Downloading the Blockchain

[evansste]

I installed Bitcoin Core yesterday, and the blockchain started to download with no problem.  However, later that night, it seemed to be stuck at 0.10%, since I hadn't noticed any activity.  I let it run all night, and it's still stuck at 0.10%.  It's been well over 9 hours, but it's still showing 0.10% and no other numbers are changing.

My guess is that this is abnormal, but I want to make sure.  Has anyone ever heard of the blockchain getting stuck when downloading, or do I simply need to be more patient and let it run.

There appears to be no Internet connection problem since I can still access the web.  I'm running Lubuntu 16.10 on a system with 4 GB of RAM.  It's an older system, since my motherboard is an ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe, and my processor is a Pentium 4, running at 3.2 GHz.  Hard drive space isn't a problem, since it's installing to an empty 2 TB hard drive.  However, the operating system isn't installed on that hard drive, so the location of my bitcoin directory isn't the default.  I should also mention that I created a bitcoin.conf file, and placed "txindex=1" in that file.  Would any of this be a problem?

If anyone could shed some light on what the problem may be, or if I just need to be more patient, I'd greatly appreciate it.

[Quartx]

There could be various reasons why that is happening.

1. Number of connections
Some nodes are faster than others, and you need the faster ones for the inital sync

2. Blockchain is corrupt (This should no longer happen with current Bitcoin Core releases, it was only a problem in the past)

3. Indexer is stuck or not updating (Still downloading chain but index is not updating)

Check size of blockchain data directory for a set period of time (see if it is increasing)

4. Out of disk space or ram (Should not be the case)

Is there a reason why you are using txindex=1? If you are using bitcoin core for your personal wallets, txindex=0 is more than sufficient for you to query your txes. Unless you are a dev, you would not need to use txindex=1, this option also makes core index slightly slowly as it will allow you to get transactions data for any transaction in the blockchain.

If you see that the blockchain size is already considerable large. Try running bitcoin-qt with -reindex.

If all else fails, you can try to delete the bitcoin data dir (except your wallet.dat)

[evansste]

Thanks, Quartx.

I think your first suggestion may be the reason.  I have noticed that it says "Connecting to Peers..." in the bottom left portion of the window.

Is there anything that can be done about this?  Is my capability to download the blockchain limited to the number of working nodes in my vicinity?  If so, what can I do if my computer can't find any peers?

Thanks.

[anityala]

sometime it can take super long time to synchronize. i had to wait more than one complete day for  it is fully synchronized. it is very long.

[evansste]

Thanks, anityala.  Your comment is really helpful, since I've often considered pulling the plug.

I read somewhere online that the bottleneck has a lot more to do with a computer's computing capability rather than download speeds.  Would you mind telling me what kind of processor your computer has, and how much RAM is in your system?

I downloaded the blockchain over a year ago, on this same machine, and I didn't run into these kinds of stalls.  I know that the blockchain has more than doubled since then, but I wouldn't have expected to see my computer seemingly stall.

I was tempted to pull the plug and try installing on a more powerful, newer, computer.  But after hearing your comment, I may give it another day in order to see what happens.

Thanks for your input.

[Quartx]

Is there anything that can be done about this?  Is my capability to download the blockchain limited to the number of working nodes in my vicinity?  If so, what can I do if my computer can't find any peers?

Thanks.

How fast is your internet connection on said machine? Are you using wireless or a wired lan cable. Is your network congested or direct cat6 lan cable connection with no other users on the network?

You may try to add some Amazon cloud nodes near to your location from https://bitnodes.21.co/nodes/?q=amazon.com and adding their ips tusing the -addnode option in your conf and see if anything changes

[evansste]

Thanks for the suggestion, Quartx.

I finally chose to simply try it on a more powerful computer, and I can already tell the huge difference.  After running for less than five minutes, it has already passed the 0.10% point; which is where my other computer stopped.  It's now showing 31 hours as an estimated time left until it is synced.

This proves that what I read online is correct about the processing power of a computer being a large factor.  The other computer, which I previously tried to run it on, is more than 10 years old (probably closer to 15).  This newer one has an 8-core processor and 4 times the amount of RAM as the other machine, so there's a huge difference in computing power.

I can only guess that the increased size of the blockchain has caused my other computer to fail; not unless there have been significant changes to certain Bitcoin protocols since I downloaded the blockchain over a year ago.  As I said, the computer, which failed, is the same exact computer I used back then.  The internet connection is also either the same or better.  I'm using a wired LAN cable.  It's a shared network, and I don't know how many people are on it.  However, this newer machine is humming along.

Thanks again for your help and suggestions.  I couldn't find a source which gives minimum system requirements for running Bitcoin Core, including the ability to download the blockchain, but it's safe to say that it's always a good idea to use a modern computer with healthy resources.  A 10-year-old computer just doesn't cut it.

Thanks again.

[HI-TEC99]

You might find the apparent download and indexing speed slows down after you have got the first few years  of Bitcoin's blockchain. It's because the earliest few years of blocks were mostly close to empty, but the most recent few years blocks are close to full.

[evansste]

You're right, HI-TEC99.  I forgot that the estimated time gets longer after it's been running for a while (It now says 8 days).  However, I didn't realize that it was because of the smaller size of the early blocks; which makes sense.  I'm just glad that it's not stuck anymore.