How good is prune mode!

[doof]

I literally last night moved a lot of my coins off core to a copay wallet because my mac had run out of disk.  I wake up this morning and read the awesome news!

Installed, changed the bitcoin.conf file, started core, about 1min later I had reclaimed 55GB.

Thanks core devs!

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[OmegaStarScream]

Why is that , are you talking the new version ? what changed exactly because I read the changelog and I honestly didn't understand much , too much technical stuff .

[7788bitcoin]

I literally last night moved a lot of my coins off core to a copay wallet because my mac had run out of disk.  I wake up this morning and read the awesome news!

Installed, changed the bitcoin.conf file, started core, about 1min later I had reclaimed 55GB.

Thanks core devs!

I have not tried the prune with wallet version... However, I still think only the "un-prune" mode will truely benefit the network.

[tobacco123]

I heard the previous version did not support wallet function. Is the latest version supporting that?

[Amph]

same thing i've used the minimum 550, and now from 65 giga i've only 1.80 used, my ssd can breathe again

you don't even need the config, it's pretty easy with the command line on the shortcut

[Lauda]

Why is that , are you talking the new version ? what changed exactly because I read the changelog and I honestly didn't understand much , too much technical stuff .

The new Bitcoin Core version (0.12.0) enables you to run a wallet in pruned mode. This means that you can use it without storing the whole blockchain. Essentially it can cut down the usage from around 60 GB of data to around ~2 GB. You only store the last X amount of blocks.

[RussianRaibow]

Why is that , are you talking the new version ? what changed exactly because I read the changelog and I honestly didn't understand much , too much technical stuff .

The new Bitcoin Core version (0.12.0) enables you to run a wallet in pruned mode. This means that you can use it without storing the whole blockchain. Essentially it can cut down the usage from around 60 GB of data to around ~2 GB. You only store the last X amount of blocks.

Is this better than using an SPV wallet, or is it the same?  I don't get the benefit of storing any of the blockchain, if you aren't going to store the whole thing.  Maybe I just don't understand how it works.

[Lauda]

Is this better than using an SPV wallet, or is it the same?  I don't get the benefit of storing any of the blockchain, if you aren't going to store the whole thing.  Maybe I just don't understand how it works.

Of course it is. You are a pruned node, which is not the case with a SPV wallet. Essentially you can help others become pruned nodes as well, but you are unable to help people become full nodes. Security also depends on how many blocks (storage) you set to hold.

[franky1]

Why is that , are you talking the new version ? what changed exactly because I read the changelog and I honestly didn't understand much , too much technical stuff .

The new Bitcoin Core version (0.12.0) enables you to run a wallet in pruned mode. This means that you can use it without storing the whole blockchain. Essentially it can cut down the usage from around 60 GB of data to around ~2 GB. You only store the last X amount of blocks.

thats not what the original version of what prune mode was envisioned.

the original vision was to no longer keep spent data. but keep every unspent

now all of a sudden 2500 people who regularly upgrade are no longer going to hold full data should they enable lite node(which core wrongly calls prune)..
it should be called trim mode.. any gardener can explain the difference
pruning only cutting off the dead parts that are not needed.
trimming cutting off larger areas to improve asthetics and space for growth

but just keeping recent relay data is like cutting off the tree and only keeping the ripe fruit.. good old blockstream adding features to dilute the population of REAL FULL nodes. and leaving the community with a patch work of litenodes and compatible nodes.

if people dont have full history of unspents. then they cannot validate that a transaction is authentic.
why oh why do people think that making full node clients into crippled versions is a good thing. because fundamentally its not. if you want lite clients then download a lite client

stop trying to advertise that running in lite mode is better then sliced bread. if you want to say your a full node then dont cripple yourself or believe your still a full node after enabling such features

if your going to run (better to call it trim/lite) mode atleast accept your just a relay node and not a full archival node

[Kprawn]

Whatever it is or supposed to be called, trimmed or pruned, it is better for people who wants to run a node. Many people simply do not have 60 GB spare on their disks

to reserve for a Bitcoin node, especially the people running it on smaller SSD's. This might not be the ideal solution, but it's better for more people with limited resources.

