Electrum server discussion thread

[sd]

I'm running the most recent electrum server from GIT. The logfile seems to be missing blocks, is the following normal?

Code:

[25/07/2014-20:48:22] blockchain: 312457 (82.964s)
[25/07/2014-20:58:35] blockchain: 312458 (194.778s)
[25/07/2014-21:02:21] blockchain: 312460 (128.478s)
[25/07/2014-21:10:27] blockchain: 312462 (250.398s)
[25/07/2014-21:16:38] blockchain: 312463 (166.109s)
[25/07/2014-21:22:49] blockchain: 312464 (212.260s)
[25/07/2014-21:51:48] blockchain: 312466 (670.598s)
[25/07/2014-21:56:06] blockchain: 312468 (168.989s)
[25/07/2014-22:04:08] blockchain: 312469 (166.773s)

Why do I not get a log message for every block?

[ThomasV]

I'm running the most recent electrum server from GIT. The logfile seems to be missing blocks, is the following normal?

Code:

[25/07/2014-20:48:22] blockchain: 312457 (82.964s)
[25/07/2014-20:58:35] blockchain: 312458 (194.778s)
[25/07/2014-21:02:21] blockchain: 312460 (128.478s)
[25/07/2014-21:10:27] blockchain: 312462 (250.398s)
[25/07/2014-21:16:38] blockchain: 312463 (166.109s)
[25/07/2014-21:22:49] blockchain: 312464 (212.260s)
[25/07/2014-21:51:48] blockchain: 312466 (670.598s)
[25/07/2014-21:56:06] blockchain: 312468 (168.989s)
[25/07/2014-22:04:08] blockchain: 312469 (166.773s)

Why do I not get a log message for every block?

if several blocks are available, it processes them together, before it prints a log line.
I agree that it can be confusing, it should probably print a message on each block

[sd]

Thomas,

You put a lot of great work into Electrum but it's all a bit lost if people can't easily get the server running. Can you update the install instructions? Right now HOWTO.md references start and stop scripts that don't exist. The TLDR section at the top of INSTALL doesn't result in a running server, nor do the full instruction in that file.

I tried to do it myself and send a pull request but I've no idea what the instructions should be. Whatever I try 'python setup.py install' won't install the src module on ubuntu 14.04 so electrum_server.py won't run. It was all working so nicely until I upgraded.

If you want people to run servers it should be as easy as possible for those guys.

[it-zone]

Can you update the install instructions? Right now HOWTO.md references start and stop scripts that don't exist. The TLDR section at the top of INSTALL doesn't result in a running server, nor do the full instruction in that file.

Give Thomas few days, it is completely new version of the server I will install it soon and I might be able to improve the docs.

[sd]

Give Thomas few days, it is completely new version of the server I will install it soon and I might be able to improve the docs.

I got it running with some minor hacks. I didn't see any tags in the repo. Release tags might be a good idea so if something doesn't work I can just go back to the last tag.

EDIT: Actually, no I didn't get it running. It's choking on a futex.

[ThomasV]

Give Thomas few days, it is completely new version of the server I will install it soon and I might be able to improve the docs.

I got it running with some minor hacks. I didn't see any tags in the repo. Release tags might be a good idea so if something doesn't work I can just go back to the last tag.

EDIT: Actually, no I didn't get it running. It's choking on a futex.

I fixed setup.py yesterday.. let me know

[sd]

I fixed setup.py yesterday.. let me know

I get different problems now.

Code:

zipimport.ZipImportError: bad local file header in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/electrum_server-0.9-py2.7.egg

This apparently means there is a syntax error somewhere, possibly python code that only works with a higher version. The error message makes it look like a ZIP error, which it isn't. If I run 'python setup.py install' again it seems to work and it seems to run. I can't connect but that may be because it's updating.

I really need to test this on a clean machine.

[Martok88]

Is it possible to patch the memory allocation bug manually, in the previous version of electrum-server? I attempted to update to the new version but ran into problems, including permission errors.

[sd]

Is it possible to patch the memory allocation bug manually, in the previous version of electrum-server? I attempted to update to the new version but ran into problems, including permission errors.

I really think what this project needs is a release cycle. The version on github is a development version. That's fine but we are going to get frustrated if we try and use it as a production version. I gave up running the new server, if there was a stable tag I would have gone back to that.

I did think of taking a known good version, scripting all setup, and putting it in a docker container. That way setting up a new server would be as easy as 'docker run blahblah/electrum-server' and waiting until it set itself up.

[tnkflx]

Is it possible to patch the memory allocation bug manually, in the previous version of electrum-server? I attempted to update to the new version but ran into problems, including permission errors.

I really think what this project needs is a release cycle. The version on github is a development version. That's fine but we are going to get frustrated if we try and use it as a production version. I gave up running the new server, if there was a stable tag I would have gone back to that.

I did think of taking a known good version, scripting all setup, and putting it in a docker container. That way setting up a new server would be as easy as 'docker run blahblah/electrum-server' and waiting until it set itself up.

I've been running an Electrum server for almost 2 years now and to be honest it's been running very stable. Yes, there are the occasional bugs, but they are solved quickly by Thomas. You should hang out in the IRC channel though to follow up on the latest developments..

