[ANN] Bitcoin blockchain data torrent

[shorena]

-snip-
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.

I dont see what an antivirus software would do to prevent an attack anyway, some sort of IDS certainly would.
I was under the impression that Kelp! is using the system to access the internet*, as in browse. If you are -as you describe it- only running a full node behind a proper firewall and never use a browser you should be fine.
The list for WinXP is long and its the "go to"-system for examples in the metasploit books [1] because its so easy to gain access to. Most exploits however need either an open port or the victim to request it (usually via browser).

Again, I did not intend to derail this thread with offtopic replies and if you are aware of the risks, go ahead. Its just that most people I encounted that still use WinXP do not use it deliberately but out of lazyness. And yes I am a bit paranoid.

* using multibit, trying to get Electrum to work, downloading torrent files, etc.
[1] refering to ISBN 978-3-89864-772-4 from 2012, but I assume others have similar content.

[1714846013]

1714846013

[1714846013]

1714846013

[HeadsOrTails]

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.

I'm in Australia on ADSL2+ (24Mbps max is quoted by companies so I'd think ~10Mbps is true speed as max torrent DL speed I get is ~1150kbps ~= 10/8).
I am getting 450kBps rate presently, which I'd have to think is ~50x faster than Bitcoin Core.

There must be a better way than having 1 peer sending the blockchain; the upload bandwidth jammed to a halt for 4-5 days is infeasible at the painful induction crapshoot.

Best way to resolve the issue? If you've either 1) DLd the torrent once before or 2) waited while BTC Core did its thing for 4-5 days, or 3) like Bitcoin ... seed the torrent! 

[Kelp!]

I'd like to post a suggestion for those who are about to download the torrent blockchain and who care about their existing fine torrent ratio in their old torrent client:

With such a huge download (21GB right now), any sweet torrent ratio will inevitably get borked quickly (depending on how many GB you had uploaded previously). To save your old nice torrent ratio, consider getting a new torrent client (preferably a "portable" one) and use it only for downloading the blockchain. When you decide to seed it (either part of it, or 100% or more of it), you can load it in your old torrent client, and even improve your old ratio quite substantially by seeding that huge database.

I wish I had done it like that, before I fucked up my cute old torrent ratio with this blockchain torrent. ;-)

[Sukrim]

Who cares about some arbitrary "ratios" displayed locally in a client?! What matters is how much you actually do upload...

[shorena]

Who cares about some arbitrary "ratios" displayed locally in a client?! What matters is how much you actually do upload...

Indeed, so in order to avoid a "bad ratio" just share the blockchain data torrent until you uploaded at least as much as you downloaded.

[Kelp!]

Who cares about some arbitrary "ratios" displayed locally in a client?

Of course I posted my tip for those that care about their ratio, not for those that don't care. ;-)

Indeed, so in order to avoid a "bad ratio" just share the blockchain data torrent until you uploaded at least as much as you downloaded.

Not necessarily. If you had a ratio of e.g. 2.0, you'd have to upload the file twice to get your old ratio back. For people with an average DSL connection, with typically fast download speeds but low upload speeds, that's almost impossible to achieve, especially when they prefer to go about other torrents. So, using a different torrent client exclusively for the blockchain torrent, is a simple way to keep your old ratio.

[shorena]

Who cares about some arbitrary "ratios" displayed locally in a client?

Of course I posted my tip for those that care about their ratio, not for those that don't care. ;-)

Indeed, so in order to avoid a "bad ratio" just share the blockchain data torrent until you uploaded at least as much as you downloaded.

Not necessarily. If you had a ratio of e.g. 2.0, you'd have to upload the file twice to get your old ratio back. For people with an average DSL connection, with typically fast download speeds but low upload speeds, that's almost impossible to achieve, especially when they prefer to go about other torrents. So, using a different torrent client exclusively for the blockchain torrent, is a simple way to keep your old ratio.

Esp. if you use torrents on a regular basis you should just keep this one running for a few months. Everyone seeding is increasing its speed for those downloading it. If you care enough about other torrents to get a 2:1 ratio, why not about this one?

[Kelp!]

If you care enough about other torrents to get a 2:1 ratio, why not about this one?

Like I said, with some DSL connections it's technically almost impossible to achieve (except you let your computer run 24/7 for some time). I'll try to reseed about half of the blockchain, I don't think I have the time and patience to reseed it entirely. I also need to delete the blockchain torrent eventually, to have more free space on my HDD for other torrents again. Such an ENORMOUS single file does bring about some problems on some set ups. ;-)

[Meuh6879]

downloaded successfully : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=252937.msg9034028#msg9034028
For now, integration is running : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=252937.msg9040466#msg9040466

WinXP SP3 + all KBs installed.

