Wow thanks - I did not know that snap was at least partially proprietary!
Speaking of snap - I am still lacking basic understanding of the inner workings and principles;
could you give me a hint where I can find out why (and how to fix) I am not seeing my directory
/u at all in two snap applications that I tried - bitcoin and Krita?
This is a directory that is fully accessible by everybody and I am using that for mounting all
of my external resources, so I need my apps to be able to see that.
Cheers,
Merlin

I took Alexander the Great as an example (with his Gordic knot) and get rid of the snap and installed from the normal ...tar.gz like a proper application.

Bitcoin Client Software and Version Number: 24.0.1
Operating System: ubuntu 22.04
System Hardware Specs: I5 8GB memory several HD with 6-7 TB
Description of Problem: unable to get BCCore running as a user
Any Related Addresses: no
Any Related Transaction IDs: no
Screenshot of the problem: none
Log Files from the Bitcoin Client: don't know where to find them

I had BC Core running on a 20.04 Ubuntu as user gezi for years. It had an external 5TB drive with a directory .bitcoin containing all data relating to this installation. The drive was mounted on /u/bigdata2.
The hardware failed and I replace the machine and used the opportunity to start fresh with ubuntu 22.04. The 5TB drive was again mounted on /u/bigdata2.
I installed the latest BC Core as a snap.
On first start BC Core asked me for choose the data directory, but I could not select /u/bigdata2/.bitcoin - the file selector did not show the /u folder at all. When I tried to type in the full datapath the Choose button remained grayed.
I tried everything I could imagine to get this to work, including adding dataDir=/u/bigdata2/.bitcoin to the config file Bitcoin-QT.conf in
/home/gezi/snap/bitcoin-core/bitcoin-core/126/.config/Bitcoin
In order get something to work avoiding any file permission I tried to run as root:
/snap/bitcoin-core/126/bin/bitcoin-qt -datadir=/u/bigdata2/.bitcoin
and that actually worked: it got the right data, it was a few days behind but it started the synching nicely.

Obviously I tried the same command as user gezi, but first got  popup window with a Payment request error, and then
"Error: Error initializing wallet database environment "/u/bigdata2/.bitcoin"! This error could occur if this wallet was not shutdown cleanly and was last loaded using a build with a newer version of Berkeley DB. If so, please use the software that last loaded this wallet"

The last I tried was to accept the default data location and started to sync. Then, when it thought be only 5 days until done, I did as user gezi
cd ~/snap/bitcoin-core/common
mv .bitcoin save.bitcoin
ln -s /u/bigdata2/.bitcoin .bitcoin
to plant the old data into the new nest, but to no avail: BC Core thought it was a new install and asked me for the data directory again.

I am now at  total loss and hope somebody can make sense if this all.
Thanks, Merlin

thanks!

I can imagine there is documentation about that - if so, I would appreciate a hint where I could find that  :-)

I am out of my bitcoins for a day or so because Core is reindexing.
I try to find a better solution than having Core run on my daily windows machine that does need a reboot once in a while and sometimes several in a row (including forced power off).
My idea is if I could run the full node on a linux server that is on 24/7 in the basement, but have my windows machine with the wallet on that daily windows machine accessing the database on the linux server.
Is that a possibility and if so, how would I configure that?
Thanks - Merlin

do you know if Core keeps files open that it works with or only opens them if needed?
Depending on that I would have to close down Core before I make a backup - thinking about every week or few days to minimize the reindexing time.
And, yes, I just upgraded to 0.12 so hopefully that will not be a big issue any more. I actually do backup the whole database daily already (robocopy so I don't have to copy the whole thing - only changes), unfortunately I did not think of that yesterday, so that backup was overwritten with the 2 years out of sync  :-(

I had another crash of my windows 8.1 machine which I run bitcoin core on - and that took down my index - - again.
Now after a night of the fan going full speed I am still 37 weeks out of date.
There must be a way to back up that work!
Would it be possible to have a back-up of the index and restore it after a crash that corrupts the index? A copy of a few GB should be faster than hours and hours of reindexing.
Or is there a reason why that should/would not work?
If it is possible would I have to shut down core before backing up the index to make sure no files are open that might not be backed up or could I use shadow copy to do that (or would I end up with a corrupted index after restoring a snapshot that core does not know what to do with)?
Thanks - Merlin

merlinsilk

Hi, my bitcoin wiki user name is merlinsilk and I would like get editor status.
Thanks, Merlin