Bitcoin Forum

Yesterday I started developing an instawallet/faucet/don't know yet service and started a bitcoind on my server. I expect it to take more than 24h to download the blockchain. This you can not explain to new users easily.

Don't get me wrong, the full client is the backbone of bitcoin and should run on as many nodes as possible but I guess it is repelling to install a software that takes 24h to finish. Worse than Windows.

As a new user with no idea whatsoever, I would not pick Electrum from this list (http://bitcoin.org/clients) but I think it should be suggested if it is what I think it is. I didn't try it myself yet ;)

Which clients are you suggesting to new users?

For now, I find it easiest to get people to register with an exchange to "accept" their first coins.

If people would prefer to reduce their counterparty risk (the risk associated with an exchange getting shutdown/ hacked), then I recommend the original client from www.bitcoin.org.

I just explain to them that it takes "overnight" to download the blockchain.  And then that gives them to additional security.

I agree that some people have complained (because they have an old computer) that the large size is too much.  Those are the people that I recommend sticking to an exchange.

I haven't looked into the e-wallets much.

have you tried 6.2? it downloaded all blocks for me in about 20/30 mins yesterday

Hmm ... then what is wrong??? Looks well connected (17) latest version (60200) but it's almost 24h now and not done yet. "top" shows me spikes of 10% CPU load every some seconds. It's a server, so bandwidth should not be a problem.


:( hope it is more responsive once the blockchain is downloaded so i can at least go into beta without putting much effort into setting up a faster client. Was so happy with the ease of the api but speed is really an issue now.

I only suggest eWallets to noobs.

0.62 I believe - I look forward to the 6.2 none beta 10 years from now.

+1 i was speechless but it did  ::)

I also setup a new 0.62 wallet on a Windows VM yesterday and it took about 30 minutes to get the whole blockchain.

To those who had the 20/30-minute download times...

Are you all using Windows?

your DB libs could be out of date, dunno just saying. I've tested it a few times on various ubuntu machines and it has completed the blockchain download in the same amount of time ~30-40 minutes.

@westkybitcoins, debian-ubuntu here

+1

However, if the noob is clearly passionate about Bitcoin itself, then it might make sense to discuss the desktop client.

When my Mother asked "what the hell have you been spending your time on" I said, "sign up at blockchain.info" and then I sent her a coin, and she got it. Simplicity it key, unless the person is a tech/monetary/economics/liberty enthusiast, then they're ready for more advanced discussions.

Bingo.

Can you post which CLI-commands could help finding the cause?

It's a 2.6.18 i686 linux virtual server but 50x the startup time is a bit crazy still.

a bit off topic but yeah


You want to look for ver. +4.8.24, if it doesn't show up at all look for a way to upgrade your distro especially the Berkeley libs.

Thanx. If my concern of the client taking one day to start is the topic, I don't see how finding the reason is off-topic.

a bit off-topic in regards to OP i meant. You seem to have those libs uptodate, hmm, are you using the "daemon" or the "qt" desktop version ?

i installed bitoind on a good linux server 1gbit connection and it took over 24 hours to check thorugh the blockchain...
absolutely inacceptable for newbies giving it a quick try...

no.

http://dre.tx0.org/compare.htm (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83768)

the thing is bitcoin-qt just works, like others said too. Bitcoind is a whole other issue and i don't think newbies will fiddle with it as a wallet too soon.  :)

@phelix that chart is a bit misleading, Armory uses the bitcoin client to handle the blockchain and the other two need a connection to dedicated servers that do the same thing. My point is we don't have a complete independent client atm, and btw bitcoin-qt IS portable. Meh, must stop evangelizing but can't help it sometimes.

i thought multibit would not need a special server?

post in the other thread so flatfly can fix it

opps, my bad, multibit is a standalone based on bitcoinj lib

FIX EDIT: the portability issue was already addressed https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83768.msg923865#msg923865

I started bin/32/bitcoind -daemon. Anyway shouldn't if at all the daemon be faster than the X version and not the inverse? Here people seam to be talking of having a lightning fast 30 minutes wait for the qt version.

Which ewallet do you suggest?

I use and like blockchain the most so that's what I recommend.

When it becomes commonly accepted that transmission nodes in the Bitcoin network are feasibly mainly to those with dedicated or specialized hardware in environments where network connectivity significantly exceeds what joe-sixpack has access to, I doubt that it will bounce back (to 'users run nodes') no matter what the theory says is possible.

At that point Bitcoin is, to me, a much different solution than the one which initially appealed to me and one with a different set of dangers.  It will also be at that point that I will be on the lookout for a good point to bail.  That is, one which maximizes my profits (or limits my losses as the case may be), and that has not been the overriding factor in my interest in the solution to date.

There is not much to actually argue about here since this is just my opinion and mindset.  It also seems that I have a lonely position here which is not representative of the user-base.  But just in case, I state it in case it has an impact on development priorities.

Ya, looking more than a few months ahead baffles and confuses a large majority of humans.  What can ya do?

Can show some evidence to support this statement?

Vale, lo mismo das con la solucion antes que yo, mantenos informados tio, y gracias por el cumplido.

(Ok, you will probably find the solution before I do, keep us posted dude, and thanks for the compliment.)

I'm sorry, you did the positive statement, you bare the burden of proof.

Since you admit it's just speculation I'd like to let you know I do not share the same view as you and will ignore yours.

