Bitcoin Forum

Is there any reason one could not run a full bitcoin node on a Raspberry Pi 2? I see these are very cheap now, just $37. Add a 32GB SD card and you have a fully functioning node right?

32GB is not enough, but yes people run full nodes on a raspi. It takes ages to download and verify, mainly due to the slow CPU. You might want to get the blockchain with a different machine and copy it.

Without GPIO hacking ATA or other: USB->SATA converter with ARM drivers integrated. Between pagefile and 3xMBps bus speed of USB 2.0 you'll be annoyed.

You can also put a storage server on your NAT. Still pagefile and like 60% CPU utilization though..

It seems that Microsoft are selling with an embedded Windows 10
http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/distribution-world/microsoft-starts-selling-raspberry-pi-2016-01/

not that I would suggest using Windows 10. :)

I have tempted by running a full node on my Rapsberry Pi 2 for a while. If someday I have something big enough to store the blockchain (64 GB (128 ?) SD card, HDD...) and that I know how to use, I'll do it. I already have the HDD, now I still need to learn how to plug in it ::)...

You would need a 128GB SD card now. The performance will be very poor, it's just on the margin of workable.  SD cards usually don't have good write endurance either.

That's why I thought about using an HDD. How does it need to be plugged, on th GPIO ports ?

You can buy an adapter for a HDD and plug the USB onto raspberry pi. There's even a guide here (https://learn.adafruit.com/external-drive-as-raspberry-pi-root/overview) but you would need a powered USB hub. IIRC, Banana Pi Pro have a Sata port.

This would be a good idea for a node in the past but not so much now, mainly due to the blockchain size and it's efficiency. The mempool was much slower in the past with lower transaction volume and hence it could run with lower ram and more connections. With the increased mempool, you would need to tweak the client slightly by using several optimizations (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=659040.0). As shorena said, consider verifying the entire blockchain on your own computer before moving it to the raspberry pi. By copying the entire directory, you won't have to synchronize and verify from the beginning.
Windows is definitely not the recommended one with their memory footprint.

Than you for your advice. So you would recommend to use a Linux computer instead of a Raspberry Pi 2. And what about a cluster of RPi 2 ? This way the RAM and the CPU capacities could be increased in keeping the bill low.

It's a pity that the USB ports are only usb2. Maybe the next version will be usb 3 and allow ssd disks to be connected.

Raspbian runs on Linux so I was recommending to use Linux instead on Windows on raspberry pi 2.

I've never heard of someone daisy chaining raspberry pis to run a Bitcoin node. Daisy chaining[1] is sure possible but it isn't for an average users. If you're thinking about daisy chaining raspberry pis, it makes more sense to buy an old low profile computer to run the node on.

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/build-your-own-supercomputer-out-of-raspberry-pi-boards/

Is cpu power a consideration when running a node (as long as it's reasonable)? The storage requirement could be reduced by running a pruned node with 0.12. A 128GB usb stick with the blockchain stored on it could be used to initialise the node. I'm thinking of doing this instead of struggling with my Chromebook.

What frightens me in the "old low profile computer" is that, since is old, he can "die", especially his HDD. I know that I might change it, but this way I prefer buy a new computer, since the price difference will be really low, and this lead to a big bill, so I want to build it on a (few) Raspberry Pi 2(s), so the cycle restart :-\...

CPU(IIRC) and ram usage gets higher with more peers and initial synchronization. Pruned nodes in 0.12 would only relay new blocks to compatible peers[1]. It probably won't help with the synchronization fully, just the relaying of new blocks and transactions.

Quite true. As I said, it probably isn't necessary for more resources to run Bitcoin Core unless you need lots of connections. You can always build your own computer with parts that require low energy if you need it. It isn't easy to daisy chain raspberry pis, at least to me.

[1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/0.12/doc/release-notes.md

there is an OS is created for raspberry pi to run a bitcoin core. It called Rokos, I did not try it but you can get more info from these links:

http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/04/the-rokos-core-os-turns-your-raspberry-pi-into-a-bitcoin-node/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1312616.0

Or you could just do what I said in my post and save a lot of time and money. PI-2 has no fast-bus so it's network storage or some USB converter solution. Not sure why you'd use SD the write-cycles would be gone in months..

I haven't run a full node in years so wasn't sure about the storage requirement. A USB 2.0 HDD would work as others have pointed out. Probably in the future we will have a faster Raspberry Pi with SATA ports and USB 3.0 for sure.

None of the OSH friendly ARM chips, like the TI cortex a7, have any fast buses. Some ARM chips have PCIe 2.0 but are closed license.

I don't think you can do high frequency over I2C or SPI without converting it down either. So basically something like class 10 CF is as fast as it gets. USB 2.0 is slower.

banana pi has a sata port. but I gather it runs it though the usb chip. so it isn't very fast

I have written an instruction to run bitcoin Core with Banana Pi. It is in german but you can still copy paste the instructions to install Core (See Post 3).
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=973628.0

The Bananian Os uses only around 50MB of Ram so that there is 950MB for Bitcoin Core.
https://www.bananian.org/

Rokos seems like a good option for the RPI 2.

