Bitcoin Core version - important?

[themossinator]

Hi - I am running version 0.18.0 on ubunutu, is this ok to keep running as a full node? I tried to upgrade to the latest version but got some disk permission error
thanks

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[AdolfinWolf]

Yeah, there aren't any critical security vulnerabilities (although there does seem to be a minor crash vulnerability in 0.18), but if you're getting disk errors or whatever, I'd advise you to at the very least back up your wallet, and perhaps try to find out what's going wrong..

If you don't, you might run into a situation where your disk becomes corrupted or whatever. Of course, I don't exactly know your situation, but "disk errors" don't look like a healthy sign to me.

(If it's just a permission error, the solution might be trivial.)

[themossinator]

Yeah, there aren't any critical security vulnerabilities (although there does seem to be a minor crash vulnerability in 0.18), but if you're getting disk errors or whatever, I'd advise you to at the very least back up your wallet, and perhaps try to find out what's going wrong..

If you don't, you might run into a situation where your disk becomes corrupted or whatever. Of course, I don't exactly know your situation, but "disk errors" don't look like a healthy sign to me.

(If it's just a permission error, the solution might be trivial.)

thanks for your response - I tried to update via Snap, i have very limited linux experience - this installed but then got the disk permissions errors when trying to run 0.20.1 ..... so I have gone back to 0.18
maybe both versions are conflicting or something
I tried to download a tar file from bitcoin.org, it has files inside but no real guide as to how to install

as long as I am not hindering the network I will leave it on 0.18 until such time as I can figure out how to install a new version, I don't keep any bitcoin in the wallet - thank you

[TofuDefi]

Yeah, there aren't any critical security vulnerabilities (although there does seem to be a minor crash vulnerability in 0.18), but if you're getting disk errors or whatever, I'd advise you to at the very least back up your wallet, and perhaps try to find out what's going wrong..

If you don't, you might run into a situation where your disk becomes corrupted or whatever. Of course, I don't exactly know your situation, but "disk errors" don't look like a healthy sign to me.

(If it's just a permission error, the solution might be trivial.)

thanks for your response - I tried to update via Snap, i have very limited linux experience - this installed but then got the disk permissions errors when trying to run 0.20.1 ..... so I have gone back to 0.18
maybe both versions are conflicting or something
I tried to download a tar file from bitcoin.org, it has files inside but no real guide as to how to install

as long as I am not hindering the network I will leave it on 0.18 until such time as I can figure out how to install a new version, I don't keep any bitcoin in the wallet - thank you

You can download latest version here: https://bitcoincore.org/bin/bitcoin-core-0.20.1/

If you use ubuntu download bitcoin-0.20.1-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz  file, uncompress it, find bitcoin-qt, usually it in bin folder and run it without installation. But yes, backup your wallet before doing so.

[ABCbits]

(If it's just a permission error, the solution might be trivial.)

thanks for your response - I tried to update via Snap, i have very limited linux experience - this installed but then got the disk permissions errors when trying to run 0.20.1 ..... so I have gone back to 0.18
maybe both versions are conflicting or something

If you Snap and you store the blockchain file on external storage, it's likely it's due to strict Snap permission, which doesn't allow application to access.
Check this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5211567.0, few people mention how to fix the problem.

I tried to download a tar file from bitcoin.org, it has files inside but no real guide as to how to install

You just need to extract tar file, then open directory bin and double-click bitcoin-qt or run this command

Code:

./bitcoin-qt

If there's execution permission problem, enable execution from ubuntu file manager or run this command

Code:

chmod +x bitcoin-qt

[NotATether]

as long as I am not hindering the network I will leave it on 0.18 until such time as I can figure out how to install a new version, I don't keep any bitcoin in the wallet - thank you

Most of my peers are running 0.16 which is an even older version, so relative to the rest of the nodes on he network, yours is running a fairly recent version.

If there's execution permission problem, enable execution from ubuntu file manager or run this command

Code:

chmod +x bitcoin-qt

Linux binaries have the executable bit turned on by default, when you compress a file into a tarball, it stores the permission bits inside as well. It would be different if you were unzipping a .zip file; no permissions are stored in there, so you need to run chmod +x before you can run it.

[themossinator]

thanks to everyone, i have 0.20.1 installed!

my only problem now is that it is taking forever to sync...or 10 weeks to be exact 

Never had this problem before, my port 8333 is verified open, my internet connection is fast - peer connection number goes up to about 15 at times but there doesn't seem to be any data coming through
maybe everyone else is on an older version of core or does that even matter?

[cute.as.ducks]

maybe everyone else is on an older version of core or does that even matter?

No, it doesn't matter.

Btw, where have you been all this time? I see you just woke up after a long break.

[ranochigo]

thanks to everyone, i have 0.20.1 installed!

my only problem now is that it is taking forever to sync...or 10 weeks to be exact 

Never had this problem before, my port 8333 is verified open, my internet connection is fast - peer connection number goes up to about 15 at times but there doesn't seem to be any data coming through
maybe everyone else is on an older version of core or does that even matter?

Doesn't matter. Having a fast internet connection doesn't necessarily means that the synchronization will be fast. Try looking at your task manager for signs of disc usage as well as CPU usage. The verification will be slowed significantly once it's goes pass the recent assumevalid threshold which means it'll validate all the subsequent blocks thoroughly and it will take quite some time.

[themossinator]

maybe everyone else is on an older version of core or does that even matter?

It doesn't matter, you can connect to node with different Bitcoin Core version or even those who don't use Bitcoin Core.

thanks to everyone, i have 0.20.1 installed!

my only problem now is that it is taking forever to sync...or 10 weeks to be exact 

Never had this problem before, my port 8333 is verified open, my internet connection is fast - peer connection number goes up to about 15 at times but there doesn't seem to be any data coming through
maybe everyone else is on an older version of core or does that even matter?

Doesn't matter. Having a fast internet connection doesn't necessarily means that the synchronization will be fast. Try looking at your task manager for signs of disc usage as well as CPU usage. The verification will be slowed significantly once it's goes pass the recent assumevalid threshold which means it'll validate all the subsequent blocks thoroughly and it will take quite some time.

IMO 10 weeks is still too long, unless OP uses hardware from more than a decade ago. OP, try open debug.log (located on directory where blockchain files is stored) and see if there are any error related with internet connection or connecting to node.

it's at 15 weeks now

I checked the debug.log file - noticed a few "socket sending timeout" and "ping timeout"

cpu usage on average seems to be around 20%, ram usage about 50%

just watching the Network Traffic window in Core, it's just a few kb/s every minute or so

[ranochigo]

it's at 15 weeks now

I checked the debug.log file - noticed a few "socket sending timeout" and "ping timeout"

cpu usage on average seems to be around 20%, ram usage about 50%

just watching the Network Traffic window in Core, it's just a few kb/s every minute or so

If I had to guess, my best hunch would be that your block files is corrupted. You have to scour your debug.log file abit more and see if anything indicates that the blocks are corrupted.

I highly doubt that it's your internet being restricted. But to eliminate the possibility, you'll have to see when was the last line that Bitcoin Core synchronized. Did you have any power outage or any time when Core had an unclean shutdown (abruptly).

[themossinator]

thanks ETF and ranochigo - in the end I just let it do its thing and all good in the end, thank you! I should probably run a disk scan though

[themossinator]

Hi, just getting back to this, the only thing that has seemed to solve the slow sync problem I was having is to increase the memory usage in the settings to 2GB, i think it was initially set to 450mb, my computer has 4GB of memory
Now getting Progress Increase of 0.45% which is way way faster than before