[Meuh6879]

1 crash after read 2To and writing 18Go (task manager open on this bitcoin-qt.exe process).

Need to restart bitcoin core ... it must scan the 18Go and keep working of the integration of the bootstrap.dat (for me, 30 weeks to process after this crash).

[mistercoin]

Very nice! I will add it to my seedbox

[Meuh6879]

  thanks for this.

I think that the torrent bootstrap.dat is the only way to download the blockchain now ... because bitcoin network is massively stopped by orphan block.

[Yoghurt114]

I was updating from the 16gig bootstrap to the current (21gig) torrent and noticed they don't go side by side initially (ie. the 21 gig one doesn't start off from where the 16gig one stopped). I deleted both torrents (not the actual bootstrap file) and loaded the 21 gig torrent by itself, it (uTorrent that is) started checking the file as I would expect, but then started downloading from 0%. I expected it would start downloading right around 70% or so. Is this expectation wrong? Or did I do it wrong?

TLDR; How do I update the torrent to a more recent version without downloading from scratch?

[tl121]

I am running bitcoin-0.9.2-linux on Debian.  I got a copy of linearize from github and ran it using Python 2.7.3. I had no problem creating hashlist.txt, but when I ran linearize-data.py  I got errors.   There were other skipped blocks, but the end was as follows:

Wrote 239000 blocks
Skipping unknown block 000000000000007dae319c0420d12bf47f14ed63a994d2402b9bb9a69d0b732d
Input file/home/tony/.bitcoin/blocks/blk00024.dat
Out of order block.
Expected 000000000000008a098f009454d431be775eb87a3c4ffbfe04a8eaf127de0aa6
Got 000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f

I figured that my block data was somehow corrupted, so I ran bitcoin-qt with checkblocks=0 and checklevel=3. Then I re-ran linearize with the same result.  Then I ran bitcoin-qt --reindex and spent a day  doing a complete reindex.   I then reran linearize and got the same error. This concerns me, because if my blocks on disk had somehow gotten corrupted then bitcoin-qt should have found the corruption.

Does anyone have an idea what may be wrong?

Follow-up edit.  I cleared out all of the files in .bitcoin and downloaded the block chain from another node on my network.  This took about 18 hours. Then I ran linearize and produced a good bootstrap.dat file and it is presently seeding.

[sd]

Who cares about some arbitrary "ratios" displayed locally in a client?! What matters is how much you actually do upload...

The only thing that really matters is that anyone who wants the data should be able to get hold of it as fast as possible. The more bandwidth we have seeding the better but if anyone really can't seed they should not feel bad about it. It's not an obligation.

[sd]

I've been seeding the new torrent for 2 months now on a well connected server and have a seed ratio of 548. That's about 12 TB uploaded by one server in 2 months. I'm wondering if this is all due to people setting up full nodes, or if something else is happening here.

If you are a long term seeder are you getting similar results?

[bitpop]

I've been seeding the new torrent for 2 months now on a well connected server and have a seed ratio of 548. That's about 12 TB uploaded by one server in 2 months. I'm wondering if this is all due to people setting up full nodes, or if something else is happening here.

If you are a long term seeder are you getting similar results?

Armory likes to use it

[LeMiner]

I've been seeding the new torrent for 2 months now on a well connected server and have a seed ratio of 548. That's about 12 TB uploaded by one server in 2 months. I'm wondering if this is all due to people setting up full nodes, or if something else is happening here.

If you are a long term seeder are you getting similar results?

Armory likes to use it

This exactly, armory loves using this torrent. I've been seeding it for quite a while now. I tried out the download speed yesterday from this torrent and got around 25MB/s (around the max of the connection I'm using at home). I'm sure it would be even faster on my business connection.

Either way, keep seeding and everybody thanks for providing this service.

[defcon23]

Hi, is anyone got a FRESH & CLEAN bootstrap.dat file around ? it will be much appreciated by many users ,( me included ) , since it became almost impossible to syncronise bitcoin core in a decent downloading time...even with a really good conection.
Actualy it is a serious problem for this software..
 Bitcoin core developpers should have to seriously work on this..
Thanx in advance 

[Sukrim]

header first syncing is already merged, so this is already fixed in the next version. There is likely not going to be a new bootstrap.dat until then...