Raspberry Pi 2 Node

[DuddlyDoRight]

I'm actually thinking of getting a PI2 at $35 and hacking it's hacked USB implementation to make a secure wallet where there is transparent signing of transactions and key storage. A lot cheaper than any of the hardware wallets. I'll repo the code for it. If this isn't already done..

Another thing that sounds cool is a CGI solution to use the PI2 as a hack-proof solution for a hosted website where full root on the webserver doesn't compromise bitcoin wallets.

[Reynaldo]

Hey Sir, the answer to your question is no.

The recommended setup would be a raspberry pi 2 + 2 usbs that hold /tmp /var and other partitions that get written a lot and then use an external HDD to hold the blockchain and an extra micro-sd for the /home and the root /, this way you'll preserve the micro-sd life and will be able to hold a node for more than 4-7 years.

[DuddlyDoRight]

Hey Sir, the answer to your question is no.

The recommended setup would be a raspberry pi 2 + 2 usbs that hold /tmp /var and other partitions that get written a lot and then use an external HDD to hold the blockchain and an extra micro-sd for the /home and the root /, this way you'll preserve the micro-sd life and will be able to hold a node for more than 4-7 years.

Or again use an inline SATA converter at 14MBps-36MBps which takes minutes to setup.. It'd probably still faster than the SD which, by the way isn't really standardized and slow but even if it was, by about 15MBps. Even 802.11n 5Ghz is probably faster than SD using a WIFI enclosure.

If anyone is wondering, the fastest thing you can possibly-realistically do is class 10 CF on GPIO at around 100MBps. If people all the sudden care about wear-leveling(OMG next gen games on an SSD) it's SATA converter or fail.

Public license ARM chips have no PCIe or other fast bus and that's probably years off.

[Jet Cash]

Do you guys not like the banana pi? I has wifi, more memory, and an octa-core processor. It's a bit more expensive, but all these boards are pretty cheap in reality.

[DuddlyDoRight]

Do you guys not like the banana pi? I has wifi, more memory, and an octa-core processor. It's a bit more expensive, but all these boards are pretty cheap in reality.

Are you hi? It's never had or been announced a octa-core processor, it's actually dual-core which is two cores less. Same RAM, less IO, higher price..

hxxp://www.bananapi.org/p/product.html

[shorena]

Do you guys not like the banana pi? I has wifi, more memory, and an octa-core processor. It's a bit more expensive, but all these boards are pretty cheap in reality.

Are you hi? It's never had or been announced a octa-core processor, it's actually dual-core which is two cores less. Same RAM, less IO, higher price..

hxxp://www.bananapi.org/p/product.html

They are obviously talking about the m3

[DuddlyDoRight]

Do you guys not like the banana pi? I has wifi, more memory, and an octa-core processor. It's a bit more expensive, but all these boards are pretty cheap in reality.

Are you hi? It's never had or been announced a octa-core processor, it's actually dual-core which is two cores less. Same RAM, less IO, higher price..

hxxp://www.bananapi.org/p/product.html

They are obviously talking about the m3

The board that costs the same as a Braswell ITX but has ARM power-management and slower bus? Yeah.. It has SATA though.

[calkob]

Is there any reason one could not run a full bitcoin node on a Raspberry Pi 2? I see these are very cheap now, just $37. Add a 32GB SD card and you have a fully functioning node right?

Blockchain is currently over 60gb.....

[ColderThanIce]

Is there any reason one could not run a full bitcoin node on a Raspberry Pi 2? I see these are very cheap now, just $37. Add a 32GB SD card and you have a fully functioning node right?

Blockchain is currently over 60gb.....

.. and constantly growing.

If you really wanted to run a node on something like a Raspberry Pi / Odroid / Banani Pi you could look at hooking up an external HDD to the unit to hold the blockchain, or running the blockchain off of a NAS (if you have the spare resources to do so).

