[ANN] Bitcoin blockchain data torrent

[shorena]

How much time I need to sync the blockchain from zero using bitcoin-qt and how much with torrent?
I have a 7mb adsl.

It took me 3 days with a 100MBit connection with bitcoin-core. As has been said: you sync only with one client, if you are lucky they have a fast connection. With the torrent you will use your line at ~90% (keep 10% for orga/surfing) or even fully*. It went up to  When you are done keep seeding to help others.

* Edit: just did a test. The torrent runs at ~ 24MBit/s after ~30 seconds. bitcoin-core is never going to achieve that rate.

[1714061899]

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[1714061899]

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[Sukrim]

I'm having some trouble getting the 22.5 GB file. I have the 21GB which appears to be from last April. I tried using the torrent link from the OP as well as manually adding the infohash. They both lead me to the 21 GB file. Any thought as to what I'm doing wrong?

22500000 bytes are approx. 21 GiB (1024 bytes = 1 GiB), so if your client displays "21 GB", it is already the new file.

[zvs]

How much time I need to sync the blockchain from zero using bitcoin-qt and how much with torrent?
I have a 7mb adsl.

Downloading bootstrap.dat will take some hours and syncing will take a few hours more. It might go upto 1-2 days.

~~MZ~~

'7mb' is pretty fast.  I'm going to assume that's 7Mbps and not, hrm, 56Mbps.  I had bonded DSL that was 25Mbps, supposedly being increased up to 60 soon...

Anyway, I can fully reindex the blockchain in an hour or so on an i7-4770, w/ the blockchain all being stored in RAM.  On a 7Mbps link, it'd probably be faster to download it from a fast node and sync it as it downloads, if you have anything faster than an i7-2600 or so.

[VEscudero]

Hello,

for those of you that have problems downloading from the torrent, I have created a par2 parity volume of the bootstrap.dat file that has 317000 blocks (22566124235 Bytes).

Bittorrent makes a pretty good job of distributing rarest parts of the file first, but if someone has problems getting the full boostrap.dat file from bittorrent, she can try to reconstruct it from the parity archives I have created.

I have created enough recovery blocks to help people reconstruct the full bootstrap.dat (of about 22 GB in size) even from the old bootstrap copy from April that cointained about 17GB.

I encourage you to first download the index bootstrap.dat.par2 and verify how many blocks you need before trying to download the rest of the par2 blocks you need.

Here you have almost 5GB of recovery blocks with a small block size of 2 MB (exactly the same as in the torrent), which is an extreme test case for any PAR2 implementation: https://mega.co.nz/#F!ixcyQRJB!toDzjgV9XTYAs1WBQ6lTnA

You might want to download them though bittorrent as well: http://torcache.net/torrent/6D89F7B4327E2A1EBC7BD3DC269825DF92D660C3.torrent

P.S: Please be advised than par2 recovery its quite time consuming and this should be only viewed as a last resort in case you cannot download the file through Bittorrent.

[Kelp!]

I'm totally new to bitcoin and I just have to get this off my chest now: dealing with that huge database was one of the most nightmarish computer experiences I ever had.

Why does nobody ever mention that it's not just the slow download that makes getting the database such a pest, but also the IMPORTING of the full database? I first downloaded 17,2 GB successfully through the software, then I got your torrent with the intention of speeding things up. Now I find out that IMPORTING the database is AT LEAST as slow as downloading it.

My nice old torrent ratio is fucked up now. I will need a new external HDD, if I want to keep that intractable database (I'm one of those that couldn't move it around between partitions because of the size limit mentioned in this thread). And I STILL haven't got the database working. I feel like my computer and my HDDs, running at full speed, have aged by several years over the last days ...and so have I.

Using bitcoin together with that database seems to be for geeks that have at least one spare computer at home and can use it for installing and importing this intractable database.

I'll probably give up over the next days, if "importing" the final 2 GB from the database will never stop (it sure looks like it), and probably will stick to using online wallets. This is simply too much for me, my nerves and my computer.

I wonder, why can't the database be torrented in its original form (the way it appears after it is imported), so it only needs to be verified within perhaps half an hour or so and not "imported" over several days?

BTW, the download of the torrented database went real fast at full speed (16 MB here), and it's nice to see that there are so many generous contributors (seeders) in the community.

[shorena]

-snip-

I wonder, why can't the database be torrented in its original form (the way it appears after it is imported), so it only needs to be verified within perhaps half an hour or so and not "imported" over several days?

Because that would require trust. Would you trust strangers on the internet that the data on your copy of the blockchain is legit? Your clients needs to verifiy each block. If you think its such a hassle you can allways use thin/lite clients like electrum or multibit. They offer the security of a local wallet yet dont require you to download the complete blockchain.

[Kelp!]

I do have MultiBit already (to make it run, I had to install bulky Java again, after I had uninstalled it just a few weeks ago, duh). Electrum didn't run here at all. I sure would have liked to handle it the more professional and securer way, with the database. Maybe I'll go at it slowly, importing a few spare hours every day, though that will make importing the final two gigabytes last for a week probably.

Regarding the torrent, I always thought, if a torrent file had been tampered with, it would be rejected by trackers. But I trust, if it worked like that, the good people here would have used it that way already long time ago.

[giveBTCpls]

@Kelp! Yes, running Bitcoin QT is a pain in the ass, thats why they've come up with lightweight wallets. Look it up.

[Kelp!]