There is a lot you can do with 50+ GB extra disk space, like storing porn and sharing it on paying torrents. 

[shorena]

Is this better than using an SPV wallet, or is it the same?  I don't get the benefit of storing any of the blockchain, if you aren't going to store the whole thing.  Maybe I just don't understand how it works.

Of course it is. You are a pruned node, which is not the case with a SPV wallet. Essentially you can help others become pruned nodes as well, but you are unable to help people become full nodes. Security also depends on how many blocks (storage) you set to hold.

No, you cant help anyone else become any form of node as a pruned node. You dont share old blocks and in order to become a pruned node all blocks must be downloaded and verified.

[pereira4]

Why is that , are you talking the new version ? what changed exactly because I read the changelog and I honestly didn't understand much , too much technical stuff .

The new Bitcoin Core version (0.12.0) enables you to run a wallet in pruned mode. This means that you can use it without storing the whole blockchain. Essentially it can cut down the usage from around 60 GB of data to around ~2 GB. You only store the last X amount of blocks.

thats not what the original version of what prune mode was envisioned.

the original vision was to no longer keep spent data. but keep every unspent

now all of a sudden 2500 people who regularly upgrade are no longer going to hold full data should they enable lite node(which core wrongly calls prune)..
it should be called trim mode.. any gardener can explain the difference
pruning only cutting off the dead parts that are not needed.
trimming cutting off larger areas to improve asthetics and space for growth

but just keeping recent relay data is like cutting off the tree and only keeping the ripe fruit.. good old blockstream adding features to dilute the population of REAL FULL nodes. and leaving the community with a patch work of litenodes and compatible nodes.

if people dont have full history of unspents. then they cannot validate that a transaction is authentic.
why oh why do people think that making full node clients into crippled versions is a good thing. because fundamentally its not. if you want lite clients then download a lite client

stop trying to advertise that running in lite mode is better then sliced bread. if you want to say your a full node then dont cripple yourself or believe your still a full node after enabling such features

if your going to run (better to call it trim/lite) mode atleast accept your just a relay node and not a full archival node

Funny that Blockstream FUDsters would say that they are giving the community reasons to not run full nodes when not a while ago they were supporting BIP101 because Blockstream FUDsters are braindead zombies that will say "yes sir" to anyone that gets supported by Gavin.
No one on Core has said that running lite nodes is better... they are just giving people options. If your computer is too old to run a full node, now you can run at least a lite node, which is better nothing, but of course Gavinistas always must complain.

[Lauda]

No, you cant help anyone else become any form of node as a pruned node. You dont share old blocks and in order to become a pruned node all blocks must be downloaded and verified.

Interesting. It seems that I was wrong. I was under impression that it functioned so and actually thought that you're the one who told me this a while back. So essentially if you start fresh with setting for a pruned node you have to go through everything but only keep the latest X amount of blocks? What does a pruned node relay, or does it relay nothing?

[shorena]

No, you cant help anyone else become any form of node as a pruned node. You dont share old blocks and in order to become a pruned node all blocks must be downloaded and verified.

Interesting. It seems that I was wrong. I was under impression that it functioned so and actually thought that you're the one who told me this a while back. So essentially if you start fresh with setting for a pruned node you have to go through everything but only keep the latest X amount of blocks? What does a pruned node relay, or does it relay nothing?

Yes, you need to get all blocks.
Yes, you relay new blocks and transactions (I remember telling you this, maybe there was a mix up).
You cant however relay old blocks and as they are needed for a pruned node with wallet you cant help others synching.

[Lauda]

Yes, you need to get all blocks.
Yes, you relay new blocks and transactions (I remember telling you this, maybe there was a mix up).
You cant however relay old blocks and as they are needed for a pruned node with wallet you cant help others synching.

So essentially you keep relaying blocks and transactions but can't help others become a node of any sort? Now I understand it, and it does make sense.

