Advice on Raspberry pi hardware for running full BTC node

[DaveF]

Can I mirror my trezor wallet on Bitcoin core? Perhaps a watch only wallet.  I'm not intending to use the synced wallet for new transactions quite yet since I'm familiar with the trezor.

Yes...With a but....it's not that simple.

1) Run the Trezor back end. https://github.com/trezor/blockbook

2) Connect the back end to your Bitcoin Core node

3) Use custom back end in option in the Trezor Web Walett and connect to your backend

So...Yeah, it can be done.

-Dave

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[Carlton Banks]

you can also use Bitcoin Core team's HWI: https://github.com/bitcoin-core/HWI

guide here: https://github.com/bitcoin-core/HWI/blob/master/docs/bitcoin-core-usage.md


There's a big change to how the wallet sub-system works that's probably going to make it into Bitcoin 0.20.0, at the moment creating a watching wallet is pretty painless (although it will take a while to scan the blockchains for tx history), but spending using Bitcoin's GUI isn't yet possible. Continuing to use the separate Trezor apps is still the only way to do it (or use the cli tools for HWI)

Ultimately though, using Trezor's web wallet as the front end is less satisfactory as a solution than using an integrated tool with Bitcoin's GUI, both for how streamlined the process and how secure/minimal the system will be. But the earliest possibility of using that is gonna be 0.20.0, and that's not scheduled for release till May 2020. The watch-wallet scanning may well receive a big performance boost with BIP157-based utxo querying. Again, that'll be in 0.20.0 at the earliest (but you can enable the filters for BIP157 now if you're using Bitcoin 0.19.0+)

[KD6-3.7]

Ok, so for now I did downloaded a blockchain on that spare laptop using a newly purchased 1TB Samsung SSD. It took around 26-30hs which is amazing. Re-syncing after a night off takes only several minutes which is dope. To learn how to do it I watched those tutorials:
Linux - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bju_FdCo42w&list=PLtK75qxsQaMLZSo7KL-PmiRarU7hrpnwK (watched till like 34-35th video)
Full Node - https://github.com/k3tan172/ubuntu-node-box/ - only installed Core for now. Haven't setup incoming connections, TOR or anything yet since I'll do it when I migrate to RPi.

RPi is a project for this or next month so I will update you guys on specs I will decide on and on learning/progress.

Thanks for all the help

[DaveF]

I know it's been discussed before in the thread, but I just came back to my office from one of my clients that has an embedded device that was dead. It is nothing more then a Pi in a case in the back of their id scanner.

Cause of death...a power adapter that probably cost less the then the $0.25 I put in the parking meter in front of their office because it's raining and I didn't want to park in the free lot and walk.
Seriously, I put in a phone charger that I had in my trunk and they were back online. I cracked open the dead one and it was so poorly constructed I was surprised it ever worked.

-Dave

[Carlton Banks]

the RPi 4 even has a special new disk-over-USB protocol to make SATA work better than it did with the RPi3.

so I got this detail wrong

What we want is a USB SATA caddy that uses the UAS standard (sometimes called UASP, and stands for USB Attached SCSI). This allows the OS to issue ATA commands over the USB interface, which ordinarily USB does not handle.

This gives you:

• the TRIM command, only used with SSD storage
• improved random IOPS performance, as low level commands sent to the disk can be queued, instead of issued sequentially

The full performance of a direct SATA interface still isn't quite possible, but it's negligible for use with these single-board devices where the CPU is by far the more oft-encountered performance bottleneck.

Bascially, you can ditch the slow unreliable SD card for everything except /boot, and I think in the case of the RPi4 even that partition can be on an SSD and SD cards are entirely unneeded. I was wrong though that only the RPi4 can do this, any RPi should work with a UAS based external disk caddy. You just need an operating system that's new enough to talk UAS (which should be everything modern, it's kind of an old standard that took a long time for manufacturers to support, there aren't many UAS disk caddies available on the market)

[Icygreen]

I've downloaded core 0.19.0.1 files and extracted them to my Rpi desktop but I'm having trouble running bitcoin-qt. The readme files point me to run bin/bitcoin-qt but when I click it ask me which application I want to use and gives a list of options that don't seem right.  What do I do to run this or get core setup?  

