Bitcoin-Qt problem - permanently "out of sync"

[darkfrogmenace]

I'm a noob to Bitcoin and just bought my first BTC from bitbargain. I then sent them to the standard address given in the Bitcoin-Qt client I had downloaded. However I subsequently realised that my wallet in Bitcoin-Qt is constantly showing as "out of sync" despite the fact that I have been running the programme for hours, which means my BTC haven't arrived (20+ confirmations on blockchain.info). I'm sure this must have been the case since the moment I downloaded it, but just didn't realise until I'd sent the BTC. In hindsight I was an idiot to send them while this was the case, but I don't think I can undo it now so I'd really appreciate it if someone more savvy could help me out of this mess.

I am running Bitcoin-Qt v0.7.2-beta on OS X 10.7. Here's a screenshot of the problem:

http://i48.tinypic.com/9jgl0p.jpg

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[robot_boy]

Okay, this may not be the same problem you are having, but I know when I first downloaded my bitcoin client it took days to sync. Even now it takes hours if I do not keep it running for a few days. Basically I am suggesting that it may just be a matter of time. If you are sitting at the same point forever in the amount of blocks it needs to download then you may have a serious issue, but if progress is just slow going it might not be that big of an issue.

[SAC]

I'm a noob to Bitcoin and just bought my first BTC from bitbargain. I then sent them to the standard address given in the Bitcoin-Qt client I had downloaded. However I subsequently realised that my wallet in Bitcoin-Qt is constantly showing as "out of sync" despite the fact that I have been running the programme for hours, which means my BTC haven't arrived (20+ confirmations on blockchain.info). I'm sure this must have been the case since the moment I downloaded it, but just didn't realise until I'd sent the BTC. In hindsight I was an idiot to send them while this was the case, but I don't think I can undo it now so I'd really appreciate it if someone more savvy could help me out of this mess.

I am running Bitcoin-Qt v0.7.2-beta on OS X 10.7. Here's a screenshot of the problem:

Kind of hard to read but that pop up looks like it says you need another 6000  blocks to be caught up once it does download them you will see your btc. BTW if you have time machine setup you may want to go into its preferences and exclude every file in the /Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/ except the wallet.dat this will save you gigabytes of easily replaced data being backed up every time it runs.

[Raoul Duke]

Are blocks downloading slowly or not downloading at all?

[robot_boy]

Well that was what was unclear to me. I was not sure if he had been sitting at 6000 blocks hours now or if he had been working on it for hours now and he still had 6000 blocks left. One means he just has to wait. The other might indicate a serious problem.

[darkfrogmenace]

The block % has actually been hovering around the high 90s all day, I believe it got to around 98% and then started to drop slightly and hover again. Is that normal or should it go straight to 100%? Thanks for your swift replies & apologies for the lack of clarity in the image.

[SAC]

The block % has actually been hovering around the high 90s all day, I believe it got to around 98% and then started to drop slightly and hover again. Is that normal or should it go straight to 100%? Thanks for your swift replies & apologies for the lack of clarity in the image.

Can be normal depends on the peers you get when connecting one thing you can do is quit the program then start it again to see if you can get better peers. It is like bittorrent the faster peers you get the faster the download slower well slower update.

[darkfrogmenace]

Suppose I'll just leave it running and see where it's got to tomorrow then, perhaps I'm just being impatient as robot_boy alluded to.

[SAC]

Suppose I'll just leave it running and see where it's got to tomorrow then, perhaps I'm just being impatient as robot_boy alluded to.

Tomorrow you should be fine last time I did it took like 22 hours to get the entire chain and I am serious about the time machine if you do not want to waste your backup space exclude them files. Here is what it looks like on my Mac I even have the debug.log linked to /dev/null because I got tired of watching that grow to a gb + size all the time.

Code:

MacUser2525:~$ ll -h ~/Library/Application\ Support/Bitcoin/
total 13450016
-rw-------  1 MacUser2525  admin   5.8M 21 Nov 00:43 addr.dat
-rw-------  1 MacUser2525  admin   2.0G  7 Oct 06:14 blk0001.dat
-rw-------  1 MacUser2525  admin   2.0G  4 Dec 21:23 blk0002.dat
-rw-------  1 MacUser2525  admin   964M 26 Jan 20:29 blk0003.dat
-rw-------  1 MacUser2525  admin   1.6G 26 Jan 20:29 blkindex.dat
drwx------  4 MacUser2525  admin   136B 26 Jan 20:26 database
-rw-------  1 MacUser2525  admin   210B 21 Nov 00:43 db.log
lrwxr-xr-x  1 MacUser2525  admin     9B 28 Aug 11:33 debug.log -> /dev/null
-rw-------  1 MacUser2525  admin   958K 26 Jan 20:40 peers.dat
-rw-------  1 MacUser2525  admin   160K 26 Jan 20:29 wallet.dat
-rw-------  1 MacUser2525  admin   5.0M  7 Oct 01:23 wallet.dat.orig

[darkfrogmenace]

Done. Cheers SAC. About 6GB right there? Crazy. And I'm pushed for space as it is.

[SAC]

Done. Cheers SAC. About 6GB right there? Crazy. And I'm pushed for space as it is.

Yep pretty whacked the space this thing takes in mine above it would only do about ~2.5gb on a backup depending on what has changed in the database directory. As the blk0001.dat & blk0002.dat would already have been there leaving the blk0003.dat & blkindex.dat as the large files with todays date to be backed up and since those would be getting updated constantly throughout the day every time TM runs it would have backed up them two files at least.