If you like to run something more future proof Intel Nuc or MinnowBoard Turbot (both x86) is another option.
http://wiki.minnowboard.org/MinnowBoard_Turbot

I'm actually thinking of getting a PI2 at $35 and hacking it's hacked USB implementation to make a secure wallet where there is transparent signing of transactions and key storage. A lot cheaper than any of the hardware wallets. I'll repo the code for it. If this isn't already done..

Another thing that sounds cool is a CGI solution to use the PI2 as a hack-proof solution for a hosted website where full root on the webserver doesn't compromise bitcoin wallets.

Hey Sir, the answer to your question is no.

The recommended setup would be a raspberry pi 2 + 2 usbs that hold /tmp /var and other partitions that get written a lot and then use an external HDD to hold the blockchain and an extra micro-sd for the /home and the root /, this way you'll preserve the micro-sd life and will be able to hold a node for more than 4-7 years.

Or again use an inline SATA converter at 14MBps-36MBps which takes minutes to setup.. It'd probably still faster than the SD which, by the way isn't really standardized and slow but even if it was, by about 15MBps. Even 802.11n 5Ghz is probably faster than SD using a WIFI enclosure.

If anyone is wondering, the fastest thing you can possibly-realistically do is class 10 CF on GPIO at around 100MBps. If people all the sudden care about wear-leveling(OMG next gen games on an SSD) it's SATA converter or fail.

Public license ARM chips have no PCIe or other fast bus and that's probably years off.

Do you guys not like the banana pi? I has wifi, more memory, and an octa-core processor. It's a bit more expensive, but all these boards are pretty cheap in reality.

Are you hi? It's never had or been announced a octa-core processor, it's actually dual-core which is two cores less. Same RAM, less IO, higher price..

hxxp://www.bananapi.org/p/product.html

They are obviously talking about the m3

The board that costs the same as a Braswell ITX but has ARM power-management and slower bus? Yeah.. It has SATA though.

Blockchain is currently over 60gb.....

.. and constantly growing.

If you really wanted to run a node on something like a Raspberry Pi / Odroid / Banani Pi you could look at hooking up an external HDD to the unit to hold the blockchain, or running the blockchain off of a NAS (if you have the spare resources to do so).

I'm also surprised that the Bitseed (https://bitseed.org/shop/) hasn't been mentioned yet either. It's pretty expensive compared to buying your own small board computer and external HDD, but it looks like a decent plug n' play solution for a bitcoin node.

Thanks for mentioning that. As you have probably gathered, I'm still finding my way around Bitcoin. I'm running a full node on an HP core i5 notebook, which seems to work really well, but it only gives me 4-5 hours between charges. One of my project is to find a mini-system that will work off 12 volts, be fanless ( in the UK ), and include WiFi so that it can be used to run a full node ( pruned with 0.12). The Banana pi M3 looked quite promising, although the SATA and USB didn't look to be the best. Some of the Braswell boards look as if they might indeed be a better choice. Improved SATA and USB 3.0 are an advantage. I had a quick look at some of the boards and couldn't find any WiFi support, but that may not be too much of a disadvantage - a directional receiver connected via USB may be better than a low power on-board solution ( for me anyway).

Apologies to the OP, as I seem to have hijacked his thread. I'll do a bit more reading, and start a new one in a day or so.

you can buy an usb wifi dongle for less than 10$ USD.
http://www.amazon.com/Edimax-EW-7811Un-150Mbps-Raspberry-Supports/dp/B003MTTJOY/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1454081512&sr=1-4&keywords=wifi+usb

This is actually possible to run Bitcoin Core on a RPi 2 and to store the blockchain on a NAS ? This could (or maybe not, I d'ont know) be a good idea.

60GB doesn't actually mean anything. Storage is easy.. Pagefile and RAM and bandwidth and CPU clock&threads matter for this.. A PI2 with 1GB DDR3 and USB or 802.11n+ at tens of megabytes a second will suffice. The Banana PI M3 or a Braswell ITX with SATA or even PCIe will without question handle it even in the future.

I'm going to go with PI2 at $35 and make a script to turn it into a hardware wallet isolated from host machines instead of paying hundreds for the rushed-development hardware wallet offerings out there now..

My two cents

I used to run a node on an Intel Atom 1.6Ghz, 2GB ram system, the blockchain was on an external hdd connected via USB.

On normal days the performance was ok, but since the stress tests began and now that most of the blocks are full it became a problem. Everytime a new block would come it would eat up the cpu for like 30 seconds. Also bitcoind would slow down dramatically every few days, still running but it lagged a few blocks behind of the network, requiering a manual restart to clear up the mempool and catch up with the chain...

So my advice would be to keep away from the Pi, bitcoin is way too heavy nowadays. A Pi can be useful for running a node for one of the staking coins and actually make a few cents on it.

For the bitcoin node I now use this: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4918#ov

Much better performance, not as cheap as the Pi but still low cost, low power consumption, passive cpu cooling so it stays quiet and enables the use of a normal sata drive.