[Icygreen]

I've downloaded core 0.19.0.1 files and extracted them to my Rpi desktop but I'm having trouble running bitcoin-qt. The readme files point me to run bin/bitcoin-qt but when I click it ask me which application I want to use and gives a list of options that don't seem right.  What do I do to run this or get core setup?  

Looks like you attempt to open the blob/binary of bitcoin-qt. What you should to are :
1. Make sure bitcoin-qt have execute permission (right click bitcoin-qt from your file explorer and see option to make it executable)
2. Try to run it with command

Code:

cd /path/to/your/bitcoin/qt/file
./bitcoin-qt

Didnt work. it says no such file or directory.
I tried with both Linux files from core. Linux (tgz) and ARM Linux file. Both were extracted to a folder on the desktop. Permissions are set to anyone.
Am I using the correct files?

[Carlton Banks]

Am I using the correct files?

for Rpi4, you specifically want the .tar.gz file with the platform "aarch64" in the filename

[Icygreen]

Am I using the correct files?

for Rpi4, you specifically want the .tar.gz file with the platform "aarch64" in the filename

I could not find a file with aarch64 in the filename on https://bitcoin.org/en/download
I have the file bitcoin-0.19.0.1-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
If this isn't the correct file, could I please have a link?

[Carlton Banks]

I could not find a file with aarch64 in the filename on https://bitcoin.org/en/download
I have the file bitcoin-0.19.0.1-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz

yeah, x86_64 is Intel/AMD and so will not work

you want https://bitcoincore.org/bin/bitcoin-core-0.19.0.1

for some reason bitcoin.org (apparently) doesn't have the aarch64 build, but maybe that's because bitcoin.org is not the official site. Not sure, no reason they wouldn't host the ARMv8 builds I can think of.

[Dabs]

A lot of things aren't working yet properly for Rpi4 since it's so new. Eventually it will get there, but maybe try and get / use an older RPi and see how that works.

[judypug1956]

trying to run a full node on a rasp pi is basically an exercise in futility.

Just buy a used pc like this

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-M83-Tiny-PC-computer-i5-4590t-8gb-memory-tested-and-working-10E9000UUS/333436439862?

buy a ssd and run a node in linux.

better yet get this one

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Thinkcentre-M72e-Tiny-Dual-core-i3-3220T-Win7-Linux-12GB-Memory/123997550116?

ask for it in linux os
ask for 500gb hdd
ask for 8gb ram

only 99 dollars
far better then any rasp pi

[DaveF]

trying to run a full node on a rasp pi is basically an exercise in futility.

Just buy a used pc like this

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-M83-Tiny-PC-computer-i5-4590t-8gb-memory-tested-and-working-10E9000UUS/333436439862?

buy a ssd and run a node in linux.

better yet get this one

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Thinkcentre-M72e-Tiny-Dual-core-i3-3220T-Win7-Linux-12GB-Memory/123997550116?

ask for it in linux os
ask for 500gb hdd
ask for 8gb ram

only 99 dollars
far better then any rasp pi

Not really, many people do it.
Heck you can even run an entire lightning node on one.
It is not plug & play / as quick and simple as double-clicking an exe and done. But, it's not impossible and a lot of people do.
It just takes a bit more time and effort. It's a good learning experience too.

-Dave

[Icygreen]

trying to run a full node on a rasp pi is basically an exercise in futility.

I'm starting to see why you'd say that. I'd agree that I'm probably over my head with this but I would like to learn more.

Not really, many people do it.
Heck you can even run an entire lightning node on one.
It is not plug & play / as quick and simple as double-clicking an exe and done. But, it's not impossible and a lot of people do.
It just takes a bit more time and effort. It's a good learning experience too.

-Dave

Thanks for the link to the correct file @Carlton Banks!

Sorry to need hand holding all the way through this. That was largely unexpected and perhaps an oversight on my part but if good guidance and patience is available, I'm eager to learn/follow directions and proceed.

I've been trying in vein to install the bitcoin-qt file. I tried
sudo install /file/path/to/bitcoin-qt
cd /file/path/to/bitcoin-qt (as mentioned a few posts above)

How do I install the binary file bitcoin-qt to get core to work?

