Bitcoind gets extremely slow after running for a while

[WindListener]

Even commands like bitcoin-cli getbalance or getinfo take minutes to execute!

It's running on a 1GB ram VPS, with 4GB of swap. It's using most of the ram and 1GB of swap. It's a HDD vps, but nothing else is running on it but bitcoind.
So should be enough right?

Yet after running for several days it's becoming so slow I have to restart it. That fixes it for a while.
It's with the latest version for Ubuntu 14.04, all updated.

[1715172239]

1715172239

[Nexious]

More RAM would most likely help, are you running a full node? Also check the mempool size when it starts to run slow, as with some of the 'attacks' lately the mempool can grow huge and cause some slow downs.

[unamis76]

My node with 4GB RAM struggles and crashed during the stress test so your node with 1GB is definitely struggling and swapping a lot...

[shorena]

My node with 4GB RAM struggles and crashed during the stress test so your node with 1GB is definitely struggling and swapping a lot...

Have a VPS with 2 GB and can confirm this.

This is the memory usage from yesterday. As you can see the node is almost constantly at or over 1GB.

Code:

                | transactions  |memory usage   
yyyy-mm-dd-hh:mm|count|size in b|used|free      
------------------------------------------------
2015-11-11-00:00|6372|81348654|1055|992
2015-11-11-00:30|7433|81846914|1051|996
2015-11-11-01:00|5635|80818380|1052|995
2015-11-11-01:30|6015|80587507|1054|993
2015-11-11-02:00|5423|80351940|1052|995
2015-11-11-02:30|5684|80280093|1051|996
2015-11-11-03:00|6122|80514567|1051|996
2015-11-11-03:30|5002|80027616|1051|996
2015-11-11-04:00|5892|80907061|1051|996
2015-11-11-04:30|6918|81742174|1058|989
2015-11-11-05:00|4987|79836673|1052|995
2015-11-11-05:30|4709|79721534|1052|995
2015-11-11-06:00|5025|80065499|1056|991
2015-11-11-06:30|7727|81430918|1052|995
2015-11-11-07:00|8320|82095438|1053|994
2015-11-11-07:30|4698|79703537|1052|995
2015-11-11-08:00|5713|80191484|1052|995
2015-11-11-08:30|5781|80212697|1052|995
2015-11-11-09:00|4766|79682062|1052|995
2015-11-11-09:30|4869|79650538|1052|995
2015-11-11-10:00|5435|79756952|1052|995
2015-11-11-10:30|4968|79589412|1052|995
2015-11-11-11:00|5828|80225334|1052|995
2015-11-11-11:30|4874|79654212|1052|995
2015-11-11-12:00|6198|80526772|1052|995
2015-11-11-12:30|5418|80113424|1052|995
2015-11-11-13:00|4799|79558251|1052|995
2015-11-11-13:30|4934|79464049|1052|995
2015-11-11-14:00|4577|79301228|1053|994
2015-11-11-14:30|7489|80638846|1052|995
2015-11-11-15:00|8137|81405928|1052|995
2015-11-11-15:30|5464|79994536|1052|995
2015-11-11-16:00|4758|79503424|1052|995
2015-11-11-16:30|8436|81436653|1052|995
2015-11-11-17:00|5865|80435564|1052|995
2015-11-11-17:30|5641|80373791|1051|996
2015-11-11-18:00|9205|82948359|1049|998
2015-11-11-18:30|4781|79621596|1052|995
2015-11-11-19:00|6357|80456702|1052|995
2015-11-11-19:30|7142|80824997|1052|995
2015-11-11-20:00|7497|81500873|1051|996
2015-11-11-20:30|5299|79997235|1052|995
2015-11-11-21:00|5471|80057779|1052|995
2015-11-11-21:30|6840|80812994|1053|994
2015-11-11-22:00|6252|80725703|1052|995
2015-11-11-22:30|7014|81084155|1053|994
2015-11-11-23:00|5175|80314667|1053|994
2015-11-11-23:30|7824|81681685|1052|995

@OP
You might want to reduce the impact core has on memory.

Easiest way is to modify the bitcoin.conf, mainly the following settings

Code:

disablewallet=1 # no wallet 
dbcache=4    # limits database cache to 4 MB
minrelaytxfee=0.00002 # limits the number of TX that are held in memory, default for 0.11 is 0.00005, the higher the value the less TX are stored and passed along

[WindListener]

I guess it's the RAM then.
But is it realistic that the swap use is making it THAT slow? yeah the swap is on HDD but still?

how do I check the mempool size?


shorena, thanks for the suggestions! I'll play with them tomorrow.
The node uses a wallet and it's a big one, so I'll skip the first setting but that reminds, can a huge wallet be a problem for the slowness too?

[shorena]

I guess it's the RAM then.
But is it realistic that the swap use is making it THAT slow? yeah the swap is on HDD but still?

how do I check the mempool size?

getmempoolinfo[1]

shorena, thanks for the suggestions! I'll play with them tomorrow.
The node uses a wallet and it's a big one, so I'll skip the first setting but that reminds, can a huge wallet be a problem for the slowness too?

Probably, but Im not sure how a wallet influences the speed. The machine I use my wallet on has no speed issues.

[1] https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-reference#getmempoolinfo

[vayvanne]

my guess is this is DDoS related issue.
I see the same on machine with 16GB RAM. there may be also the memory leak as I see constantly increasing mempoolsize.
most effect on this has -limitfreerelay=<n>