Blockexplorer is either Down or Running Extremely Slow & Stuck at 166899 Blocks

[terrytibbs]

Rasengan (who, on behalf of Private Internet Access, generously provides this BBE server for free)

Advertisers are also very generous, they donate millions of dollars to the cable companies. Oh, I forgot to mention they got an ad in exchange. Still "free", right?

[Revalin]

Time to come up some ideas for a decentralized block data tool?

Everyone already has a copy of the blockchain.  All we need is a GUI or CGI to read it.

[theymos]

Advertisers are also very generous, they donate millions of dollars to the cable companies. Oh, I forgot to mention they got an ad in exchange. Still "free", right?

I doubt the ad even comes close to allowing them to recoup the cost of running the server.

[Wandering Albatross]

Everyone already has a copy of the blockchain.  All we need is a GUI or CGI to read it.

bitcoin has lots of commands that can be issued to a running bitcoin instance:

Code:

backupwallet <destination>
getaccount <bitcoinaddress>
getaccountaddress <account>
getaddressesbyaccount <account>
getbalance [account] [minconf=1]
getblockcount
getconnectioncount
getdifficulty
getgenerate
gethashespersec
getinfo
getmemorypool [data]
getnewaddress [account]
getreceivedbyaccount <account> [minconf=1]
getreceivedbyaddress <bitcoinaddress> [minconf=1]
gettransaction <txid>
getwork [data]
help [command]
keypoolrefill
listaccounts [minconf=1]
listreceivedbyaccount [minconf=1] [includeempty=false]
listreceivedbyaddress [minconf=1] [includeempty=false]
listsinceblock [blockid] [target-confirmations]
listtransactions [account] [count=10] [from=0]
move <fromaccount> <toaccount> <amount> [minconf=1] [comment]
sendfrom <fromaccount> <tobitcoinaddress> <amount> [minconf=1] [comment] [comment-to]
sendmany <fromaccount> {address:amount,...} [minconf=1] [comment]
sendtoaddress <bitcoinaddress> <amount> [comment] [comment-to]
setaccount <bitcoinaddress> <account>
setgenerate <generate> [genproclimit]
settxfee <amount>
signmessage <bitcoinaddress> <message>
stop
validateaddress <bitcoinaddress>
verifymessage <bitcoinaddress> <signature> <message>
walletlock
walletpassphrase <passphrase> <timeout>
walletpassphrasechange <oldpassphrase> <newpassphrase>

What other info do pools need access to?

[RoloTonyBrownTown]

Yep, bit wonky at the mo.   Diff is currently shown as 623.38695987...

http://blockexplorer.com/q/getdifficulty

[payb.tc]

Everyone already has a copy of the blockchain.  All we need is a GUI or CGI to read it.

bitcoin has lots of commands that can be issued to a running bitcoin instance:

Code:

backupwallet <destination>
getaccount <bitcoinaddress>
getaccountaddress <account>
getaddressesbyaccount <account>
getbalance [account] [minconf=1]
getblockcount
getconnectioncount
getdifficulty
getgenerate
gethashespersec
getinfo
getmemorypool [data]
getnewaddress [account]
getreceivedbyaccount <account> [minconf=1]
getreceivedbyaddress <bitcoinaddress> [minconf=1]
gettransaction <txid>
getwork [data]
help [command]
keypoolrefill
listaccounts [minconf=1]
listreceivedbyaccount [minconf=1] [includeempty=false]
listreceivedbyaddress [minconf=1] [includeempty=false]
listsinceblock [blockid] [target-confirmations]
listtransactions [account] [count=10] [from=0]
move <fromaccount> <toaccount> <amount> [minconf=1] [comment]
sendfrom <fromaccount> <tobitcoinaddress> <amount> [minconf=1] [comment] [comment-to]
sendmany <fromaccount> {address:amount,...} [minconf=1] [comment]
sendtoaddress <bitcoinaddress> <amount> [comment] [comment-to]
setaccount <bitcoinaddress> <account>
setgenerate <generate> [genproclimit]
settxfee <amount>
signmessage <bitcoinaddress> <message>
stop
validateaddress <bitcoinaddress>
verifymessage <bitcoinaddress> <signature> <message>
walletlock
walletpassphrase <passphrase> <timeout>
walletpassphrasechange <oldpassphrase> <newpassphrase>

What other info do pools need access to?

how is the next difficulty estimated/calculated?

