how to move bitcoin-core from linux to windows ?

[btctousd81]

i have linux dedicated server., its working as full node.,
no pruning, all the blk files are downloaded and up to date.

now i have windows machine at my home.

what is the best way to move all required files for working bitcoin-core on my windows machine.,

so after installing bitcoin-core on windows , it wont download all the blk files again.

i have these directories and files on my linux machine.,

Code:

[root@.bitcoin]# ls -lah
total 30M
drwxr-xr-x  5 root   root   4.0K Oct 26 10:43 .
drwx------ 27 deploy deploy 4.0K Oct 15 22:05 ..
-rw-------  1 root   root     37 Oct 25 05:43 banlist.dat
-rw-------  1 root   root      5 Oct 16 10:26 bitcoind.pid
drwx------  3 root   root    68K Oct 25 17:01 blocks
drwx------  2 root   root    56K Oct 26 10:44 chainstate
drwx------  2 root   root   4.0K Oct 16 10:26 database
-rw-------  1 root   root      0 Oct 12 22:56 db.log
-rw-------  1 root   root    24M Oct 26 10:48 debug.log
-rw-------  1 root   root   243K Oct 16 10:26 fee_estimates.dat
-rw-------  1 root   root      0 Aug  9 10:00 .lock
-rw-------  1 root   root   112K Oct 16 10:26 mempool_not_needed.dat
-rw-------  1 root   root   4.3M Oct 26 10:43 peers.dat
-rw-------  1 root   root   1.4M Oct 26 10:26 wallet.dat

what is bare minimum requirement for running bitcoin-core ?

so that i can create a zip of those files and directories and download on my windows machine., and act like full node within few minites.,

i am doing this, because i am on slow connection/8 mbps at home and on top of that it has usage limit per month 100 gigs.,

thanks for your time.,

have any of you tried something like this ?

[achow101]

All you need are the blocks and the chainstate folders.

[btctousd81]

All you need are the blocks and the chainstate folders.

does bitcoin-core version has to be same ? on my both machines ?

[achow101]

does bitcoin-core version has to be same ? on my both machines ?

It is advisable to have the same Bitcoin Core version because sometimes database formats will change between major versions (the UTXO database in the chainstate folder changed from 0.14.x to 0.15.x).

[cellard]

All you need are the blocks and the chainstate folders.

If you want to reuse your blockchain data in a fork (for example, to access the Bitcoin Gold coins after the fork), do I need to put both blocks and chainstate folder, or chainstate will not be compatible even if both Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Gold Core (or whatever is called) are basically the same? (let's say it's an 0.15 fork, which I still don't know) or should I only use the blocks folder because the chainstate folder can never be compatible with a fork?

[achow101]

If you want to reuse your blockchain data in a fork (for example, to access the Bitcoin Gold coins after the fork), do I need to put both blocks and chainstate folder, or chainstate will not be compatible even if both Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Gold Core (or whatever is called) are basically the same? (let's say it's an 0.15 fork, which I still don't know) or should I only use the blocks folder because the chainstate folder can never be compatible with a fork?

The chainstate folder can be compatible in a fork. However if the chainstate folder is for a blockchain that is synced past the fork, it may not necessarily work when switching to the other fork of the blockchain.

[cellard]

If you want to reuse your blockchain data in a fork (for example, to access the Bitcoin Gold coins after the fork), do I need to put both blocks and chainstate folder, or chainstate will not be compatible even if both Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Gold Core (or whatever is called) are basically the same? (let's say it's an 0.15 fork, which I still don't know) or should I only use the blocks folder because the chainstate folder can never be compatible with a fork?

The chainstate folder can be compatible in a fork. However if the chainstate folder is for a blockchain that is synced past the fork, it may not necessarily work when switching to the other fork of the blockchain.

But isn't this the case with the block files too?

If I opened Bitcoin Core client today and synced it, and I tried to access Bitcoin Cash with the Bitcoin ABC client and I put the blocks folder there in the ABC folder, my blocks would have newer blocks that never happened in the Bitcoin Cash chain.

So I open ABC with these block files and it reaches past the day of the fork... what happens with the existing block files that don't correspond to the BCash chain? It just starts downloading and they get overwritten? Why is this different with the chainstate files?

(PS: I guess I could always order the files by date and just copy the blocks and chainstate files right before the fork happened)

[achow101]

But isn't this the case with the block files too?

If I opened Bitcoin Core client today and synced it, and I tried to access Bitcoin Cash with the Bitcoin ABC client and I put the blocks folder there in the ABC folder, my blocks would have newer blocks that never happened in the Bitcoin Cash chain.

So I open ABC with these block files and it reaches past the day of the fork... what happens with the existing block files that don't correspond to the BCash chain? It just starts downloading and they get overwritten?

They are validated and ignored. The files are not deleted, they just remain there taking up space. Bitcoin ABC would ignore those blocks (it will validate them, remember their location on disk, and remember their validation status) and continue with download the Bitcoin Cash chain. Because you don't provide the chainstate databases, it will build the chainstate from scratch by going through all of the block files.

Why is this different with the chainstate files.

The chainstate files are for the databases which contain the UTXO set and the validation statuses of every block and the current state of the known blockchain. However when you switch to a different blockchain with the same chainstate database, you may confuse the software because it thinks the blockchain it has is valid (that's what the database says) when it is actually invalid to the software. This could cause lots of problems.