core. I'll just check to see if I need to move anything else with the blockchain.

i found some informations that may help you decide :
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/ssd-vs-hdd-power-usage.645232/
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/ssd-charts-2014/benchmarks,129.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/hdd-charts-2013/benchmarks,134.html

Benchmarks for power consumption about HDD and SSD

I think that you can't use the stick as the blockchain size is 105gb, i run a full node. unless you have a 256gb stick to have an idea about the price

I've got Ubuntu running with everything working, including the WiFi.

I can't use a convential HDD because of the power requirements. If I added one, I'd be no better off than with the other notebook, that has got a 2Tb drive in it. I've got a 128Gb Sandisk stick, and I used that to do the installation. I was going to use that for the blockchain, but I think it's too small. and wouldn't give me any room for growth. I'm interested to see how I get on with the SSD, and how much power it will need.

If you don't need the low laptop, then you can install directly ubuntu instead of using it from a usb stick.
It is not that hard to realise, and you will have a fully functional ubuntu laptop, you can use 14 as it is lighter then 16.

I don't think that an SSD drive is mandatory, you can use a normal HDD the difference is 2000-3000 RPM wich is around 50% more then HDD, yet the difference isn't that important when it comes to the bitcoin client processing.

Thanks, but I'm not going to use 3rd party solutions for this project.

This is going quite well. I had a bit of a hiccup yesterday, as I couldn't download the Ubuntu software. This morning was a different world, and it downloaded in about 15 mins over public WiFi. I tried to install Ubuntu using Yumi, and that was a mistake, as I couldn't get it working, even after messing around with the BIOS. After resetting the BIOS, and rebuilding the USB stick with the standard pendrive installer, everything ran smoothly, and the machine is running well under Ubuntu with no trace of Windows or its spyware.

I'll probably buy the SSD drive later and play with that.

This may  be your best option http://bcoin.io/
it is a full node in the browser, it consumes a ridiculus amount of CPU, thus sparing battery, it doesn't need a bitcoin client, you can see it working directly while he is validating transactions.
here is the documentation : http://bcoin.io/docs/index.html
Here you can choose what kinde of client you want to run : http://bcoin.io/browser.html

This project has been made by coinables, here is the github : https://github.com/bcoin-org/bcoin

At the moment of writing, the node part of the website seems down for a reason, but you can use it with nodejs on your computer : https://nodejs.org/en/download/

OK here we go with the project.

I'm creating the recovery disk at the moment - what a slow process this is, but then I guess it's Windows.

I've got a 128GB Sandisk USB drive, and I'm going to try this for the Linux install. It's got a blockchain backup from last January (2016), so I guess I can overwrite that. My next post in this thread will be to say that Ubuntu is up and running hopefully.

Something else to throw into the mix.

Based on the repliesI've received, I thought I would look at some external SSD drives. I'm considering using this one instead of the USB stick
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing-accessories/data-storage/data-storage/samsung-t3-external-ssd-250-gb-10147518-pdt.html

There are some realy good points that have been made. It looks as if the optimum plan is as follows -

- Build the blockchain on a different machine
- Use a memory stick on an USB 3 port rather than an SD card for the blockchain and log files
- Buy a good quality fast memeory stick, I plan to use a 128Gb Sandisk
- Store the wallet and other small files on the notebook hard drive
- Eject the USB stick when core is not running
- Run a pruned node in anticipation of the blocksize increasing to more than 128Gb

Partially yes. In a sense that complete wearout will happen after, say, 3 years instead of after 2 years.

The main problem I see that when flash devices wear out they tend to fail completely. E.g. you start getting errors, device partially works. At this moment people tend do troubleshooting by doing a full reset by power cycling, and the device never comes up or comes up completely scrambled.

This is in contrast with hard drives that fairly rarely get complete failures. They tend to just develop more and more bad blocks, but the data that was not rewritten is typically still available although the disk will not accept any more writes. The hard drive recovery programs also do tricks like copying everything backwards (from the end to the beginning) that frequently help in recovering data that is not readable the normal way. I haven't seen anything similar available for recovering flash media. On spinning hard drives the standard trick of keeping multiple copies of the most critical files (wallet.dat) works rather well. Just partition the hard drive accordingly with multiple small backup areas. On flash that is rarely successful.

The SD devices maintain their rated specifications only when formatted exactly as the special "SD formatter" utility would do it (it is available on their web site for Windows & MacOSX). And that program only does FAT and exFAT.