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Bitcoin => Bitcoin Discussion => Topic started by: ForceField on February 15, 2012, 07:36:19 PM



Title: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: ForceField on February 15, 2012, 07:36:19 PM
Blockexplorer (http://blockexplorer.com) is either down or running extremely slow and is stuck at 166899 blocks.

Currently using http://www.blockchain.info (http://www.blockchain.info/) as it's the only available alternative.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: mcorlett on February 15, 2012, 07:38:24 PM
For what it's worth, Block Explorer is always extremely slow for me.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: Revalin on February 15, 2012, 07:52:52 PM
BlockExplorer?  Pffft.  All the cool kids are using http://blockchain.info/ these days.

:)

Not sure what's wrong over there but blockchain.info works if you need something for now.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: Herodes on February 15, 2012, 07:54:39 PM
you could also download and use bitcointools by gavin. I don't have the link here, but it's been posted at the forum before.



Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: theymos on February 15, 2012, 07:58:16 PM
Looks like it's caused by a lot of traffic. Maybe a DoS attack. I'm fixing it now.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: Remember remember the 5th of November on February 15, 2012, 08:42:58 PM
Blockchain.info is indeed nice eye-candy, and while I tend to use it more, sometimes Blockexplorer displays information differently than blockchain.info so it's good it's around.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: ForceField on February 16, 2012, 02:20:19 AM
Looks like it's caused by a lot of traffic. Maybe a DoS attack. I'm fixing it now.

Was fixed for a short while but it seems like there is still an issue with Blockexplorer.

PM'd you theymos.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: theymos on February 16, 2012, 05:19:59 AM
I think everything is fixed now. Sorry about that.

IPs will now automatically be banned (temporarily) if they connect much faster than once per second.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: slush on February 16, 2012, 11:58:30 AM
IPs will now automatically be banned (temporarily) if they connect much faster than once per second.

http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/blockexplorer.com

It looks that BE is still down.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: cypherdoc on February 16, 2012, 12:37:48 PM
IPs will now automatically be banned (temporarily) if they connect much faster than once per second.

http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/blockexplorer.com

It looks that BE is still down.

Just to be clear, you guys are complaining that theymo's block explorer service is down, not the block chain itself.  Everything looks ok on Bitcoin Monitor.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: EhVedadoOAnonimato on February 16, 2012, 01:12:45 PM
IPs will now automatically be banned (temporarily) if they connect much faster than once per second.

You should consider a captcha. Or you risk blocking proxies.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: ehmdjii on February 16, 2012, 01:34:00 PM
IPs will now automatically be banned (temporarily) if they connect much faster than once per second.

how long is temporarily?


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: slush on February 16, 2012, 01:52:06 PM
Just to be clear, you guys are complaining that theymo's block explorer service is down, not the block chain itself.  Everything looks ok on Bitcoin Monitor.

Of course we're talking about blockexplorer.com. How can be block chain down?


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: slush on February 16, 2012, 01:54:13 PM
You should consider a captcha. Or you risk blocking proxies.

Well, some services (like my pool) is using blockexplorer.com's API for confirming that local blockchain copy is OK. So captcha won't work for API calls, obviously.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: theymos on February 16, 2012, 04:48:22 PM
It's really fast whenever I restart the database and web servers, but then I guess it gets overwhelmed with traffic. I'll look into it later today.

(Usually I have two "master" servers constantly available and capable of either handling the full load or sharing the load, but the one that I have at home was unfortunately damaged when I moved recently, so I have to rely entirely on the Private Internet Access server.)


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: cypherdoc on February 16, 2012, 04:51:41 PM
Just to be clear, you guys are complaining that theymo's block explorer service is down, not the block chain itself.  Everything looks ok on Bitcoin Monitor.

Of course we're talking about blockexplorer.com. How can be block chain down?

you'd be surprised at how many noobs will think blockexplorer IS the blockchain.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: broken on February 17, 2012, 02:52:49 AM
Just to be clear, you guys are complaining that theymo's block explorer service is down, not the block chain itself.  Everything looks ok on Bitcoin Monitor.

Of course we're talking about blockexplorer.com. How can be block chain down?

you'd be surprised at how many noobs will think blockexplorer IS the blockchain.

Maybe the Internet is broken.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: theymos on February 17, 2012, 03:20:08 AM
The server won't start up now, due either to a bad disk or to my tweaks meant to make the system faster. Rasengan (who, on behalf of Private Internet Access, generously provides this BBE server for free) is working on fixing it and maybe upgrading it so that it can handle more traffic. Hopefully at least /q/getblockcount will be working tomorrow.

Maybe the Internet is broken.

You're the Internet?  ;)


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: payb.tc on February 17, 2012, 03:27:32 AM
Hopefully at least /q/getblockcount will be working tomorrow.

thanks, i'll send another donation on behalf of the clock (http://bitcoinclock.com) :D


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: Wandering Albatross on February 17, 2012, 08:04:07 PM
Time to come up some ideas for a decentralized block data tool?