I'm also surprised that the Bitseed hasn't been mentioned yet either. It's pretty expensive compared to buying your own small board computer and external HDD, but it looks like a decent plug n' play solution for a bitcoin node.

[Jet Cash]

The board that costs the same as a Braswell ITX but has ARM power-management and slower bus? Yeah.. It has SATA though.

Thanks for mentioning that. As you have probably gathered, I'm still finding my way around Bitcoin. I'm running a full node on an HP core i5 notebook, which seems to work really well, but it only gives me 4-5 hours between charges. One of my project is to find a mini-system that will work off 12 volts, be fanless ( in the UK ), and include WiFi so that it can be used to run a full node ( pruned with 0.12). The Banana pi M3 looked quite promising, although the SATA and USB didn't look to be the best. Some of the Braswell boards look as if they might indeed be a better choice. Improved SATA and USB 3.0 are an advantage. I had a quick look at some of the boards and couldn't find any WiFi support, but that may not be too much of a disadvantage - a directional receiver connected via USB may be better than a low power on-board solution ( for me anyway).

Apologies to the OP, as I seem to have hijacked his thread. I'll do a bit more reading, and start a new one in a day or so.

[Reynaldo]

The board that costs the same as a Braswell ITX but has ARM power-management and slower bus? Yeah.. It has SATA though.

Thanks for mentioning that. As you have probably gathered, I'm still finding my way around Bitcoin. I'm running a full node on an HP core i5 notebook, which seems to work really well, but it only gives me 4-5 hours between charges. One of my project is to find a mini-system that will work off 12 volts, be fanless ( in the UK ), and include WiFi so that it can be used to run a full node ( pruned with 0.12). The Banana pi M3 looked quite promising, although the SATA and USB didn't look to be the best. Some of the Braswell boards look as if they might indeed be a better choice. Improved SATA and USB 3.0 are an advantage. I had a quick look at some of the boards and couldn't find any WiFi support, but that may not be too much of a disadvantage - a directional receiver connected via USB may be better than a low power on-board solution ( for me anyway).

Apologies to the OP, as I seem to have hijacked his thread. I'll do a bit more reading, and start a new one in a day or so.

you can buy an usb wifi dongle for less than 10$ USD.
http://www.amazon.com/Edimax-EW-7811Un-150Mbps-Raspberry-Supports/dp/B003MTTJOY/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1454081512&sr=1-4&keywords=wifi+usb

[Erkallys]

Is there any reason one could not run a full bitcoin node on a Raspberry Pi 2? I see these are very cheap now, just $37. Add a 32GB SD card and you have a fully functioning node right?

Blockchain is currently over 60gb.....

.. and constantly growing.

If you really wanted to run a node on something like a Raspberry Pi / Odroid / Banani Pi you could look at hooking up an external HDD to the unit to hold the blockchain, or running the blockchain off of a NAS (if you have the spare resources to do so).

I'm also surprised that the Bitseed hasn't been mentioned yet either. It's pretty expensive compared to buying your own small board computer and external HDD, but it looks like a decent plug n' play solution for a bitcoin node.

This is actually possible to run Bitcoin Core on a RPi 2 and to store the blockchain on a NAS ? This could (or maybe not, I d'ont know) be a good idea.

[DuddlyDoRight]

60GB doesn't actually mean anything. Storage is easy.. Pagefile and RAM and bandwidth and CPU clock&threads matter for this.. A PI2 with 1GB DDR3 and USB or 802.11n+ at tens of megabytes a second will suffice. The Banana PI M3 or a Braswell ITX with SATA or even PCIe will without question handle it even in the future.

I'm going to go with PI2 at $35 and make a script to turn it into a hardware wallet isolated from host machines instead of paying hundreds for the rushed-development hardware wallet offerings out there now..

[krile]

My two cents

I used to run a node on an Intel Atom 1.6Ghz, 2GB ram system, the blockchain was on an external hdd connected via USB.

