[ANN] Ethereum: Welcome to the Beginning

Quote from: gadado on September 04, 2017, 07:43:49 PM

Quote from: Fargusson on September 03, 2017, 10:49:12 AM

Hi gadado !

If you have a slow Internet connexion and/or an HDD, it's only normal that you're syncing so slowly, especially given that Mist 0.9.0 is also synchronising with Swarm which can take much bandwidth.

If you want to run a full node nonetheless, I can only advise you to close Mist, delete all the chaindata already downloaded (whithout deleting your keyfile(s) of course) and relaucnh Mist on --fast mode using cmd.exe (if you're on Windows). Detailed workthrough on Mist official Github page.

Thank you a lot for your help.

That started well but ended up to become extremly slow after 4 mil again. In fact it still hasn't synchronized. What is worse if I open the wallet with that fast blockchain I don't see my coins in it. All I see is an internal test transaction I did in the past.
Do you know if the coins ammount will be correct once it completed the fast blockchain or did my fast blockchain end up unusable after all?

So for a test I restored the slow blockchain. Glad I didn't delete it. There I see the coins.
I only switched the geth folder and never touched the keystore folder so it should be the same keys/wallet.

The slow blockchain has now 84 GByte (still 200k blocks missing)
The fast blockchain has 35 GByte mabye 20k blocks missing and the coins missing.

I wonder... isn't there a blockchain data packed provided from the official pages to download somewhere?

Don't know what that mist is doing but downloading 100Gbyte is not something that should takes days. Downloaded worse in a few hours. It would be way faster and less troublesome if one could simple download that blockchain from somewhere trusted I think.

You're very welcome!

I'm not sure you would be able to download a chaindata folder from someone else as the chaindata is somehow linked to your main ETH account (this being a way to check out that the blockchain is not trying to reach consensus using multiple copies downloaded by the same guy - which won't be that safe nor decentralized).

I should advise you to pursue the --fast way though. I have an (almost) full copy of the blockchain and it's over 140 GByte by now so with your 84 GByte you've still a lot to go. IMHO it's normal that you're experimenting some slowing down at the end given that the last hundreds of blocks are downloaded regularly even in --fast mode: because they represent the most recent transactions (15 s per block * 20 k is only three to four days ago) the network could need some more access to the full state of the transaction (which cannot be given by a pruned copy of the block).

And to answer your last question, Mist is not only downloading the chaindata but also sharing it with all the peers you're connected with to reach consensus. It's a bit like P2P file sharing: you're downloading some data from some people when others are downloading data from you. But as there is a block (i.e. a file) found every 15 secs, you have to download a file then check out with a dozen nodes if you agree with their copy of the file, all in 15 seconds, while sending some data to the random guy who let his computer off for two weeks and need some old blocks data... That can be harsh for HDD who are mechanically restrained on their ability to read/write multiple times on random locations in a short timespan. That's why buying an SSD could be a good idea if you want to run a full node.