You can find simmilar boards that have wifi integrated if you need it or just add a pci or usb wifi adapter...

I used to run the blockchain off of my NAS and I never had any issues doing so. However, I did that with a Windows machine running Bitcoin-Qt, so I'm not sure if that would differ from running the node on an RPi (I suspect there would be no difference though - just create a folder, and then mount the network location to it).

One thing to note if running the blockchain from a NAS is that the blockchain can only be used by one device at a time. So, if you're wanting to run a node on your PC, as well as your RPi (for whatever reason), you won't be able to.

Thank you for your explanation. I don't think that I'll ever need to run it on both my PC and my RPi 2 at the same time, at least with the same folders. Would it be possible to run it on both my PC and my RPi 2, but with two separated blockchain files on the same NAS ?

I believe so. You would need them to be in different folders though. You can first use custom directory to synchronize the blockchain for your PC before duplicating it to another folder and point the raspberry pi's datadir at the second folder. This can reduce the synchronization time.

I think that would work as well. IIRC, Bitcoin-qt "locks" the blockchain when it starts up, so that another application won't be able to use it. I suspect having two copies of the blockchain in different locations would bypass that lock restriction. The only downside is that you'd be storing two copies of the blockchain, so you'd be using 120GB instead of 60GB.

OK. This was a question. The PCs that I'll be using will have their own hard-drive (that's quite obvious), so I'll surely don't need to put two blockchain copies on a NAS. However, would it be possible to store it on a PC and on a NAS, as a kind of backup. If the blockchain get's corrupted (I don't know if is possible), then the PC will look at the NAS, and thus the full node will never be down.

No. The blockchain only becomes corrupted when the node is not running, it shouldn't corrupt while the software is still running. If you ever need to start up Bitcoin Core, it will inform you whether it needs to reindex or not. If it does, then you can simply restart it with the datadir pointed at the NAS copy while you fix the local copy.

Storing a backup of the blockchain on a NAS would be possible, yes, however it might be a bit of a pain copying 60GB worth of data to the NAS every few days or week, if you want to back it up that often. You could look at an incremental backup scheme (only backing up changes since the previous backup) and that would speed up backing up the blockchain. I'm not so sure I'd bother backing up the Bitcoin blockchain at all, just because it seem like Bitcoin-Qt doesn't corrupt the blockchain very often, and even if it does, there are re-scan and re-index options built into Bitcoin-Qt to attempt recovery of a corrupt blockchain. In the worst case, you'd just need to re-download the blockchain which would probably take a day or two, and then you'd be back up and running.

This is in your case mate ! For me, it would more like a week or two ::). I'm not the owner of an high-quality connection :'(...

If it would take you a week or two to download the entire blockchain you should reconsider running a node on that connection. I suspect you have a fairly low upload speed as well, so running a node on that network wouldn't benefit the Bitcoin network much at all.

The case is a bit more complex. My connection is theorically good, but in the day, the bandwich is really low. However, the night, it is fine. Along the possibility for me to store my bitcoins and don't be tempted by using them like I sadly do often, I'll also help the community, at least the night.

Is it possible to attach a screen to the Pi 2 and have it run information like the bitnodes hardware did? Their LCD code is here (https://github.com/ayeowch/bitnodes-hardware/blob/master/lcd.py), how would one use this to have information being presented on screen?

Yes, this is possible. Some specially designed screen are available on diverse website on the web. I think that they have to be connected to the 40-pin GPIO port, but I'm not sure at 100%.

I know that there are screens and that they can be attached to the GPIO port, but my question is more software related: if I attach one of those screen how would I get on about making it work like it did on the bitnodes hardware?

Pi2 is a great device and I've been actively looking for others that support analog input. Intel Edison has been another one i've experimenting with.

http://www.geek.com/chips/raspberry-pi-zero-cluster-in-development-1645823/

Beowulf cluster of piZero running a full bitcoin node ftw

60GB bytes at 20MBps avg(USB 2.0)? 00:30:00-00:45:00

WIFI storage with a SATA 802.11N enclosure is faster by tens of megabytes/minutes.

Not a chance.  I tried that last summer while the blockchain was still less than 40GB and after a month it still had not synched and burned out the usb storage, presumably from too many rw cycles while doing the rather busy -reindex.
Now on my other computer my /.bitcoin/ is >67GB and still growing.

Feb 2016 specs for a full node;
minimum:
>=2GHz x 4core cpu such as an intel i5
>=2GB RAM
>=80 GB HDD presently used and sure to grow

recommended:
>=4GB RAM
>=160 GB HDD preferably SSD for speed and rw


What does work with a raspberry pi is
- electrum bitcoin wallet
- various altcoin full nodes

That would be really cool, but probably not really cost-effective :D


Well, if you check this thread and feedback online you can see one can indeed run a Bitcoin node on a Raspberry Pi 2. Definitely not the most powerful node, but it works.

Well 0.12 is due soon and you can run a pruned node, so that's only 2Gb

I was almost running a full node on my zero but it's 2 much for my 64gb sd card and my portable hdd is busy in another project