blocks downloading really slow

[martinH]

Hi,

today I've installed a bitcoin client for a friend. It's running, but it seems to take hours now to download all the blocks of the block chain. The first blocks went reasonable quick, but at the moment it takes maybe one second per block (I'm at block 124000 and something now). It makes sense to me, that the more recent blocks are bigger and therefore take longer to be downloaded. But I'm wondering if it's really normal that it takes more than six hours to download the block chain?

I also restarted the client and added some more connections with -addnode, as suggested in another thread. It's still that slow.

Another question: I've done a test transfer from my to his client today. The money has not arrived yet. So my understanding of the system is, that this is because you can not receive any money unless the block chain is downloaded completely. Is this correct?

Martin

[theymos]

That is unusually slow. Maybe your antivirus is slowing it down.

So my understanding of the system is, that this is because you can not receive any money unless the block chain is downloaded completely.

Right.

[mewantsbitcoins]

You can receive the money even if you client is offline. It just won't be displayed until you have up to date blockchain

[martinH]

That is unusually slow. Maybe your antivirus is slowing it down.

The system is a freshly installed SUSE 11. So there shouldn't be any antivirus. Is there any known issue with SUSE? My internet connection is not a particularly slow one and I'm using the 0.3.21-beta client. So the reason for this problem must have something to do with the operating system.

[PPCMac]

Stop your bitcoin client.
Try downloading the blockchain manually from here http://81.169.129.25/blockchain/
Extract it and overwrite the blkindex.dat and blk0001.dat in your ~/.bitcoin/ directory.
Restart your client with the -rescan option.