It would have helped, if in the very FIRST POST some of the problems to be encountered with the database would have been mentioned:

1. For instance, it isn't mentioned that you need a free space of over TWICE the size of the database on a partition to be able to "import" the torrented database. I was moving data around like crazy between partitions and external HDDs, just to be able to accomodate that huge database. And later I had to move around yet more data when I found out that I needed twice the size to "import" the database successfully. I also found out that I couldn't move the database to an external HDD at all because of that file size limit mentioned only later somewhere in this thread.

2. Also, the fact that the process of only IMPORTING from the torrented database (not just downloading through the client) will take quite a few days (with the computer using up almost all system resources and slowing down other processes) should be mentioned in the FIRST post, so people get an inkling of what's coming towards them. I've gone too far by now (with 19,6 GB successfully imported) to give up at this point. I'll probably carry through to the end, then see how the client behaves during future updates ...and then probably delete the database and stick to MultiBit.

[jgarzik]

Why does nobody ever mention that it's not just the slow download that makes getting the database such a pest, but also the IMPORTING of the full database?

Plenty of people mention this.

The "headers-first" feature, hopefully in 0.10, fixes this issue.  With headers-first, the client will import much faster than torrent + import.

[Sukrim]

I was moving data around like crazy between partitions and external HDDs, just to be able to accomodate that huge database.

If a couple dozen GB are "huge", you might want to get a new HDD/SSD anyways. Ten times the size of the block chain in storage costs about as much as a BigMac menu at McDonald's... Who the hell uses several partitions on one disk these days anyways?

Also reindexing takes a few hours at most on my machine, so probably you're running on something that might not really be fit to run a full node in the first place.

[Skavenger]

i need to improve my connection, this is taking fucking forever 

[2112]

i need to improve my connection, this is taking fucking forever 

Yeah, this torrent is a good one to debug your connection. I have one machine seeding it and I see various clients reporting download speed in the range from 10kB/s to 10MB/s (100kbps to 100Mbps).

[Kelp!]

The "headers-first" feature, hopefully in 0.10, fixes this issue.  With headers-first, the client will import much faster than torrent + import.

Sounds good. May it arrive soon.

Also reindexing takes a few hours at most on my machine, so probably you're running on something that might not really be fit to run a full node in the first place.

Like I mentioned already, as it is right now, it seems to be more suitable for geeks (preferably with a second computer). It shouldn't be like that. It should be also for the average user.

[sd]

Like I mentioned already, as it is right now, it seems to be more suitable for geeks (preferably with a second computer). It shouldn't be like that. It should be also for the average user.

The thing is running full nodes really is for bitcoin geeks. We want as many people running them as possible but the fact is that it's just not the right solution for most casual bitcoin users who just want to use bitcoin rather than run the infrastructure behind it.

The right solution for you is Electrum, Multibit, or some other light client. They still do the signing on your hardware with private keys only you have access to, so they really are as secure as a full node. I don't know why Electrum doesn't work for you, I thought it was quite reliable on windows.

[Kelp!]

Electrum doesn't run here because I have only XP with SP1 installed (and I won't update for various reasons). Some software requires at least SP2 to run. Of course, MultiBit requires Java to be installed. So, I'm sticking to MultiBit with Java now.

I've given up now using Bitcoin Core with its 21 GB (and growing) database because simply starting it with an up-to-date database, it would take about 20 minutes on my computer to "verify" before the program could be used ...and then it would still take quite some time until the newest blocks were downloaded. That's a no-go for me. Considering that I'll perhaps make one bitcoin transaction every few months and I'd then have to wait for hours to download the newest blocks, MultiBit is the right solution for me.

I'll keep seeding the torrented blockchain for a while and use it to test my new VPN connection (I only started using bitcoin to pay for the VPN service in the first place). I'll also be on the look-out for future improved versions of Bitcoin Core (as hinted at by jgarzik) and test them once in a while. It IS a fascinating project.

[shorena]

-snip-I have only XP with SP1 installed (and I won't update for various reasons).
-snip-

This is off topic, but whatever your reason are. UPDATE NOW! Running WinXP with SP1 on a machine thats online is like begging for trojans. Your system is most likely infected allready as every scriptkiddie that knows how to install a linux distro can easily "own" your system with metasploit. If you must have WinXP for specific tools that you can not get to run on a modern OS, use VM Ware.

[deadweasel]

-snip-I have only XP with SP1 installed (and I won't update for various reasons).
-snip-

This is off topic, but whatever your reason are. UPDATE NOW! Running WinXP with SP1 on a machine thats online is like begging for trojans. Your system is most likely infected allready as every scriptkiddie that knows how to install a linux distro can easily "own" your system with metasploit. If you must have WinXP for specific tools that you can not get to run on a modern OS, use VM Ware.

My god that is a horrifying setup.  Please, be responsible with your BTC

[Kelp!]

...and I'm not using any anti-virus either! LOL Sorry, my system is failsafe whatever any "geek" or "IT-expert" may say to the contrary. And I'm not going to discuss it either. Period!

[2112]

This is off topic, but whatever your reason are. UPDATE NOW! Running WinXP with SP1 on a machine thats online is like begging for trojans. Your system is most likely infected allready as every scriptkiddie that knows how to install a linux distro can easily "own" your system with metasploit. If you must have WinXP for specific tools that you can not get to run on a modern OS, use VM Ware.

As a person who also runs Win XP SP1 (for reasons unrelated to Bitcoin), I'm curious. Is there a real way to exploit such a machine (by a scriptkiddie or a real hacker) when the only Internet-visible port is tcp/8333 and the respective outgoing connections? Or is shorena spouting a standard pseudo-security paranoia? Please don't talk about social engineering attacks or other attacks involving physical access to the hardware.

Edit: Like Kelp! I also don't run antivirus on it, although I monitor it with a Tripwire-equivalent.