Topic: Setting Up a Bitcoin Node (Read 28496 times)

Is there any simple work around for  isp is blocking port 8333?

It seems to be blocked on the isp level but they deny that fact when it's obvious that the problem isn't configuration on my end  (all firewalls disabled and ports 8333 forwarded in the router but still seems to be blocked and I can't get over 8 connections no matter what I try)

You could also fire up btcd.

"btcd is an alternative full node bitcoin implementation written in Go (golang)."

See https://github.com/conformal/btcd for more info. Need more than 32gb of space.

Still need to open up port 8333 on router.

Cool, I didn't know that.

Just pointing out that the blockchain information doesn't have to reside at the 'default' location or even on the same PC that runs the node.  This is a fully supported feature of Bitcoin Core.  I'm running this now on an old laptop with a fairly small hard disk drive, that could not accommodate the full blockchain, so I copied it from one of my other PC's that runs a 'normal' client to a NAS (Network Attached Storage), mapped the path to the location on the NAS to a network drive on the PC running the node, and it works.  It saved a lot of time of downloading the blockchain off the internet, but still took some time to verify the blocks by the node PC.

Cheers

I fired up my newer client and do see the incoming/outgoing now.  I would say it working correctly for your.

I don't know about your other question.  I do think they are working on supporting multiple wallet.dat files I would think that would be similar to what your thinking, but they aren't there yet.

Running the latest QT 0.9.3 with the -disablewallet option on the command line brings a user interface window that shows the incoming and outgoing connections.

On another subject, if you already have Bitcoin Core running on another PC, you already have a copy of the blockchain.  That can be copied to the PC used as a node, or you could place it somewhere on your network, such on a NAS, create a mapped drive on the node running PC and place something like
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Bitcoin\bitcoin-qt.exe" -datadir=Z:\BitCoinData
(See https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Data_directory)

where Z:\BitCoinData is the path on your mapped drive (it needs also write permissions for your node PC, as it will update indexes and keep updating the blockchain).
This could be useful if your 'new' node PC has limited storage space on its local drive(s) (however you'll need to run both the NAS and the node PC together).

Cheers

Mine just has the number of connections in the debug window and on the GUI.  What does it say on the GUI for "active connections" ?

I've got bitcoin core running and in the debug window it details if its a incoming or outgoing connection and then a total of them both. Ill leave the machine going and see what it is saying then.

Just doing my contribution to the bitcoin network!!

Your client distinguishes between incoming and outgoing connections? I have never seen that.  It has always shown me "active connections".  Mine is currently at 82.

Anyway a socket is both incoming and outgoing.  You can use netstat to see how many connections there are but they should be equal to the active connections shown on the client.

Hi

It has completed downloading the blockchain and currently has incoming connections. I'm asking the outgoing connections seem to be stuck on 8? Is this correct or will this change as well as it stays live?

thanks

It will have 8 connections while downloading the blockchain.  Once that has completed it will accept incoming connections provided you have port forwarding set in your router for  TCP 8333 to the IP of your machine with the client running.

Just a little question,
looking at the stats for bitcoin core, i can see the connections coming in but its always staying on 8 outgoing? Is this just the way it is or will this rise aswell... bare in mind ive had this running for about a hour now.

thanks

Here are the steps to set it up:

(1)Download Bitcoin Core and install it. If you want to compile from source rather than running a precompiled binary:
* Linux build notes are here
* OSX build notes are here
* Windows build notes are here

(2)Run Bitcoin Core (either the graphical bitcoin-qt or the bitcoind daemon) so that it starts up, but immediately close it once it starts trying to sync the blockchain. This is in order to create your Bitcoin data directory.

(3)Download the bootstrap torrent. This may take a few hours depending upon your Internet connection, but it will be much faster than downloading the historical blockchain within Bitcoin Core. You can learn more about the bootstrap file here. Note that this step will no longer be necessary for Bitcoin Core version 0.10 and above because blockchain syncing has been parallelized across multiple peers and is now faster than bootstrapping from the file.

(4)While you’re waiting for the torrent to finish, you should configure your home’s router (assuming that you have one.) It’s critical that you forward port 8333 on your router to the IP address of the computer that is running your node. If you don’t do this, you will not be contributing your bandwidth to the network and should not run the node. You can check that your port forwarding works using the “check node” tool on Bitnodes.io when your node is running. If you’re running a software firewall on the machine running the node, you’ll also want to ensure that you create a rule to open up port 8333.

(5)If you want to set up automatic monitoring of your node so that you will be alerted if it stops running, after using Bitnodes’ “check node” tool you can click on your node’s IP address to view its status page. At the bottom of the status page you can enter your email address to receive alerts when the node’s status changes.

(6)For your own convenience — to prevent your Bitcoin node from potentially saturating your home Internet connection — you may also wish to set throttling / QoS rules on your router or via software on the machine’s operating system. The procedure will vary from router to router and OS to OS; not all routers support it. If you’re running Linux, you can alternatively use this bash script to limit the outgoing bandwidth allowed through port 8333. Just change the LIMIT variable to your desired throttled speed.
   
(7)Once the bootstrap torrent finishes downloading, move the bootstrap.dat file to your Bitcoin data directory.
On Windows, this is: \Users\YOUR_WINDOWS_USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin
On Mac, this is: ~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/
On Linux, this is: ~/.bitcoin

(8)Run Bitcoin Core. Assuming that you’re running the graphical user interface, you’ll know that it is working on the bootstrap data because it will say “Importing blocks from disk.” If you’re running bitcoind you should be able to see the import occurring if you view the debug.log file in the Bitcoin data directory. Note that this process may take several hours and will be fairly intensive on your machine due to the verifications being performed upon the data.

(9)If you bootstrapped from the historical file, once the import completes, Bitcoin Core will rename the bootstrap file to “bootstrap.dat.old” and you should now delete it to free up hard drive space.

(10)You’re done! Now you just want to keep the machine online and make sure that you upgrade your node by installing new releases of Bitcoin Core.

this is a really nice side project with a raspberry pi - Running full bitcoin node on raspberry pi.

https://www.google.com.do/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=bitcoin%20node%20on%20raspberry%20pi

Couldn't hurt.  Especially if they were using different DNS servers or something to make the routes slightly different.  Just try it and see how many transactions the different nodes relay.

Thanks for the reply , I would be running them from different up address, would this scenario help?

Thanks

Once the blockchain has finished syncing then you will start getting more than 8 connections.  At that point your instance can start relaying transactions.

If you install more than one instance on your network, only one IP can have TCP Port 8333 forwarded to it and that is the only one that will relay transactions.  So more instances won't really help at that point.

Hey All

So I want to help the bitcoin network..


I have downloaded bitcoin core.

It is currently syncing to the network.

Port 8333 is being ported to the server.


I assume this is all correct and i'm contributing .., would it benefit running more and more nodes of my servers that currently have little or no load? Or having too many in the same location doesn't benefit the network?

Cheers!

What is "listen=0" for ?

totally right