Electrum server discussion thread

[rjk]

will you loose any coins?

can you explain your question?

When I update it, will I still have my coins afterword?

Why would anyone put out an update to anything that caused directly or indirectly a loss of data or coins for any reason? That's absurd.

[1714491589]

1714491589

[1714491589]

1714491589

[1714491589]

1714491589

[TheBitMan]

will you loose any coins?

can you explain your question?

When I update it, will I still have my coins afterword?

Why would anyone put out an update to anything that caused directly or indirectly a loss of data or coins for any reason? That's absurd.

I got confused to what he wrote..got the new version and it's working well.

[ThomasV]

will you loose any coins?

can you explain your question?

When I update it, will I still have my coins afterword?

Why would anyone put out an update to anything that caused directly or indirectly a loss of data or coins for any reason? That's absurd.

I got confused to what he wrote..got the new version and it's working well.

The new version of what? the client or the server?
This thread is about the server, and the server does not manage your coins; the client does.
This is why your question did not make sense to me.

Please clarify. do you run an Electrum server?

[ThomasV]

I just added a very basic DOS protection to the server code:

addresses with more than 200 inputs or output transactions will raise an error.
this means protection agains requests of the history of popular addresses (eg Satoshi Dice)

[marcus_of_augustus]

This is more a question about the design philosophy of the server than specifics;

Why SQL database?

[ThomasV]

This is more a question about the design philosophy of the server than specifics;

Why SQL database?

because I use abe.

[ThomasV]

I just pushed another important update with a new bitcoind patch.
it fixes memorypool issues.

[ThomasV]

here is another update to the patch.
the pevious version did not return orphaned transactions in getmemorypool

https://gitorious.org/electrum/server/commit/a1156626e746cd847bb0a02344bfb57993fd1c80

[Tachikoma]

Can I ask you what kind of resources a electrum server uses or rather what kind of resources I should dedicate to it to have it running stable.

[ThomasV]

Can I ask you what kind of resources a electrum server uses or rather what kind of resources I should dedicate to it to have it running stable.

my server (ecdsa.org) runs on a vps hosted by cinfu.com, with 1GB of RAM

I had crashes in the last few days because I was working on the server code;
the traffic increase caused by SatoshiDice forced me to make my bitcoind patch more efficient..

I believe this is fixed. bitcoind has been running for 24h and does not crash anymore.

However, its memory usage slowly increases; there might be a memory leak.
The total memory usage right now is 630M. This is bitcoind + the electrum server in python.

(note that the electrum server never removes elements from its cache, so in principle this is another leak that should be fixed.
in practice, however, bitcoind eats much more)

[marcus_of_augustus]

Can I ask you what kind of resources a electrum server uses or rather what kind of resources I should dedicate to it to have it running stable.

The HOWTO is instructive http://gitorious.org/electrum/server/blobs/master/HOWTO

I thought this was a consideration ....

Important notice: This is a *very* long process. Even on fast machines you can expect it to take hours. Here are some benchmarks for importing ~173.000 blocks (size of the Bitcoin blockchain at the time of this writing):

System 1: ~9 hours.
        * CPU: Intel Core i7 Q740 @ 1.73GHz
        * HDD: very fast SSD
System 2: ~55 hours.
        * CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 @ 2.40GHz
        * HDD: 2 x SATA in a RAID1.

[Tachikoma]

Thanks for the answers ThomasV and Marcus.

I think Slush posted a torrent somewhere, I hope this might speed up the initial blockchain import, not sure how old that is by now. To be sure I will assign it 2GB and see how it behaves.

I think ecdsa.org might have crashed again btw, I have pending transaction that is confirmed on the other servers.

[anfedorov]

When I connect to electrum.novit.ro, I seem to get all of my transactions (up to today's).

When I connect to ecdsa.org, I get transactions up to two days ago (Jun 16th), although I didn't make any yesterday, so it might just be today's that are missing.

When I connect to uncle-enzo.info, I get transactions up to four days ago (Jun 14th).

When I connect to btcback.com, I get transactions up to ~two weeks ago (Jun 3rd).

This does not inspire confidence in the status of the Electrum servers... what could be causing the issues?

