Is there a way to run a testnet locally? How would you make the block sizes smaller so that I can generate them quickly for simulation purposes?

Thanks again Joel.

I would like to contribute to the bitcoin code. Are there some junior jobs that I can help with and would anyone be willing to mentor me along this journey?my C++ is limited.
Thanks.

The help output says it generates coins, isn't that what mining software does?

Hi again,
I desire to simulate the Bitcoin network. I thought about running bitcoind -testnet but I don't know the process of generating my own test network. I want the bots to have varying amounts of btc, from 20 to 2000 to play around with. Is there a way to run the testnet without the need of computationally expensive mining?
Thank you.

Update: I moved all the data from ~/.bitcoin to another computer, and it didn't help, same stuff, minus the memory error. Then I proceeded to remove the blk****.dat file and the ))db.*** and db.log files. Seems to now be working just fine! It's around 105000 blocks now and shooting up fast!

https://i.imgur.com/vA28N.png

version 0.32 24-beta, 32bit binary, ubuntu 11.10

I launched top and it says that the client was using about 80% of the total processing power, and about 3% memory. I closed the client, and tried to relaunch but it said that it was unable to launch since I most likely had bitcoin running still. I launched top, there was another instance running, maybe in daemon mode or something. I restarted the system, launched the client and it's back to about 8% cpu usage and 3% memory usage, and I'm using a total of about 15% cpu and 10% of the memory.

Anyway, the real issue, is that it's stuck at 132346 blocks. It's been there for 3 days now. I've mentioned this in IRC, but no one knows how to help. I'm expecting some bitcoins if the client would ever catch up to the rest of the network.

Your help is really appreciated, I want to get involved in the community asap.

Edit: I have the router firewall set to allow port-forwarding for this machine, using port 8333. Note though, that I didn't do this previously and it got to that many blocks prior to ever opening a port. I only opened the port after a day or two of nothing happening.

Also of note, I've had 11 to 21+ connections at a time.