Way to fire up Bitcoin-QT once a week to sync blocks, then quit?

AliceWonder

full member

Activity: 168

Merit: 100

Quote from: Sydboy on July 14, 2014, 02:22:12 PM

lol yeah. OP will spend 6 weeks researching and testing this when it could easily be done with a few clicks.

Automating things means you don't have to remember, and means you can schedule it to take place when you normally aren't doing other things. And automating probably means he can do with bitcoind instead of bitcoin-qt

Sydboy

full member

Activity: 196

Merit: 100

lol yeah. OP will spend 6 weeks researching and testing this when it could easily be done with a few clicks.

Quote from: InwardContour on July 13, 2014, 08:58:20 PM

Quote from: cp1 on July 12, 2014, 11:27:41 PM

Quote from: dserrano5 on July 11, 2014, 03:45:39 PM

Quote from: aferret on July 11, 2014, 02:52:35 PM

The --help seems to imply there's no way to quit automatically, and without messing with the JSON API and whatnot, I suppose the easiest way is to start up at 3am, run for a few hours, then send a kill to the PID file, but that feels dirty.

If you're going to run bitcoin at 3am, why not do it daily? You can let it run for 2-3 hours, then issue a 'bitcoin-cli stop' and you'll always have the chain pretty much updated.

Yeah, just do whatever cron is called on mac with two jobs, one to start and one to stop.

Even this is much more complicated then it needs to be. The OP can simply open bitcoin QT and close it once it has synched the blockchain. This would take no more then a total of 30 seconds of the OP's time every week.

kokojie

legendary

Activity: 1806

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Same as on any OS, use the task scheduler for your OS, to start bitcoin-qt, wait 2-3 hours, then shut it down.

nwfella

legendary

Activity: 1610

Merit: 1000

Well hello there!

Use Cocktail to schedule regular startup's with shutdown's issued after whatever time period is reasonable given how often you update your wallet and the speed with which your system/connection does it.

InwardContour

sr. member

Activity: 644

Merit: 260

Quote from: cp1 on July 12, 2014, 11:27:41 PM

Quote from: dserrano5 on July 11, 2014, 03:45:39 PM

Quote from: aferret on July 11, 2014, 02:52:35 PM

The --help seems to imply there's no way to quit automatically, and without messing with the JSON API and whatnot, I suppose the easiest way is to start up at 3am, run for a few hours, then send a kill to the PID file, but that feels dirty.

If you're going to run bitcoin at 3am, why not do it daily? You can let it run for 2-3 hours, then issue a 'bitcoin-cli stop' and you'll always have the chain pretty much updated.

Yeah, just do whatever cron is called on mac with two jobs, one to start and one to stop.

Even this is much more complicated then it needs to be. The OP can simply open bitcoin QT and close it once it has synched the blockchain. This would take no more then a total of 30 seconds of the OP's time every week.

AliceWonder

full member

Activity: 168

Merit: 100

Quote from: cp1 on July 12, 2014, 11:27:41 PM

Quote from: dserrano5 on July 11, 2014, 03:45:39 PM

Quote from: aferret on July 11, 2014, 02:52:35 PM

The --help seems to imply there's no way to quit automatically, and without messing with the JSON API and whatnot, I suppose the easiest way is to start up at 3am, run for a few hours, then send a kill to the PID file, but that feels dirty.

If you're going to run bitcoin at 3am, why not do it daily? You can let it run for 2-3 hours, then issue a 'bitcoin-cli stop' and you'll always have the chain pretty much updated.

Yeah, just do whatever cron is called on mac with two jobs, one to start and one to stop.

They call it something else but the user crontab command is still there and it still reads a standard crontab file.

At least on whatever version of OS X my mum has.

cp1

hero member

Activity: 616

Merit: 500

Stop using branwallets

Quote from: dserrano5 on July 11, 2014, 03:45:39 PM

Quote from: aferret on July 11, 2014, 02:52:35 PM

The --help seems to imply there's no way to quit automatically, and without messing with the JSON API and whatnot, I suppose the easiest way is to start up at 3am, run for a few hours, then send a kill to the PID file, but that feels dirty.

If you're going to run bitcoin at 3am, why not do it daily? You can let it run for 2-3 hours, then issue a 'bitcoin-cli stop' and you'll always have the chain pretty much updated.

Yeah, just do whatever cron is called on mac with two jobs, one to start and one to stop.

Relnarien

sr. member

Activity: 399

Merit: 257

Quote from: aferret on July 11, 2014, 02:52:35 PM

Hey all,

I'm not very much involved with Bitcoin anymore, but I do still do minor amounts of mining, and occasionally do micropayments. Ergo, I'd like to maybe once a week, once a month spin up my client just to synchronize blocks (so if I *do* need to use it, it's current), and shut down.

I'm on mac, for what it's worth.

The --help seems to imply there's no way to quit automatically, and without messing with the JSON API and whatnot, I suppose the easiest way is to start up at 3am, run for a few hours, then send a kill to the PID file, but that feels dirty. What I'm really looking for is something more like "run until synchronized, OR for a maximum of N hours".

Is there a better way that I'm missing? Is this/should this be a feature request?

I'm a little confused about what you actually want to do. You can just set automated tasks on your Mac to launch the client and shutdown your computer if that's all you really need. Isn't Automator available for the version of Mac OS that you're using?

InwardContour

sr. member

Activity: 644

Merit: 260

Every Sunday you can simply open QT via the spotlight, let it run while you do your thing on your computer, checking every two hours or so and when you see the green check that shows it is fully synced you can press "apple" + "Q" to close it.

It could not be more simple then this

dserrano5

legendary

Activity: 1974

Merit: 1029

Quote from: aferret on July 11, 2014, 02:52:35 PM

The --help seems to imply there's no way to quit automatically, and without messing with the JSON API and whatnot, I suppose the easiest way is to start up at 3am, run for a few hours, then send a kill to the PID file, but that feels dirty.

If you're going to run bitcoin at 3am, why not do it daily? You can let it run for 2-3 hours, then issue a 'bitcoin-cli stop' and you'll always have the chain pretty much updated.

azeteki

member

Activity: 96

Merit: 10

esotericnonsense

You said you didn't want to mess with the API, but in case you do, it should not be that difficult to make up a script that can achieve this.

Start up bitcoin-qt.

Using JSON-RPC, poll it for latest block every now and then ('getbestblockhash', 'getblock').
Assume you are synced when the 'time' field is within say 12 hours of your system time.
Using JSON-RPC, send 'stop' request.

A cron job with a bash script (does mac have equivalents?) seems capable of doing it.

aferret

newbie

Activity: 1

Merit: 0

Hey all,

I'm not very much involved with Bitcoin anymore, but I do still do minor amounts of mining, and occasionally do micropayments. Ergo, I'd like to maybe once a week, once a month spin up my client just to synchronize blocks (so if I *do* need to use it, it's current), and shut down.

I'm on mac, for what it's worth.

The --help seems to imply there's no way to quit automatically, and without messing with the JSON API and whatnot, I suppose the easiest way is to start up at 3am, run for a few hours, then send a kill to the PID file, but that feels dirty. What I'm really looking for is something more like "run until synchronized, OR for a maximum of N hours".

Is there a better way that I'm missing? Is this/should this be a feature request?

Topic: Way to fire up Bitcoin-QT once a week to sync blocks, then quit? (Read 1641 times)