On normal days the performance was ok, but since the stress tests began and now that most of the blocks are full it became a problem. Everytime a new block would come it would eat up the cpu for like 30 seconds. Also bitcoind would slow down dramatically every few days, still running but it lagged a few blocks behind of the network, requiering a manual restart to clear up the mempool and catch up with the chain...

So my advice would be to keep away from the Pi, bitcoin is way too heavy nowadays. A Pi can be useful for running a node for one of the staking coins and actually make a few cents on it.

For the bitcoin node I now use this: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4918#ov

Much better performance, not as cheap as the Pi but still low cost, low power consumption, passive cpu cooling so it stays quiet and enables the use of a normal sata drive.

You can find simmilar boards that have wifi integrated if you need it or just add a pci or usb wifi adapter...

[ColderThanIce]

This is actually possible to run Bitcoin Core on a RPi 2 and to store the blockchain on a NAS ? This could (or maybe not, I d'ont know) be a good idea.

I used to run the blockchain off of my NAS and I never had any issues doing so. However, I did that with a Windows machine running Bitcoin-Qt, so I'm not sure if that would differ from running the node on an RPi (I suspect there would be no difference though - just create a folder, and then mount the network location to it).

One thing to note if running the blockchain from a NAS is that the blockchain can only be used by one device at a time. So, if you're wanting to run a node on your PC, as well as your RPi (for whatever reason), you won't be able to.

[Erkallys]

This is actually possible to run Bitcoin Core on a RPi 2 and to store the blockchain on a NAS ? This could (or maybe not, I d'ont know) be a good idea.

I used to run the blockchain off of my NAS and I never had any issues doing so. However, I did that with a Windows machine running Bitcoin-Qt, so I'm not sure if that would differ from running the node on an RPi (I suspect there would be no difference though - just create a folder, and then mount the network location to it).

One thing to note if running the blockchain from a NAS is that the blockchain can only be used by one device at a time. So, if you're wanting to run a node on your PC, as well as your RPi (for whatever reason), you won't be able to.

Thank you for your explanation. I don't think that I'll ever need to run it on both my PC and my RPi 2 at the same time, at least with the same folders. Would it be possible to run it on both my PC and my RPi 2, but with two separated blockchain files on the same NAS ?

[ranochigo]

This is actually possible to run Bitcoin Core on a RPi 2 and to store the blockchain on a NAS ? This could (or maybe not, I d'ont know) be a good idea.

I used to run the blockchain off of my NAS and I never had any issues doing so. However, I did that with a Windows machine running Bitcoin-Qt, so I'm not sure if that would differ from running the node on an RPi (I suspect there would be no difference though - just create a folder, and then mount the network location to it).

One thing to note if running the blockchain from a NAS is that the blockchain can only be used by one device at a time. So, if you're wanting to run a node on your PC, as well as your RPi (for whatever reason), you won't be able to.

Thank you for your explanation. I don't think that I'll ever need to run it on both my PC and my RPi 2 at the same time, at least with the same folders. Would it be possible to run it on both my PC and my RPi 2, but with two separated blockchain files on the same NAS ?

I believe so. You would need them to be in different folders though. You can first use custom directory to synchronize the blockchain for your PC before duplicating it to another folder and point the raspberry pi's datadir at the second folder. This can reduce the synchronization time.

[ColderThanIce]

This is actually possible to run Bitcoin Core on a RPi 2 and to store the blockchain on a NAS ? This could (or maybe not, I d'ont know) be a good idea.

I used to run the blockchain off of my NAS and I never had any issues doing so. However, I did that with a Windows machine running Bitcoin-Qt, so I'm not sure if that would differ from running the node on an RPi (I suspect there would be no difference though - just create a folder, and then mount the network location to it).

One thing to note if running the blockchain from a NAS is that the blockchain can only be used by one device at a time. So, if you're wanting to run a node on your PC, as well as your RPi (for whatever reason), you won't be able to.

