Testnet not working right now?

[arosca]

For the past 2-3 days I have been unable to send or receive any transactions on testnet. I tried two different Android clients (Tesnet3 and Mycelium) and 3 different machines running Armory/bitcoind on different networks. One of my friends also has this issue.

I suspect I cannot connect to other peers and that's what causes the problem. According to http://blockexplorer.com/testnet blocks are getting processed though.

Is anyone aware of any issues? Any ideas on how I could troubleshoot further?

[Nicolas Dorier]

dns nodes are down.
Here some other seeds

   95.85.39.28   18333
   46.4.106.234   18333
  94.102.53.181   18333
  5.135.159.139   18333
188.226.138.211   18333
188.165.238.173   18333
   46.28.204.15   18333
109.201.135.216   18333
      5.9.2.145   18333
   46.182.106.2   18333
109.201.154.201   18333
188.165.246.217   18333
  108.62.62.235   18333
  184.107.180.2   18333
  198.50.215.81   18333
 188.226.176.87   18333
   75.6.237.138   18333
   93.93.135.12   18333
  54.208.21.132   18333
107.170.107.245   18333
188.230.215.236   18333
   46.28.207.68   18333
 178.63.106.253   18333
  74.207.249.18   18333
    54.209.7.19   18333
254.112.255.114   18333
  162.216.6.146   18333
  88.198.20.152   18333
  54.72.131.178   18333
     54.84.19.8   18333
162.243.123.220   18333
  87.230.26.205   18333
 178.63.106.250   18333
    78.46.97.16   18333
162.243.141.246   18333
   221.249.5.50   18333
   69.85.93.216   18333
     5.9.119.49   18333
192.161.182.207   18333
   37.59.58.130   18333
  107.170.35.88   18333
 144.76.175.228   18333
 15.125.110.219   18333
    178.63.14.7   18333
   95.85.15.189   18333
117.241.136.198   18333
 192.241.204.12   18333
 188.122.92.134   18333
 148.251.11.118   18333
  54.206.106.94   18333
 134.60.102.116   18333
 54.215.172.225   18333
   85.153.13.35   18333
  119.81.66.229   18333

[arosca]

That seems to be the problem, thanks! I added one of these seeds as the trusted peer to Testnet3 on Android and I'm connected now.

However, I haven't been able to get Armory to work. I tried all of the following in bitcoin.conf with no success:

seednode=95.85.39.28:18333
seednode=95.85.39.28
addnode=95.85.39.28:18333
addnode=95.85.39.28

(one line like that for all of the seeds you provided)

[arosca]

Looking at the bitcoind logs, entries like the one below worked (bitcoind is up to date with the latest block). However, Armory doesn't start up for testnet.

addnode=95.85.39.28

[arosca]

Looked into this a bit further. In https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/chainparams.cpp there are 6 hardcoded seeds for the main network:

        vSeeds.push_back(CDNSSeedData("bitcoin.sipa.be", "seed.bitcoin.sipa.be"));
        vSeeds.push_back(CDNSSeedData("bluematt.me", "dnsseed.bluematt.me"));
        vSeeds.push_back(CDNSSeedData("dashjr.org", "dnsseed.bitcoin.dashjr.org"));
        vSeeds.push_back(CDNSSeedData("bitcoinstats.com", "seed.bitcoinstats.com"));
        vSeeds.push_back(CDNSSeedData("bitnodes.io", "seed.bitnodes.io"));
        vSeeds.push_back(CDNSSeedData("xf2.org", "bitseed.xf2.org"));

Whereas testnet only has 2 seeds:

        vSeeds.push_back(CDNSSeedData("bitcoin.petertodd.org", "testnet-seed.bitcoin.petertodd.org"));
        vSeeds.push_back(CDNSSeedData("bluematt.me", "testnet-seed.bluematt.me"));

Both of which appear to be down as of May 20, 2014.

Still, I don't understand why this would bring the testnet client down. Doesn't it keep a list of previously connected peers?

[Nicolas Dorier]

arosca, it does for me, maybe there is a timeout period after 3 days or something like that.

[dserrano5]

Does anyone know how much RAM does a testnet bitcoind use after a few days?

[arosca]

Does anyone know how much RAM does a testnet bitcoind use after a few days?

The memory footprint is minimal. All data is stored on disk (in Berkeley DB files).

On my machine (Windows) it uses about 100MB (constant--does not increase over time)