The wallet is not responding!

[Yamane_Keto]

My local Electrum server (Fulcrum) runs on a Raspi 4B 8GB RAM with a 1TB SSD and fetches data from a Bitcoin Core 24.0.1 daemon running on the same Raspi (RaspiBlitz with active LND with a few channels which keeps the Raspi busy, too). The Electrum wallets are opened on an "ancient" ThinkPad T520 with 8GB RAM, a 1TB SATA SSD running Ubuntu 22.04.02 LTS.

This is interesting, and another proof that the problem is in the servers and not in the software. I think 8 GB of RAM is suitable, so can you randomly try some of available servers? 3-5 servers to see if switching between servers will solve this problem or the user must run a full node.

I hope that one of the members to run a private electrum Bitcointalk server instead of those free servers that Chainalysis may spy on.

[1714676352]

1714676352

[1714676352]

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[1714676352]

1714676352

[Cricktor]

This is interesting, and another proof that the problem is in the servers and not in the software. I think 8 GB of RAM is suitable, so can you randomly try some of available servers? 3-5 servers to see if switching between servers will solve this problem or the user must run a full node.

As you requested, I had some spare time for testing, I used my watch-only wallet with the 21954 distinctive addresses as test subject.

Electrum server		Sync time until responsive
fortress.qtornado.com:443		1m52s
2ex.digitaleveryware.com:50002		3m34s
bitcoin.lu.ke		1h8m12s	...arrgh, that was painful!
electrum.jochen-hoenicke.de:50006		1m28s
fulcrum.grey.pw:51002		1m25s
fulcrum.theuplink.net:50002		1m32s
fulcrum.tinsb.xyz:50002		1m27s

No particular issues were observed, the 2^nd server had a few "Server busy" sync restarts which I didn't observe on any of the other servers, even the snail slow server bitcoin.lu.ke sifted through the addresses in slow but steady pace. Still, this server won't see my wallet ever again. 

I know from past experience with other problematic "forensic" wallets and an electrs Electrum server in particular. If you have addresses with a very very large address history, like 5- to 6-figure transaction histories, you run into trouble because electrs can't send big enough data packets, at least I never figured out how to configure it that it doesn't choke on such large histories. electrs can be a pain when you do some blockchain forensics and stumble over "problematic" addresses.

[Yamane_Keto]

No particular issues were observed, the 2^nd server had a few "Server busy" sync restarts which I didn't observe on any of the other servers, even the snail slow server bitcoin.lu.ke sifted through the addresses in slow but steady pace. Still, this server won't see my wallet ever again. 

So, in the case of the user, switching the server to another one will solve the problem? If this is true, then it is the best solution instead of the headache of extracting the private keys, including them in the BitcoinCore wallet, and waiting for the synchronization.

thanks for testing

[Cricktor]

If you use public Electrum servers the default setting is that your Electrum wallet connects to 8 arbitrarily chosen public Electrum servers. I don't know if those 8 public Electrum servers are queried in parallel or some sort of switching occurs when e.g. one server is only slowly responding.

If there's no syncing progress visible in your Electrum the first thing I would try is to choose some other Electrum server. Normaly this shouldn't be required but sometimes it is.

As I don't use any public servers, except for Testnet, I invoke my Electrum as follows:

Code:

electrum --oneserver --server raspiblitz:50001:s &

replace "raspiblitz:50001:s" with "<your Electrum server name>:50001:s" if you have a local node with some other name in your LAN and there an Electrum server (usually electrs) that listens on port 50001 (:s for SSL connection, :t for unencrypted connection; SSL encryption isn't needed in your own LAN if you can trust all your LAN devices).

[Abdussamad]

If you use public Electrum servers the default setting is that your Electrum wallet connects to 8 arbitrarily chosen public Electrum servers. I don't know if those 8 public Electrum servers are queried in parallel or some sort of switching occurs when e.g. one server is only slowly responding.

It connects to one server to download the transaction history from and up to 10 others to download block headers from. It cross verifies the information received from the servers to keep them all in check.