[tl121]

Has anybody profiled the Python code for electrum server?  It seems slow to me, about four times slower than bitcoind.  Not a problem right now keeping up with blocks, but if the block size gets expanded and transaction rate continues to increase then there is likely to be a problem.  I am using the latest code from github.  I am running a private server on a 1.4 GHz Haswell based atom server with 8 GB of RAM and an SSD.  A recent 1 MB block took about 200 seconds to process according to the log. This had 99% CPU utilization while processing the large block.

Perhaps there are some tuning suggestions around, but I wasn't able to find any.

[ingrownpocket]

What's the disk size required at the moment to run an Electrum server?

[molecular]

What's the disk size required at the moment to run an Electrum server?

On my host, in addition to bitcoind data, it currently uses 16GB (pruning_limit=10000)

[ingrownpocket]

What's the disk size required at the moment to run an Electrum server?

On my host, in addition to bitcoind data, it currently uses 16GB (pruning_limit=10000)

Was hoping I could run an Electrum server on a $10 VPS on DigitalOcean. I'll have to find another host then. Thanks.

[jack_jin]

  I have a trouble when i installed the electrum server.
every thing has been done before run "electrum-server start" command to launch electrum server.
but it print an error: "ImportError: /home/bitcoin/.python-eggs/plyvel-0.9-py2.7-linux-x86_64.egg-tmp/plyvel/_plyvel.so: undefined symbol: _ZN6snappy13RawUncompressEPKcmP".
I have google with the key word "_ZN6snappy13RawUncompressEPKcmP". i found a reference in this page("https://github.com/wbolster/plyvel/issues/5"). I do as this page said, but finally failed.
my leveldb is 1.9, i install the liblevedb1,libleveldb-dev,plyvel.

can somebody help me with this big problem.thanks a lot!
 

[BadAss.Sx]

electrum.badass.sx (p10000) is added with no logging (/dev/null).

On my host, in addition to bitcoind data, it currently uses 16GB (pruning_limit=10000)

Don't forget, you need the BTC blockchain also which is 37GB atm.

[fex]

Hi,

I'm setting up an electrum server and have a problem getting the run_electrum_server running correctly - this process does not seem to respond.

Steps taken:
- installed electrum server using the provided python script
- setup a user account and specified it in /etc/electrum.conf
- increased allowed file handels for user in /etc/security/limits.conf
- downloaded a leveldb dump, set ownership of all files to user

- start server:

Code:

> sudo electrum-server start
Starting server as daemon
bash: line 0: ulimit: open files: cannot modify limit: Operation not permitted
nohup: redirecting stderr to stdout

- log says:

Code:

[03/04/2015-19:01:15] Starting Electrum server on XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
[03/04/2015-19:01:15] Database version 3
[03/04/2015-19:01:15] Blockchain height 350446
[03/04/2015-19:01:15] UTXO tree root hash: b8bcc0587c80e07e3fd56da7e85faf2676d8dc35da1b1094f236936af1eeb958
[03/04/2015-19:01:15] Coins in database: 1400838008059941
[03/04/2015-19:01:15] TCP server started on XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:50001

Now if I try "sudo electrum-server getinfo" the electrum-server process blocks and nothing happens. The log does not show anything. Process cpu usage is at ~100%.

Any suggestions on how to debug this?

[JWU42]

@fex,

The electrum-server DB has to catch-up.  It isn't a verbose process but seeing the CPU usage will assure you it is working.  The log will only update after passing every 1000 blocks.  Note it can take an hour or two to catch-up just 10-12 hours (on a modern CPU with an SSD).

[Lexiko]

Hi! Does anybody have any working sample of using Electrum RPC daemon using curl?

I'm trying to use such request (this was taken from bitcoind rpc server sample):

Code:

curl --data-binary '{ "id": 0, "method": "server.version", "params": [ "1.9.5", "0.6" ] }'  -H 'content-type: text/plain;' http://127.0.0.1:8000/

... but as a result I have an answer:

Code:

<value><string>&lt;class 'xml.parsers.expat.ExpatError'&gt;:not well-formed (invalid token): line 1, column 0</string></value>

[fex]

Now if I try "sudo electrum-server getinfo" the electrum-server process blocks and nothing happens. The log does not show anything. Process cpu usage is at ~100%.

Any suggestions on how to debug this?

@fex,

The electrum-server DB has to catch-up.  It isn't a verbose process but seeing the CPU usage will assure you it is working.  The log will only update after passing every 1000 blocks.  Note it can take an hour or two to catch-up just 10-12 hours (on a modern CPU with an SSD).

Yes, I found this to be the case, but there was another thing.

I finally had some time to look into the problem: there were too many files open. I did change the limit for this in /etc/security/limits.conf as described on github, however, two things to note:

1. If you put an entry like "<bitcoinuser> hard nofile 65536" in limits.conf, it will only work if <bitcoinuser> is really logged in. It does not work (at least on Ubuntu 14.10) when another user account loggs in and then uses "su" to get into the <bitcoinuser> account. This might be a problem when using "electrum-server" binary as it seems to use "su". To solve this, I added limits.conf-entries for the "really logged in" user account that starts the "electrum-server" binary.

Maybe this information could be added to the readme on Github somehow.

2. The error indicating that too many files were open was burried under a stack trace that I got when I was running run_electrum_server directly (instead of "electrum-server start"). It did not show up in the log file.



Regards,

Felix