I have bitcoind version 120100 on my Debian machine, which was less than year out of date. Recently, I turned it on again and it started syncing and appeared to be doing so from the beginning, starting at block 1. After nearly 4 days it is at 372 K out of 452 K blocks and slowing down.
(1) I thought it was supposed to sync starting where it left off, not at Block 1 ?
Did it say that it was reindexing or syncing? If it was reindexing, it was not actually syncing, although I don't know why it was reindexing unless you have
-reindex in the startup command or
reindex=1 in your Bitcoin.conf. Are you sure that it is using the right data directory if you set a custom one?
(2) Should I upgrade to 13 ? My concern is that if I upgrade, it is going to want to download the whole goddamn block chain again which could take 2 weeks. I need to do some BTC transactions, so I need it working.
If you double check that the datadir is correct, the bitcoin.conf and the startup command don't have
reindex anywhere in them, then it will use the blockchain that is already there.
(3) If I upgrade, is there any way to start where I am (block 372 K) and not have to start at the beginning?
Yes. It will by default pickup wherever the previous version left off. It should always do that unless something is broken, i.e. wrong datadir or reindexing.
What is the procedure? There are two programs bitcoind and bitcoin-cli in /usr/local/bin/bitcoin. Can I just turn it off, replace these two files, then turn it on again, or is it more complicated than that? I assume it must be because there is a /usr/local/bin/bitcoin-qt directory and I guess the junk in there needs to all be updated too somehow.
Thanks for any assistance.
What OS are you using? If you are using Ubuntu, you can install it from the PPA.