Thank you for your explanation. I don't think that I'll ever need to run it on both my PC and my RPi 2 at the same time, at least with the same folders. Would it be possible to run it on both my PC and my RPi 2, but with two separated blockchain files on the same NAS ?

I think that would work as well. IIRC, Bitcoin-qt "locks" the blockchain when it starts up, so that another application won't be able to use it. I suspect having two copies of the blockchain in different locations would bypass that lock restriction. The only downside is that you'd be storing two copies of the blockchain, so you'd be using 120GB instead of 60GB.

[Erkallys]

This is actually possible to run Bitcoin Core on a RPi 2 and to store the blockchain on a NAS ? This could (or maybe not, I d'ont know) be a good idea.

I used to run the blockchain off of my NAS and I never had any issues doing so. However, I did that with a Windows machine running Bitcoin-Qt, so I'm not sure if that would differ from running the node on an RPi (I suspect there would be no difference though - just create a folder, and then mount the network location to it).

One thing to note if running the blockchain from a NAS is that the blockchain can only be used by one device at a time. So, if you're wanting to run a node on your PC, as well as your RPi (for whatever reason), you won't be able to.

Thank you for your explanation. I don't think that I'll ever need to run it on both my PC and my RPi 2 at the same time, at least with the same folders. Would it be possible to run it on both my PC and my RPi 2, but with two separated blockchain files on the same NAS ?

I think that would work as well. IIRC, Bitcoin-qt "locks" the blockchain when it starts up, so that another application won't be able to use it. I suspect having two copies of the blockchain in different locations would bypass that lock restriction. The only downside is that you'd be storing two copies of the blockchain, so you'd be using 120GB instead of 60GB.

OK. This was a question. The PCs that I'll be using will have their own hard-drive (that's quite obvious), so I'll surely don't need to put two blockchain copies on a NAS. However, would it be possible to store it on a PC and on a NAS, as a kind of backup. If the blockchain get's corrupted (I don't know if is possible), then the PC will look at the NAS, and thus the full node will never be down.

[achow101]

This is actually possible to run Bitcoin Core on a RPi 2 and to store the blockchain on a NAS ? This could (or maybe not, I d'ont know) be a good idea.

I used to run the blockchain off of my NAS and I never had any issues doing so. However, I did that with a Windows machine running Bitcoin-Qt, so I'm not sure if that would differ from running the node on an RPi (I suspect there would be no difference though - just create a folder, and then mount the network location to it).

One thing to note if running the blockchain from a NAS is that the blockchain can only be used by one device at a time. So, if you're wanting to run a node on your PC, as well as your RPi (for whatever reason), you won't be able to.

Thank you for your explanation. I don't think that I'll ever need to run it on both my PC and my RPi 2 at the same time, at least with the same folders. Would it be possible to run it on both my PC and my RPi 2, but with two separated blockchain files on the same NAS ?

I think that would work as well. IIRC, Bitcoin-qt "locks" the blockchain when it starts up, so that another application won't be able to use it. I suspect having two copies of the blockchain in different locations would bypass that lock restriction. The only downside is that you'd be storing two copies of the blockchain, so you'd be using 120GB instead of 60GB.

OK. This was a question. The PCs that I'll be using will have their own hard-drive (that's quite obvious), so I'll surely don't need to put two blockchain copies on a NAS. However, would it be possible to store it on a PC and on a NAS, as a kind of backup. If the blockchain get's corrupted (I don't know if is possible), then the PC will look at the NAS, and thus the full node will never be down.

No. The blockchain only becomes corrupted when the node is not running, it shouldn't corrupt while the software is still running. If you ever need to start up Bitcoin Core, it will inform you whether it needs to reindex or not. If it does, then you can simply restart it with the datadir pointed at the NAS copy while you fix the local copy.