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: terrytibbs on February 17, 2012, 08:05:55 PM
Rasengan (who, on behalf of Private Internet Access, generously provides this BBE server for free)
Advertisers are also very generous, they donate millions of dollars to the cable companies. Oh, I forgot to mention they got an ad in exchange. Still "free", right?


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: Revalin on February 17, 2012, 08:13:31 PM
Time to come up some ideas for a decentralized block data tool?

Everyone already has a copy of the blockchain.  All we need is a GUI or CGI to read it.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: theymos on February 17, 2012, 09:48:35 PM
Advertisers are also very generous, they donate millions of dollars to the cable companies. Oh, I forgot to mention they got an ad in exchange. Still "free", right?

I doubt the ad even comes close to allowing them to recoup the cost of running the server.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: Wandering Albatross on February 17, 2012, 10:07:10 PM
Quote from: Revalin
Everyone already has a copy of the blockchain.  All we need is a GUI or CGI to read it.

bitcoin has lots of commands that can be issued to a running bitcoin instance:

Code:
backupwallet <destination>
getaccount <bitcoinaddress>
getaccountaddress <account>
getaddressesbyaccount <account>
getbalance [account] [minconf=1]
getblockcount
getconnectioncount
getdifficulty
getgenerate
gethashespersec
getinfo
getmemorypool [data]
getnewaddress [account]
getreceivedbyaccount <account> [minconf=1]
getreceivedbyaddress <bitcoinaddress> [minconf=1]
gettransaction <txid>
getwork [data]
help [command]
keypoolrefill
listaccounts [minconf=1]
listreceivedbyaccount [minconf=1] [includeempty=false]
listreceivedbyaddress [minconf=1] [includeempty=false]
listsinceblock [blockid] [target-confirmations]
listtransactions [account] [count=10] [from=0]
move <fromaccount> <toaccount> <amount> [minconf=1] [comment]
sendfrom <fromaccount> <tobitcoinaddress> <amount> [minconf=1] [comment] [comment-to]
sendmany <fromaccount> {address:amount,...} [minconf=1] [comment]
sendtoaddress <bitcoinaddress> <amount> [comment] [comment-to]
setaccount <bitcoinaddress> <account>
setgenerate <generate> [genproclimit]
settxfee <amount>
signmessage <bitcoinaddress> <message>
stop
validateaddress <bitcoinaddress>
verifymessage <bitcoinaddress> <signature> <message>
walletlock
walletpassphrase <passphrase> <timeout>
walletpassphrasechange <oldpassphrase> <newpassphrase>

What other info do pools need access to?


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: RoloTonyBrownTown on February 17, 2012, 10:30:16 PM
Yep, bit wonky at the mo.   Diff is currently shown as 623.38695987...

http://blockexplorer.com/q/getdifficulty


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: payb.tc on February 17, 2012, 10:38:18 PM
Quote from: Revalin
Everyone already has a copy of the blockchain.  All we need is a GUI or CGI to read it.

bitcoin has lots of commands that can be issued to a running bitcoin instance:

Code:
backupwallet <destination>
getaccount <bitcoinaddress>
getaccountaddress <account>
getaddressesbyaccount <account>
getbalance [account] [minconf=1]
getblockcount
getconnectioncount
getdifficulty
getgenerate
gethashespersec
getinfo
getmemorypool [data]
getnewaddress [account]
getreceivedbyaccount <account> [minconf=1]
getreceivedbyaddress <bitcoinaddress> [minconf=1]
gettransaction <txid>
getwork [data]
help [command]
keypoolrefill
listaccounts [minconf=1]
listreceivedbyaccount [minconf=1] [includeempty=false]
listreceivedbyaddress [minconf=1] [includeempty=false]
listsinceblock [blockid] [target-confirmations]
listtransactions [account] [count=10] [from=0]
move <fromaccount> <toaccount> <amount> [minconf=1] [comment]
sendfrom <fromaccount> <tobitcoinaddress> <amount> [minconf=1] [comment] [comment-to]
sendmany <fromaccount> {address:amount,...} [minconf=1] [comment]
sendtoaddress <bitcoinaddress> <amount> [comment] [comment-to]
setaccount <bitcoinaddress> <account>
setgenerate <generate> [genproclimit]
settxfee <amount>
signmessage <bitcoinaddress> <message>
stop
validateaddress <bitcoinaddress>
verifymessage <bitcoinaddress> <signature> <message>
walletlock
walletpassphrase <passphrase> <timeout>
walletpassphrasechange <oldpassphrase> <newpassphrase>

What other info do pools need access to?

how is the next difficulty estimated/calculated?


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: theymos on February 17, 2012, 11:27:28 PM
Yep, bit wonky at the mo.   Diff is currently shown as 623.38695987...

http://blockexplorer.com/q/getdifficulty

My bitcoind is downloading the chain. You can see the progress at /q/getblockcount.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: kjlimo on February 18, 2012, 03:00:28 PM
Looks like blockexplorer is down again?

I like the idea of the gui for reading the blockchain.