[Carlton Banks]

Sorry to need hand holding all the way through this. That was largely unexpected and perhaps an oversight on my part but if good guidance and patience is available, I'm eager to learn/follow directions and proceed.

I'd prefer to help out and have a few more people out there that can do this sort of stuff. you, me and everyone else helping is actually helping anyone else following along, we're all winning here

I've been trying in vein to install the bitcoin-qt file. I tried
sudo install /file/path/to/bitcoin-qt
cd /file/path/to/bitcoin-qt (as mentioned a few posts above)

I assume you already did tar -xf bitcoin-core-0.19.0.1-aarch64.tar.gz?

you don't have an old version installed on the RPi? If so, find it like this: find /usr -name 'bitcoin'* (so that searches the /usr directory for all files starting "bitcoin", there's 3 or 4 all called e.g. bitcoind or bitcoin-cli)

If none are previously installed, just copy the files. tar has extracted a directory called "bitcoin-core-0.19.0.1" for you, in that directory is a sub-dir called "bin" where the binaries are, that's all you want. so, somehting like sudo cp -a ./bitcoin-core-0.19.0.1/bin/bitcoin* /usr/bin" will do the job.

Then, you want the service file, which you can get from https://github/bitcoin/bitcoin/contrib/init/bitcoind.service (this is the service file format for systemd, which Raspbian uses, other service managers are available...). Get that file onto your RPi, or if that's a pain in the ass, type it out real quick, it's incredibly short (use the "nano" command). Put it in the directory /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants using the "cp" command you used to copy the bitcoin executables to /usr/bin.

Change the bitcoind.service file so that the line saying "-datadir=" has the path of the .bitcoin directory on your external disk in place of /var/lib/bitcoin.

Then, do sudo systemctl enable bitcoind, then sudo systemctl start bitcoind, then tail -f /PathToICYgReeNsExternalDisk/.bitcoin/debug.log

that last command will just let you watch the node catch up with blocks you're probably missing by now. Quit the scrolling output with Ctrl-C.

Now, if you want to add new options to Bitcoin that are part of startup (e.g. bigger dbcache would work for you with 4GB RAM), you can create the file "/etc/bitcoin/bitcoin.conf", and add any options you see from doing bitcoind --help Just remove the "-" (i.e. -dbache=1000 is correct on the cli, but wants to be dbcache=1000 if you add it to the bitcoin.conf file). put one option per line in the bitcoin.conf file.


That's basically it.

[Icygreen]

Sorry to need hand holding all the way through this. That was largely unexpected and perhaps an oversight on my part but if good guidance and patience is available, I'm eager to learn/follow directions and proceed.

I'd prefer to help out and have a few more people out there that can do this sort of stuff. you, me and everyone else helping is actually helping anyone else following along, we're all winning here

I've been trying in vein to install the bitcoin-qt file. I tried
sudo install /file/path/to/bitcoin-qt
cd /file/path/to/bitcoin-qt (as mentioned a few posts above)

I assume you already did tar -xf bitcoin-core-0.19.0.1-aarch64.tar.gz?

you don't have an old version installed on the RPi? If so, find it like this: find /usr -name 'bitcoin'* (so that searches the /usr directory for all files starting "bitcoin", there's 3 or 4 all called e.g. bitcoind or bitcoin-cli)

If none are previously installed, just copy the files. tar has extracted a directory called "bitcoin-core-0.19.0.1" for you, in that directory is a sub-dir called "bin" where the binaries are, that's all you want. so, somehting like sudo cp -a ./bitcoin-core-0.19.0.1/bin/bitcoin* /usr/bin" will do the job.

Then, you want the service file, which you can get from https://github/bitcoin/bitcoin/contrib/init/bitcoind.service (this is the service file format for systemd, which Raspbian uses, other service managers are available...). Get that file onto your RPi, or if that's a pain in the ass, type it out real quick, it's incredibly short (use the "nano" command). Put it in the directory /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants using the "cp" command you used to copy the bitcoin executables to /usr/bin.

Change the bitcoind.service file so that the line saying "-datadir=" has the path of the .bitcoin directory on your external disk in place of /var/lib/bitcoin.

