[technical question]: node crashed, chain stuck

[zottejos]

Hi,

I hope this is the correct section to ask this question...
I've been experimenting with the blockchain technology and made a small altcoin to play with (it's not on any exchange or something, just a small "toy" project between myself and 7 or 8 other persons).

My problem is this:
I had a small VPS which i used as the "main node" (it was the only node in the network). About 2 weeks ago, the VPS was erased, all data was lost (i forgot to pay my bill, my provider erased everything without a backup).
I synced my wallet about 3 weeks ago, since then i didn't sync my wallet with the main node, so i don't have any blocks for the last 3 weeks, but i have the full chain up untill 3 weeks ago. The guy that has been mining the last couple of days is offline, and not likely to come back online for a while.

I installed a new VPS, removed peers.dat from my desktop, started a local deamon with -reindex and added the newnode (mycoind-cli addnode ip.x.x.x add). The new main node gets all the blocks from my local node, up untill 3 weeks ago... At this point, everything kinda hangs... It looks like both the main node as my local node are waiting for the rest of the blocks... I tried to "setgenerate true" both on my local pc, as my main node, but the hashespersec remain 0. It sits and waits.

In the debug.log from my local deamon, the last line is 2015-12-08 14:04:32 Reindexing finished

Can i force my new main node to just "forget" about the extra blocks, and start mining from the last block i had on my desktop (3 weeks old)?

[1714009762]

1714009762

[1714009762]

1714009762

[YarkoL]

It seems you have no peers, hence cannot
mine. If the other guy comes back you can
sync up with his chain. If not, set up and connect
with another node and mine away until you
have overtaken the old chain.

[zottejos]

It seems you have no peers, hence cannot
mine. If the other guy comes back you can
sync up with his chain. If not, set up and connect
with another node and mine away until you
have overtaken the old chain.

Thanks for the tip... I'll setup two nodes (one on my local pc, one on a new VPS), ask everybody to addnode the new server, wait, and ask everybody to "setgenerate true".
Hopefully this problem will sort itself out.

I'll post back if the problem is solved/not solved in a couple of days.

[YarkoL]

What does your getpeerinfo say? You don't need VPS
to mine if you have even one connection.

Also to prevent fork if the other guy comes back online,
consider checkpointing your first "new" block.

[zottejos]

What does your getpeerinfo say? You don't need VPS
to mine if you have even one connection.

Also to prevent fork if the other guy comes back online,
consider checkpointing your first "new" block.

At the moment, i have 3 peers, all stuck at the same height... I tried to setgenerate "true" both on my local node as on my vps... Hashrate remains 0

[YarkoL]

What mining algorithm?

[zottejos]

What mining algorithm?

I'm using Scrypt

[YarkoL]

Hm. Does the debug log show anything?

[zottejos]

Hm. Does the debug log show anything?

Not really, at least, no errors... These are the last lines.

first, i have a bunch of log output while the daemon was syncing:

Code:

2015-12-10 08:02:54 UpdateTip: new best=ac70e6ff0105e0eb8c9ac16139698302e5bc045ac9abcecc135cfa4df52277fb  height=63674  log2_work=43.451497  tx=68719  date=2015-10-26 02:24:17 progress=1.000000  cache=68704
2015-12-10 08:02:54 AddToWallet 6bf1b7074716a43d365fa41a0fdd76aa89a648e598927b95bc03287c665f1dd6  

Then, after it was sync'ed, i was playing with adding peers, nodes, restarting,... and i got several of these messages (btw: "De externe host heeft een verbinding verbroken" means "the external host was disconnected")

Code:

2015-12-10 18:41:03 socket recv error De externe host heeft een verbinding verbroken.  (10054)
2015-12-10 18:51:16 receive version message: /Satoshi:0.10.2.2/: version 70003, blocks=63674, us=ipv6address:port, peer=4

After this, i tryd to start and stop the built-in miner a couple of times, so i got these messages

Code:

2015-12-14 07:07:52 MycoinMiner started

I got peers, they're all synced up untill block 63674,  a couple of them trying to generate a block, but all showing 0 hashrate with getmininginfo (after i tryd to setgenerate true)

Btw: thanks for trying to help me out, I know you're doing this on your own time and you don't owe me anything, so your help is greatly appreciated

[YarkoL]

The socket error you're getting might be
an indication of something, but
as you still have peers, it does not appear
to be the source of the troubles..

Since you wrote "internal miner" I assume
you're trying to mine from graphical wallet console?

You could try building the headless client mycoind
and put these into the conf

Code:

server=1
daemon=1
listen=1

and then mine from the commandline
,/mycoind setgenerate true

If  this does not help, try external scrypt miner,
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=521563.0
it might spit out some info what is wrong

Btw: thanks for trying to help me out, I know you're doing this on your own time and you don't owe me anything, so your help is greatly appreciated

No prob, I have been in the same boat,
figuring out connection problems more times
than I care to remember  

[zottejos]

The socket error you're getting might be
an indication of something, but
as you still have peers, it does not appear
to be the source of the troubles..

Since you wrote "internal miner" I assume
you're trying to mine from graphical wallet console?

You could try building the headless client mycoind
and put these into the conf

Code:

server=1
daemon=1
listen=1

and then mine from the commandline
,/mycoind setgenerate true

If  this does not help, try external scrypt miner,
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=521563.0
it might spit out some info what is wrong

Btw: thanks for trying to help me out, I know you're doing this on your own time and you don't owe me anything, so your help is greatly appreciated

No prob, I have been in the same boat,
figuring out connection problems more times
than I care to remember  

Thanks
I'll try these steps this evening and give some feedback tomorrow!