Why is my bitcoin synchronisation SO SLOW

[somedude5]

Hello !

I wanted to run the client on my raspberry pi. But i am running it first on my pc.

Heres the thing, it has been one week and it is still not done. It starts to become extremely annoying.
It needed 4 more weeks and the next day it said 2 weeks. Is it normal that it is so slow ?

It does download and stop then i think it is processing the downloaded blocks some how.
Can i make it faster ? Or do i have to buy a better pc.

Also if it is already so slow on my pc it will be completely useless on a raspberry pi ....

Regards,

[Sharma]

I have heared many people complaining about the speed... I have synchronised on my server (octa core XEON, 16 Gb ram,...) and it still took me 3 days.

Supposedly, it's because your client needs to verify all the blocks.

Are you running 0.12.0? I have heared it's faster than the previous version (no experience tough)

[OmegaStarScream]

Hello !

I wanted to run the client on my raspberry pi. But i am running it first on my pc.

Heres the thing, it has been one week and it is still not done. It starts to become extremely annoying.
It needed 4 more weeks and the next day it said 2 weeks. Is it normal that it is so slow ?

It does download and stop then i think it is processing the downloaded blocks some how.
Can i make it faster ? Or do i have to buy a better pc.

Also if it is already so slow on my pc it will be completely useless on a raspberry pi ....

Regards,

You are basically downloading the blockchain file which have like ~40GB in size so It's pretty much about the Internet speed .

[Amph]

it took me about 8 hours for the full sync, you need a strong cpu and a strong ssd, i don't know if you can do even faster with an m2 like the 950 pro

[Sharma]

You are basically downloading the blockchain file which have like ~40GB in size so It's pretty much about the Internet speed .

Are you sure, i have read on many places that it's because you client needs to verify all the blocks... i'm pretty sure a decent internet connection can download 40 Gb in less than 2 weeks?

EDIT::

it took me about 8 hours for the full sync, you need a strong cpu and a strong ssd, i don't know if you can do even faster with an m2 like the 950 pro

Was this with 0.12.0? Granted, my server was also busy doing some other stuff, and it only has 1 standard SAS disk (i think 10k rpm), but it still took me 3 days to do this.

[Amph]

it took me about 8 hours for the full sync, you need a strong cpu and a strong ssd, i don't know if you can do even faster with an m2 like the 950 pro

Was this with 0.12.0?

yes 0.12. but i assume it would be the same with 0.11 or slightly worse, i did not find hardly any difference in synching between the two version

[FruitsBasket]

You are basically downloading the blockchain file which have like ~40GB in size so It's pretty much about the Internet speed .

Are you sure, i have read on many places that it's because you client needs to verify all the blocks... i'm pretty sure a decent internet connection can download 40 Gb in less than 2 weeks?

EDIT::

it took me about 8 hours for the full sync, you need a strong cpu and a strong ssd, i don't know if you can do even faster with an m2 like the 950 pro

Was this with 0.12.0?

I think it doesn't depend on my internet speed. 40GB would be done in a relative quick time compared to verifying the blocks.
Mayby it also depends on how many people u download the blocks from, and mayby thee transfering is slow. I am sure it is not my internet that sucks.

[OmegaStarScream]

You are basically downloading the blockchain file which have like ~40GB in size so It's pretty much about the Internet speed .

Are you sure, i have read on many places that it's because you client needs to verify all the blocks... i'm pretty sure a decent internet connection can download 40 Gb in less than 2 weeks?

EDIT::

it took me about 8 hours for the full sync, you need a strong cpu and a strong ssd, i don't know if you can do even faster with an m2 like the 950 pro

Was this with 0.12.0? Granted, my server was also busy doing some other stuff, and it only has 1 standard SAS disk (i think 10k rpm), but it still took me 3 days to do this.

Well It's related to CPU as-well but Internet speed is needed as-well since you are downloading at the beginning  .
Also I'm not sure I'm getting the OP right , Is he talking about real-time weeks or weeks that appears while sync with the network ?

[KenR]

Mayby it also depends on how many people u download the blocks from, and mayby thee transfering is slow. I am sure it is not my internet that sucks.

Did you really post this for contribution or increasing your post counts ? If the internet speed shouldn't have mattered then he might just use his phone's 2g connection right ? Much cheaper data costs.

Each full node in the Bitcoin network independently stores a block chain containing only blocks validated by that node.

Please have a read through this concept https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-guide#peer-discovery

[somedude5]

My net speed would download the full thing 80 GB in one day. I am running it for a full week now.... yes  a full week non stop.
I had another computer a year ago and i could do it in a single day so i am still wondering what is going on.

I am monitoring my internet and it goes full speed and then does nothing for a long time so i figured then it should be performing calculations to
verify , but it is terrible. Does this mean it can't run on a raspberry ? Or can i add some parameters to make it faster ?
Also when it is so computer intensive why the fence  does it only use 15 percent of my core ?