Then, do sudo systemctl enable bitcoind, then sudo systemctl start bitcoind, then tail -f /PathToICYgReeNsExternalDisk/.bitcoin/debug.log

that last command will just let you watch the node catch up with blocks you're probably missing by now. Quit the scrolling output with Ctrl-C.

Now, if you want to add new options to Bitcoin that are part of startup (e.g. bigger dbcache would work for you with 4GB RAM), you can create the file "/etc/bitcoin/bitcoin.conf", and add any options you see from doing bitcoind --help Just remove the "-" (i.e. -dbache=1000 is correct on the cli, but wants to be dbcache=1000 if you add it to the bitcoin.conf file). put one option per line in the bitcoin.conf file.


That's basically it.

Ok, after a couple hours I finally learned a bit and got somewhere but still stuck.
Learned how to copy/past with cp in terminal = success!

I couldn't find exactly the github file you posted a link to but I think this one is correct, ya? https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/contrib/init/bitcoind.service
I copied all 77 lines of the code exactly as it is, pasted in nano,saved it and called the file bitcoind.service Then put it in the directory /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants

Had a tough time figuring out how to change permissions to write to this file outside of nano. Eventually learned how to do it with chmod -R ugo+rw
Not sure if that was correct but it now allows me to change the file and I've replaced /var/lib/bitcoin with the path to the folder containing bitcoin core files on my external HD.

Now I'm stuck at

Code:

sudo systemctl enable bitcoind

First try returned with bitcoind.service does not exist. Subsequent tries shows a login for pi and root with a password field. It does not show my login 'Icygreen' nor does the default password "raspberry" or my personal password work for pi or root. I get the same result with

Code:

sudo systemctl start bitcoind

I am logged in as Icygreen and pi user has been disabled with -l  Not sure what the root password would be or if I'm even on the right track at this point.
Thanks for your previous helpful instructions. I can feel my brain stretching

[Stedsm]

Is there a firewall that's breaking your connection of your pi with the device you are trying to connect?

Have a deeper look into this article and may you find your resolution, please share it here what did you do to get it working as this thread may help lots of newbies set up their first ever full node while trying to set up a pi for the same.

- https://medium.com/@meeDamian/bitcoin-full-node-on-rbp3-revised-88bb7c8ef1d1

[mindrust]

I am currently syncing my full node on a netbook and trying the same thing on a rpi3. The ultimate goal is setting up my own LN node and BTCpay server eventually.

Raspberry looks so cool with a 3.5" screen but it is a pain in the ass to install the bitcoin core wallet.

My netbook on the other hand has an atom processor and 2gb of ram and it is working like a boss. I even bought a battery for $5 and it can keep the system running for hours without electricity so the database won't be hurt. Installation of the core wallet was easy as you do it with windows and syncing without any problems. It is probably even cheaper than a rpi3 right now if you can find a used one. It is basically computer junk but it works.

And yes, the bitcoin core you see on the .org website isn't download and install.

You'll have to compile your own. There are many guides but it takes lots of time.

There was a guide which was explaining to move the sd files to a hdd and boot rpi3 from there so your sd won't die faster.

In the end rpi3 (no idea about 4) isn't exactly the right choice to start a full node. If you are going to keep it up for years.

I'll still try it let you know what I have encountered. Also if you are going to use a rpi3/4 you better download the blockchain on a better pc then copy/paste it. I heard rpi3 would take months to sync it by itself. My netbook says it needs 10 days.

Good luck.

[Icygreen]

Is there a firewall that's breaking your connection of your pi with the device you are trying to connect?

None that I'm aware of although I don't t know how to check for this.  Are you suggesting to check for a firewall between my hard drive and the pi?
Please post instructions on how to check if you think it's relevant.

[mindrust]

Daym I was struggling with so many unncessary crap for the last 2 days.

If you were too like me, start following this tutorial:

https://github.com/rootzoll/raspiblitz

It does everything automatically.

You can even install btcpay on raspiblitz:

https://gist.github.com/normandmickey/6d6e74ebb6b3ddbd317bc1450f48f08e

If your only aim is to run a full node, then maybe this is too much but It would be more cool if you run a LN along with your full node.