Running a full node is starting to be a pain

[almightyruler]

Start the client with the option "-bind=127.0.0.1". You can connect to another people for download but another people cannot connect and download from you.

-listen=0 will also disable inbound connections. Probably makes a bit more sense.

[Buffer Overflow]

Start the client with the option "-bind=127.0.0.1". You can connect to another people for download but another people cannot connect and download from you.

If everyone did that the entire network would shudder to a halt. This is not good advice.

[halfawake]

Start the client with the option "-bind=127.0.0.1". You can connect to another people for download but another people cannot connect and download from you.

FaSan

I'd really rather use NetBalancer to rate limit bitcoin-qt if I were going to do that than kill connections altogether.  Which, imho, really ought to be built into the bitcoin-qt client, but that's another matter entirely.  I'll do that if it becomes necessary, but so far, most of the problem - I think the hard drive upgrade / replacement mostly fixed the problem. 

[arnuschky]

Start the client with the option "-bind=127.0.0.1". You can connect to another people for download but another people cannot connect and download from you.

If everyone did that the entire network would shudder to a halt. This is not good advice.

Exactly.

[FaSan]

Start the client with the option "-bind=127.0.0.1". You can connect to another people for download but another people cannot connect and download from you.

If everyone did that the entire network would shudder to a halt. This is not good advice.

Exactly.

Depends on finally usage. If you up a node for support the network maybe you don't need this, but if you need to give a BTC services and want to hide the client this is a good way.



FaSan

[statoshi]

I wonder why there isn't more effort put in the direction of implementing QoS mechanisms (like throttling blockchain downloads) in the protocol. After all, the network as a whole does not become more efficient when single nodes hog down other nodes due to misconfigured blockchain downloading.

It's complicated. TL;DR the consensus is that first we need to fix the inefficiencies in how Bitcoin Core transmits data, as that could alleviate many of the problems. Here's the 3 year long debate on the subject: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/273

[halfawake]

I wonder why there isn't more effort put in the direction of implementing QoS mechanisms (like throttling blockchain downloads) in the protocol. After all, the network as a whole does not become more efficient when single nodes hog down other nodes due to misconfigured blockchain downloading.

It's complicated. TL;DR the consensus is that first we need to fix the inefficiencies in how Bitcoin Core transmits data, as that could alleviate many of the problems. Here's the 3 year long debate on the subject: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/273

Yeah, I found that discussion a while ago, am a bit frustrated that nothing seems to be done about it.  Just throttled bitcoin-qt's upload bandwidth to 300k with Netbalancer, about 1/3 of my maximum upload speed and it seems to be helping my computer run a lot faster than it used to be, so it looks like I won't be needing that RAM upgrade after all.  Netbalancer is free - in case any other Windows users are having this problem, though the free version will only let you shape the bandwidth of three processes, that's plenty for me since bitcoin-qt is the only one giving me grief.

[statoshi]

As a similar stopgap measure, Bitcoin Core provides a Quality of Service bash script for Linux users that will throttle bandwidth usage. https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/tree/master/contrib/qos

[Newar]

As a similar stopgap measure, Bitcoin Core provides a Quality of Service bash script for Linux users that will throttle bandwidth usage. https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/tree/master/contrib/qos

Or use trickle

[gmaxwell]

Yeah, I found that discussion a while ago, am a bit frustrated that nothing seems to be done about it.

Lots of things are being done about it, but they're not done yet. Wheres your contribution?

[halfawake]

Yeah, I found that discussion a while ago, am a bit frustrated that nothing seems to be done about it.

Lots of things are being done about it, but they're not done yet. Wheres your contribution?

Not much, I admit, so maybe I'll just update the wiki to let people know how to work around it (in Windows, anyway).  I'd happily fix it myself, but after reading the whole discussion on github about it, I'm pretty sure that I don't have the technical know how to do it.  And I'd rather just let it continue to be an issue than submit a patch that just makes things worse.

So thanks for your work on it, I appreciate it.

[logictense]

I suspect someone started downloading the full blockchain off my full node.  Unfortunately, the effect was that my computer came to a screeching halt: moving the mouse and the pressing keys on my keyboard had absolutely no effect for several minutes.  When I regained use of my computer, I looked in the Task Manager and bitcoin-qt was using the most RAM, and a fair amount of processing power was being used as well.  I turned off bitcoin-qt and the problem went away; anecdotally, I'd say that's reason to believe that running the bitcoin-qt client was causing the problem.

So a little bit about my specs, both internet and computer: I'm using an internet connection of 25 Mbps down / 1.5 Mbps up - reasonable download speed (unfortunately I don't live in an area where gigabit internet is available), but not much on the upload front.  My computer has 5 GB of RAM, 250 GB of hard drive space, and a 3 Ghz processor speed.  The only part of my computer itself that I feel is underpowered is the RAM, I plan on eventually upgrading to 20 GB RAM, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

So here's my question: is there something about the way the bitcoin client is built that causes my computer to freeze up when people start to download the blockchain from me?  Or is this just a case of me not having enough upload bandwidth to handle someone downloading a full node from me?  I'd love to be able to support the network by running the bitcoin-qt client regularly, but this is starting to happen semi-regularly as bitcoin becomes more popular and I don't feel like my computer is THAT underpowered.

If you're using the default directory, delete all the stuff in your /users/<name>/appdata/roaming/bitcoin folder make a new bitcoin.conf file. After blockchain is done downloading, change maxconnections, also change listen to 1 (if you want), and maybe you need to change keypool to make a majority of addresses you probably wont need to have your wallet bloating

[almightyruler]

If you're using the default directory, delete all the stuff in your /users/<name>/appdata/roaming/bitcoin folder make a new bitcoin.conf file. After blockchain is done downloading, change maxconnections, also change listen to 1 (if you want), and maybe you need to change keypool to make a majority of addresses you probably wont need to have your wallet bloating

This doesn't make sense. Why would you delete the local blockchain, then download exactly the same thing?

[halfawake]

If you're using the default directory, delete all the stuff in your /users/<name>/appdata/roaming/bitcoin folder make a new bitcoin.conf file. After blockchain is done downloading, change maxconnections, also change listen to 1 (if you want), and maybe you need to change keypool to make a majority of addresses you probably wont need to have your wallet bloating

This doesn't make sense. Why would you delete the local blockchain, then download exactly the same thing?

Agreed, this is terrible advice.  The blockchain is 25.5 GB right now, there's no way I'm going to delete & redownload it just for the hell of it.

In any case, I figured out a solution to the problem a little while ago: I ratelimited bitcoin-qt's upload speed to about 1/3 of my bandwidth several days ago in Netbalancer, and then put Netbalancer in my Startup folder so that it'll stay that way.  Seems to have fixed the problem.

I've updated the wiki to mention this issue and explain how I successfully worked around it in Windows.  If anyone has any recommendations for other places to put this information on the wiki that people will be likely to see, please let me know and I'll be happy to add it in there too.