[1Referee]

Mayby it also depends on how many people u download the blocks from, and mayby thee transfering is slow. I am sure it is not my internet that sucks.

Did you really post this for contribution or increasing your post counts ? If the internet speed shouldn't have mattered then he might just use his phone's 2g connection right ? Much cheaper data costs.

He has a point. It also depends on the nodes you are connected with. I have installed the Bitcoin core client for several people on their PC, and they all have a good computer and a more than decent broadband connection. Some managed to download it within 15 hours, and some needed more than a day.

[shorena]

My net speed would download the full thing 80 GB in one day. I am running it for a full week now.... yes  a full week non stop.
I had another computer a year ago and i could do it in a single day so i am still wondering what is going on.

I am monitoring my internet and it goes full speed and then does nothing for a long time so i figured then it should be performing calculations to
verify , but it is terrible. Does this mean it can't run on a raspberry ? Or can i add some parameters to make it faster ?
Also when it is so computer intensive why the fence  does it only use 15 percent of my core ?

You can run it on a RasPi, but you should sync the blockchain on a proper machine (e.g. yours) as it will almost always be faster.

If you have lots of ram you can add dbachce=4096 (or 2048) to the bitcoin.conf[1] file. This will reduce writes to disk and most of the changes are done in memory. If you go for 4GB for the database, you should have at least 5.5 GB total memory available. I managed to sync within 8.5 hours on a dual core this way. You should also remove the line once you are done as it will only slow things down (e.g. shutdown takes several minutes) when you are not doing the initial sync.

The major breaks are
#1 CPU
#2 Disk
#3 Internet

Since neither your internet connection nor your CPU are constantly used, its very likely the disk. This means using the dbcache setting would speed things up for you.

[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin#Sample_Bitcoin.conf

[Bitware]

Hello !

I wanted to run the client on my raspberry pi. But i am running it first on my pc.

Heres the thing, it has been one week and it is still not done. It starts to become extremely annoying.
It needed 4 more weeks and the next day it said 2 weeks. Is it normal that it is so slow ?

It does download and stop then i think it is processing the downloaded blocks some how.
Can i make it faster ? Or do i have to buy a better pc.

Also if it is already so slow on my pc it will be completely useless on a raspberry pi ....

Regards,

You are basically downloading the blockchain file which have like ~40GB in size so It's pretty much about the Internet speed .

62gb+ right now.

https://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size

[somedude5]

My net speed would download the full thing 80 GB in one day. I am running it for a full week now.... yes  a full week non stop.
I had another computer a year ago and i could do it in a single day so i am still wondering what is going on.

I am monitoring my internet and it goes full speed and then does nothing for a long time so i figured then it should be performing calculations to
verify , but it is terrible. Does this mean it can't run on a raspberry ? Or can i add some parameters to make it faster ?
Also when it is so computer intensive why the fence  does it only use 15 percent of my core ?

You can run it on a RasPi, but you should sync the blockchain on a proper machine (e.g. yours) as it will almost always be faster.

If you have lots of ram you can add dbachce=4096 (or 2048) to the bitcoin.conf[1] file. This will reduce writes to disk and most of the changes are done in memory. If you go for 4GB for the database, you should have at least 5.5 GB total memory available. I managed to sync within 8.5 hours on a dual core this way. You should also remove the line once you are done as it will only slow things down (e.g. shutdown takes several minutes) when you are not doing the initial sync.

The major breaks are
#1 CPU
#2 Disk
#3 Internet

Since neither your internet connection nor your CPU are constantly used, its very likely the disk. This means using the dbcache setting would speed things up for you.

[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin#Sample_Bitcoin.conf

Thank you for your reply, i will try this.
But i am running an samsung evo ssd 850 pro model formatted with f2fs, so i do not think it is the hard drive as well..
I will report back to you if it works

[shorena]

-snip-
You are basically downloading the blockchain file which have like ~40GB in size so It's pretty much about the Internet speed .

62gb+ right now.

https://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size

Yeah, we are close to 70GB now.

Code:

$ du -hs ~/.bitcoin/
69G	/home/-snip-/.bitcoin/

-snip-
Thank you for your reply, i will try this.
But i am running an samsung evo ssd 850 pro model formatted with f2fs, so i do not think it is the hard drive as well..
I will report back to you if it works

If you suspect you are connected to slow nodes add

Code:

addnode=188.68.53.44:8333
addnode=37.120.160.55:8333
addnode=178.254.35.104:8333

as well. #1 is my node, #2 is run by a german bitcoin club[1] and the 3rd was from another user. IIRC they are all connected with 1GBit/s

[1] https://www.bundesverband-bitcoin.de/

[richmcrich]

The size of the blockchain is just too many gigabytes right now.. it will take allot of time to download the typical bitcoin chain, You can also use the other clients like electrum and it will be relatively faster than with bitcoin.