That sounds awesome, but unfortunately, we'd have to rely on donations to fund the project.  I'm no programmer, but if the price is right, I could try to get my buddy to start developing for bitcoins.

Unless of course, someone else is already working on it or willing to do it.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: theymos on February 19, 2012, 12:12:56 AM
OK, I think I was finally able to improve BBE's efficiency enough to make it work well despite the increased traffic. Most interestingly, I now have Bitcoin's block database stored entirely in memory.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: Cryptoman on February 19, 2012, 04:09:39 PM
Blockexplorer is still down for me.  Does anyone know where I can find the exact time of the latest difficulty change?


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: deepceleron on February 19, 2012, 04:25:51 PM
Blockexplorer is still down for me.  Does anyone know where I can find the exact time of the latest difficulty change?
The difficulty is updated every 2016 blocks, here are the most recent blocks where the difficulty changed/will change

163296 - 2012-01-22 03:55:08 - 1,307,728.36
165312 - 2012-02-04 10:28:28 - 1,379,647.44
167328 - 2012-02-18 11:24:53 - 1,376,302.27
169344
171360
173376

I just put the block number into this URL for info: http://blockchain.info/block-height/167532


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: Cryptoman on February 19, 2012, 05:14:10 PM
The difficulty is updated every 2016 blocks, here are the most recent blocks where the difficulty changed/will change

163296 - 2012-01-22 03:55:08 - 1,307,728.36
165312 - 2012-02-04 10:28:28 - 1,379,647.44
167328 - 2012-02-18 11:24:53 - 1,376,302.27
169344
171360
173376

I just put the block number into this URL for info: http://blockchain.info/block-height/167532

Great, thanks!


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: Ente on February 19, 2012, 10:01:58 PM
Time to come up some ideas for a decentralized block data tool?

Everyone already has a copy of the blockchain.  All we need is a GUI or CGI to read it.

I would donate to that cause.
For me (as a programming novice) it sounds like not-too-complicated to program a blockexplorer/blockchaininfo clone which works with the local blockchain copy?
Someone make a bounty thread?

Ente


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: John Tobey on February 19, 2012, 10:12:57 PM
Everyone already has a copy of the blockchain.  All we need is a GUI or CGI to read it.

I would donate to that cause.
For me (as a programming novice) it sounds like not-too-complicated to program a blockexplorer/blockchaininfo clone which works with the local blockchain copy?
Someone make a bounty thread?

Tried Abe?  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=22785.0


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: slush on February 20, 2012, 10:04:27 AM
theymos, any update? BE is still overloaded ("Database connection timeout (likely due to overload). Try again later."). Is that regular traffic or it is some kind of attack? I don't believe that traffic increased so suddenly in last few days...


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: Ente on February 20, 2012, 10:31:32 AM
Everyone already has a copy of the blockchain.  All we need is a GUI or CGI to read it.

I would donate to that cause.
For me (as a programming novice) it sounds like not-too-complicated to program a blockexplorer/blockchaininfo clone which works with the local blockchain copy?
Someone make a bounty thread?

Tried Abe?  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=22785.0


I love it! :-)

Ente


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: theymos on February 20, 2012, 01:56:30 PM
theymos, any update? BE is still overloaded ("Database connection timeout (likely due to overload). Try again later."). Is that regular traffic or it is some kind of attack? I don't believe that traffic increased so suddenly in last few days...

Something does seem to have changed to make things slower, but I'm not sure what. I'm getting 6.6 hits per second right now, but I don't normally keep logs, so I don't know if this is much higher than normal. It's also possible the disk is broken somehow.

Anyway, I've made lots of changes to improve efficiency and I'll continue to do so. I introduced that error recently so that slow database connections wouldn't stop /q/getblockcount and other non-database pages from working.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: slush on February 20, 2012, 05:24:19 PM
Maybe you should cache requests and avoid database lookup entirely? For example /block/, /rawblock/ will be the same forever, no need to ask database at all (don't forget to drop cache on blockchain reorg.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: theymos on February 20, 2012, 06:24:19 PM
Maybe you should cache requests and avoid database lookup entirely? For example /block/, /rawblock/ will be the same forever, no need to ask database at all (don't forget to drop cache on blockchain reorg.

There's already a lot of caching.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: slush on February 20, 2012, 11:54:15 PM
Then there must be something seriously broken (if you're right and average load is ~6 requests/second).


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: ancow on March 02, 2012, 01:43:10 AM
The blockcount is stuck on blockexplorer (at 169217) - is that known and/or is there a reason for this?


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: slush on March 02, 2012, 01:52:38 AM
I reported it to theymos few minutes ago...


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: theymos on March 02, 2012, 02:33:25 AM
It'll be fixed in a few minutes.

Putting the bitcoind block database in memory makes things much faster, but I think the data somehow gets easily corrupted in a way which causes bitcoind to reject all additional blocks. I'll try putting the database on the SSD instead.


Title: Re: Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks
Post by: slush on March 02, 2012, 02:44:44 AM
SSD is really solid solution, I'm running a lot of instances on SSD disk without any issue...