[ThomasV]

When I connect to electrum.novit.ro, I seem to get all of my transactions (up to today's).

When I connect to ecdsa.org, I get transactions up to two days ago (Jun 16th), although I didn't make any yesterday, so it might just be today's that are missing.

When I connect to uncle-enzo.info, I get transactions up to four days ago (Jun 14th).

When I connect to btcback.com, I get transactions up to ~two weeks ago (Jun 3rd).

This does not inspire confidence in the status of the Electrum servers... what could be causing the issues?

I agree. The server is now my top priority.

[duncant]

When I connect to electrum.novit.ro, I seem to get all of my transactions (up to today's).

When I connect to ecdsa.org, I get transactions up to two days ago (Jun 16th), although I didn't make any yesterday, so it might just be today's that are missing.

When I connect to uncle-enzo.info, I get transactions up to four days ago (Jun 14th).

When I connect to btcback.com, I get transactions up to ~two weeks ago (Jun 3rd).

This does not inspire confidence in the status of the Electrum servers... what could be causing the issues?

I hadn't noticed that. I'm rebooting the server and importing all the missing transactions.

[ajze]

Hi all.  I'm the operator of btcback.com.  I just upgraded bitcoind/electrum and have been getting tons of errors along these lines:

ERROR:Abe.DataStore:Chain not found for magic number '\xfb\x89\xa4\x03' in block file /home/bitcoind/.bitcoin/blk0001.dat at offset 1612760166.  If file contents have changed, consider forcing a rescan: UPDATE datadir SET blkfile_number=1, blkfile_offset=0 WHERE dirname='/home/bitcoind/.bitcoin'

I shutdown electrum, ran the SQL query it suggests and restarted it.  Now I can't connect to the server and the logs are empty except for: 'Starting Electrum server on btcback.com'.  I'm assuming it takes just takes a long time to re-scan the blockchain.


Before I started that, I was also getting a different error about a missing column in the db:
OperationalError: (1054, "Unknown column 'last_value' in 'field list'")
error: sql error: 1MUbXxCYa3W2Q6YMrrQcNQDz8kaGftwXkq
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/bitcoind/src/electrum/server/backends/abe/__init__.py", line 87, in safe_sql
    ret = self.selectall(sql,params)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/Abe/DataStore.py", line 510, in _selectall
    store.sql(stmt, params)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/Abe/DataStore.py", line 412, in sql
    store.cursor.execute(cached, params)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line 166, in execute
    self.errorhandler(self, exc, value)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/MySQLdb/connections.py", line 35, in defaulterrorhandler
    raise errorclass, errorvalue

Any thoughts on that one?

[duncant]

I shutdown electrum, ran the SQL query it suggests and restarted it.  Now I can't connect to the server and the logs are empty except for: 'Starting Electrum server on btcback.com'.  I'm assuming it takes just takes a long time to re-scan the blockchain.

It's faster if you run

Code:

abe --config <config file> --no-serve

than letting the electrum server take care of the import.

[apetersson]

watching

[ajze]

I shutdown electrum, ran the SQL query it suggests and restarted it.  Now I can't connect to the server and the logs are empty except for: 'Starting Electrum server on btcback.com'.  I'm assuming it takes just takes a long time to re-scan the blockchain.

It's faster if you run

Code:

abe --config <config file> --no-serve

than letting the electrum server take care of the import.

So its re-importing everything?  Guess btcback.com will be down for a couple of days :/


EDIT:

Switched to Abe and it looks like is wasn't re-importing everything.  Should be back up as soon as I find out who's been winning at Satoshi Dice over the past couple of weeks

[anfedorov]

In the server response to "blockchain.address.get_history" commands, a transaction's timestamp is set to the time it was included in a block (or 0 while it's in the mempool). This makes it impossible for a client to correctly sort transactions which occurred while the it wasn't connected to the server, and adds a lot of complexity to correctly sorting those which occur when it's connected.

Could the server be updated to report the time a transaction was first received, either instead of the current timestamp value (as the blockchain.info API does) or in another field?

I can provide a patch if you let me know which of these is preferred, ThomasV.