[gmaxwell]

thats not what the original version of what prune mode was envisioned.
the original vision was to no longer keep spent data. but keep every unspent

Which is precisely what it does. All the information on unspent outputs is retained. This is why a pruned node set to keep 550 MB of the most recent blocks ends up needing about 2GB space currently.

if people dont have full history of unspents. then they cannot validate that a transaction is authentic.
why oh why do people think that making full node clients into crippled versions is a good thing. because fundamentally its not. if you want lite clients then download a lite client

stop trying to advertise that running in lite mode is better then sliced bread. if you want to say your a full node then dont cripple yourself or believe your still a full node after enabling such features

A pruned node is a full node, and does the same verification as a non-pruned node.

Please confirm that you understand this and realize your error now.

[franky1]

Please confirm that you understand this and realize your error now.

care to give Lauda a correction

and thank you for correcting that. can you also find a way to make this more aware in the literature etc as i know alot of people will have 2 comments
1. "if i can set it to store only 550mb of data, thats not enough for the unspents so something must get lost"
2. "why have i put it at 550mb default but my hard drive is showing 2gb"

making both people think what is the purpose of 550mb

try to make it clear that all unspents are available thus able to be used to validate transactions.. as from what i read about
"storing only 550mb of latest blocks" left alot of holes in what was actually happening. which we both know would make the node not able to fully validate if it didnt have full unspent data.

so try to make it clearer in the literature that the 550mb default is not the reality of data storage but is the 'trigger' to enable pruning of spents. and as a separate thing (im presuming) to hold separately the latest data aswell incase of orphans/forks etc.

as its just not worked that clearly

[shorena]

Please confirm that you understand this and realize your error now.

care to give Lauda a correction

and thank you for correcting that. can you also find a way to make this more aware in the literature etc as i know alot of people will have 2 comments
1. "if i can set it to store only 550mb of data, thats not enough for the unspents so something must get lost"
2. "why have i put it at 550mb default but my hard drive is showing 2gb"

making both people think what is the purpose of 550mb

try to make it clear that all unspents are available thus able to be used to validate transactions.. as from what i read about
"storing only 550mb of latest blocks" left alot of holes in what was actually happening. which we both know would make the node not able to fully validate if it didnt have full unspent data.

so try to make it clearer in the literature that the 550mb default is not the reality of data storage

When did you become someone that needs spoon feeding?

To recap, there are four types of data related to the blockchain in the bitcoin system: the raw blocks as received over the network (blk???.dat), the undo data (rev???.dat), the block index and the UTXO set (both LevelDB databases). The databases are built from the raw data.

Block pruning allows Bitcoin Core to delete the raw block and undo data once it's been validated and used to build the databases.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/v0.11.0/doc/release-notes.md#block-file-pruning

[thejaytiesto]

If im not mistaken you need to download the entire blockchain the first time you run Bitcoin, to enable prune mode. So you are not saved from downloading the entire blockchain once, so someone that cannot run a node because he lacks space, will face the same problem... of course its cool to claim back extra space, but the ideal would be to not need to download the entire blockchain to run prune mode.

Is there something like this planned in the future or its considered impossible?

[franky1]

When did you become someone that needs spoon feeding?

To recap, there are four types of data related to the blockchain in the bitcoin system: the raw blocks as received over the network (blk???.dat), the undo data (rev???.dat), the block index and the UTXO set (both LevelDB databases). The databases are built from the raw data.

Block pruning allows Bitcoin Core to delete the raw block and undo data once it's been validated and used to build the databases.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/v0.11.0/doc/release-notes.md#block-file-pruning

i know i know as i said before, that the real definition of pruning was as you said..
but the 550mb has got alot of people into a pickle that it must cut out some of the UTXO (laymens:unspent) to get to a possible level of 550mb hard drive space.

it needs to be clarified better that the 550mb is not total hard drive storage allocation of everything related to the blockchain but the separate parts related just to recent data that can change. and not related to archival data of unspents.

it may be wrote down in some places as far back as 2013-4-5 when the term pruning first came about. but the 2016 info on the actual release has made some left in a pickle thinking v0.12 is not the same as the original definition of pruning