[theymos]

Yep, bit wonky at the mo.   Diff is currently shown as 623.38695987...

http://blockexplorer.com/q/getdifficulty

My bitcoind is downloading the chain. You can see the progress at /q/getblockcount.

[kjlimo]

Looks like blockexplorer is down again?

I like the idea of the gui for reading the blockchain.

That sounds awesome, but unfortunately, we'd have to rely on donations to fund the project.  I'm no programmer, but if the price is right, I could try to get my buddy to start developing for bitcoins.

Unless of course, someone else is already working on it or willing to do it.

[theymos]

OK, I think I was finally able to improve BBE's efficiency enough to make it work well despite the increased traffic. Most interestingly, I now have Bitcoin's block database stored entirely in memory.

[Cryptoman]

Blockexplorer is still down for me.  Does anyone know where I can find the exact time of the latest difficulty change?

[deepceleron]

Blockexplorer is still down for me.  Does anyone know where I can find the exact time of the latest difficulty change?

The difficulty is updated every 2016 blocks, here are the most recent blocks where the difficulty changed/will change

163296 - 2012-01-22 03:55:08 - 1,307,728.36
165312 - 2012-02-04 10:28:28 - 1,379,647.44
167328 - 2012-02-18 11:24:53 - 1,376,302.27
169344
171360
173376

I just put the block number into this URL for info: http://blockchain.info/block-height/167532

[Cryptoman]

The difficulty is updated every 2016 blocks, here are the most recent blocks where the difficulty changed/will change

163296 - 2012-01-22 03:55:08 - 1,307,728.36
165312 - 2012-02-04 10:28:28 - 1,379,647.44
167328 - 2012-02-18 11:24:53 - 1,376,302.27
169344
171360
173376

I just put the block number into this URL for info: http://blockchain.info/block-height/167532

Great, thanks!

[Ente]

Time to come up some ideas for a decentralized block data tool?

Everyone already has a copy of the blockchain.  All we need is a GUI or CGI to read it.

I would donate to that cause.
For me (as a programming novice) it sounds like not-too-complicated to program a blockexplorer/blockchaininfo clone which works with the local blockchain copy?
Someone make a bounty thread?

Ente

[John Tobey]

Everyone already has a copy of the blockchain.  All we need is a GUI or CGI to read it.

I would donate to that cause.
For me (as a programming novice) it sounds like not-too-complicated to program a blockexplorer/blockchaininfo clone which works with the local blockchain copy?
Someone make a bounty thread?

Tried Abe?  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=22785.0

[slush]

theymos, any update? BE is still overloaded ("Database connection timeout (likely due to overload). Try again later."). Is that regular traffic or it is some kind of attack? I don't believe that traffic increased so suddenly in last few days...

[Ente]

Everyone already has a copy of the blockchain.  All we need is a GUI or CGI to read it.

I would donate to that cause.
For me (as a programming novice) it sounds like not-too-complicated to program a blockexplorer/blockchaininfo clone which works with the local blockchain copy?
Someone make a bounty thread?

Tried Abe?  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=22785.0

I love it! :-)

Ente

[theymos]

theymos, any update? BE is still overloaded ("Database connection timeout (likely due to overload). Try again later."). Is that regular traffic or it is some kind of attack? I don't believe that traffic increased so suddenly in last few days...

Something does seem to have changed to make things slower, but I'm not sure what. I'm getting 6.6 hits per second right now, but I don't normally keep logs, so I don't know if this is much higher than normal. It's also possible the disk is broken somehow.

Anyway, I've made lots of changes to improve efficiency and I'll continue to do so. I introduced that error recently so that slow database connections wouldn't stop /q/getblockcount and other non-database pages from working.

[slush]

Maybe you should cache requests and avoid database lookup entirely? For example /block/, /rawblock/ will be the same forever, no need to ask database at all (don't forget to drop cache on blockchain reorg.

[theymos]

Maybe you should cache requests and avoid database lookup entirely? For example /block/, /rawblock/ will be the same forever, no need to ask database at all (don't forget to drop cache on blockchain reorg.

There's already a lot of caching.

[slush]

Then there must be something seriously broken (if you're right and average load is ~6 requests/second).