I'm just testing this now, with the 64-bit Linux bitcoind client. To begin with, I get around 150 blocks per second, which would be consistent with reports from other users of around 20 - 30m to get the entire chain. But around block #120000 it starts to slow down dramatically. I'm down to about 3 blocks per second around #150000. Is this normal?

As far as I can see, bitcoind is not starved of CPU, memory, or disk I/O, so it must be the network that's slowing it down. This is a not particularly great ADSL line.

Toby.

So here are the full results.

http://static.paccrat.org/img/btc-ts.png

The slowdown between #100k and #120k is quite dramatic. I'm not (yet!) familiar enough with bitcoin internals to know if this is expected behaviour. Can anyone explain it?

Thanks,

Toby.

I don't recommend eWallets for noobs because they aren't really as safe as using a desktop client.

But wouldn't it be better to recommend MultiBit or Electrum for noobs rather than the Satoshi Client?

It seems to me one doesn't really need to acquire the whole blockchain unless they have a real reason.

It's simply becoming too large too quickly imo. Let the heavy duty servers deal with it.

Not everyone needs to have the Satoshi Client and a full blockchain stored locally.

Yes I seem to be experiencing the same thing, as are many others, so I would like to know if it's normal.

> type "Bitcoin" into google
> bitcoin.org is first result
> Click first download link

This, I think, is reasonable speculation of how the "noob" will install his/her client, assuming they've only heard the word "bitcoin". Of course personal recommendations may be different, I guess that's the point of this thread.

On my PC the official client simply does not work with my specs (Both windows and Linux). The latest client.

1.6ghz cpu, 512 MB ram, slow HD, windows or linux = Block chain downloading is so slow it would never finish. (Think: weeks). And computer is unusable for other tasks while client is running.

Macbook with 2ghz cpu, 4 GB ram = completes in a few hours. [note, this is on the same internet connection as the other one, so it's not slow internet that's the issue here]

Average "noob" will probably not have the latest hardware either. Everyone I know that's a normal person (i.e. not a gamer or techie) has a several years old second hand or refurbished PC. (generally, the cast off from a gamer or techie)

So no, do not advertise the official client to them!

Personally, I use Electrum, but figuring out how to run a python app is also beyond any noob. And also average noob will not backup their wallet or any of their computer data.

So e-wallets is the best answer for usability! Though whether the e-wallets are reliable and secure enough, I don't know.

There are window builds (exe's which I don't think require Python?)... but I think MultiBit might be a better choice because it still requires a blockchain (although much more compact).

Indeed, no need to install Python when using the windows binary (An up-to-date compact version
of Python 2.7 is included, and is totally noob-friendly)  ;)

I can't explain it, but I suspect that the whole process is done in a synchronous way. Like:

• Download a block (bandwidth usage)
• Verify its validity (CPU intensive, plus indexed queries)
• Insert the block in the DB - indexation (IO intensive, and probably O(log) on the index size, or perhaps even O(n), don't know)
• Proceed to next block

If that's the case, there's probably room for some optimization by rendering this process asynchronous and making bulk inserts in the DB. A thread would go downloading blocks, in a torrent fashion. Another thread would go behind it verifying the blocks. And finally a third thread would insert the verified data in bulks on the database. Validated blocks should be kept in a memory index while they are not yet inserted, so that the verifying thread can query them too.

Well, this is all speculation of mine... can someone confirm how is the block download done?

Wow... that's the time my laptop takes to update like, a single week of blocks. And I'm using 6.2.

I'm not too sure about that, but wouldn't that kind of issue be helped by forwarding port 8333 (at router level)?

The blocks are downloaded into a memory buffer by the network handler thread. This buffer is 10 megabytes, so it can certainly contain several blocks simultaneously.

The initial verification is very fast.

The bulk of the verification is done while updating the index: we need to a) find previous outputs b) check they are not yet marked spent c) evaluate scripts and signatures d) mark previous outputs spent e) mark new outputs spendable. This has to be done transaction per transaction (mostly), as each transaction can legally spend the outputs of the previous ones. Certainly optimizations are possible, but it's not as easy as splitting verification and db updates into two threads.

By the way, Matt Corallo has a branch that does split the initial verification and connecting/indexing steps into separate threads, and this does indeed seem to improve throughput a bit.

I'm not really willing to expose my IP like that. But anyway, I don't think it's a bandwidth issue.

Thanks Pieter Wuille for the clarification.

I've been assuming hardware/bandwidth is getting cheaper at a greater rate than the blockchain is growing. So it should become relatively easier to run a full client on normal hardware.

Have I assumed wrong? Has anyone checked the math?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability)

I was going to point to that.  While that body of work probably didn't plant certain seeds of doubt in my mind, it certainly did help to germinate them.

Most 'Bitcoin is fine' arguments are winnable on this forum with two words: "Moore's Law."  I feel that there is some nuance to be contemplated.  Two of the more important ones:

 - Just because new technology is developed does not mean that it is necessarily universally available at low cost or without significant hurdles.

 - Bitcoin growth rates could easily dwarf technology developments even though both may be exponential.  (And if they don't, it means that Bitcoin remains a fringe toy for us geeks in my opinion.)

I was / is still a noob, but I think I understand more of how or what bitcoin is or is not and how it works in a matter of a few days of lurking here, and reading all the wikis.

For me, I got the Satoshi client (version 4 or 5; 2 to 3 months ago) and just patiently waited for the whole blockchain to download over a week. Then I got pywallet and added some private keys I generated using vanitygen and bitaddress because I couldn't spend the money I had collected through the faucet.

I had other ideas regarding scalability but they involved incompatible protocol changes that may not be accepted by other people.