Move Blockchain data to user independent directory
-
I thought about the problem, that first time syncs takes a very long time and new users become impatient waiting for the sync to complete.
Besides other possible solutions there is one option to install the block chain related data to a system as part of the installation process for pre-compiled packages for linux and windows.
The advantage is, that the data could be downloaded in a compressed format. The compression factor will be very low, as most of the data is hashed and can’t be compressed.
The current blockchain is about 600 MB compressed as zip. On a 1 Mbit line it should take about 80 minutes to download this.
My suggestion is to store the blockchain under /var/opt/feathercoin/… for Linux and under %appdata%\feathercoin for windows.
At start the client should perform following tasks:
- check if blocks directory is available under ~user/.feathercoin/blocks (linux)
%userdata% \??? (windows) - if no to 1.
- check if blockchain data is available under /var/opt/feathercoin (%appdata%)
- if yes
- link /var/opt/feathercoin/blocks to ~user/.feathercoin/blocks (linux)
- link %appdata%\feathercoin\blocks to %userdata%\feathercoin\blocks
- if no
- download blockchain and store as done today
Commments?
- check if blocks directory is available under ~user/.feathercoin/blocks (linux)
-
I like it but where would you host the files?
-
I’d like to move folders anyway, blockchains are getting too fat for my SSD. I’m going to have to start doing symbolic links.
-
I like the idea, but it might need a subsequent extra check, once synced. Or as part of the installation. This would be to ensure the “download” was the official version.
Maybe, the sync still has to connect to the the normal network, but the “download” is treated as another “peer”.
Re: Downloads.
A need for bandwidth to provide users with wallet binaries, pre-compiled neoscrypt miners and wallets has been identified, which has had some preliminary discussion / work by staff. But, this could be addressed as a generic issue with the “official” historical blockchain download being the first development.
-
I like it but where would you host the files?
For linux on the repository servers that host the .rpm or .deb package.
This is at opensuse.org at the moment, because I use the opensuse build service to compile and package for several distributions.
All packages are signed with my private key at opensuse.
For windows I don’t know, as the distribution mechanism is different
-
I like the idea, but it might need a subsequent extra check, once synced. Or as part of the installation. This would be to ensure the “download” was
Re: Downloads.
A need for bandwidth to provide users with wallet binaries, pre-compiled neoscrypt miners and wallets has been identified, which has had some preliminary discussion / work by staff. But, this could be addressed as a generic issue with the “official” historical blockchain download being the first development.
As the repository server would carry the traffic, this would not use bandwidth of the feathercoin server, unless we need to host the windows versions there
-
Ahh, I see what your saying now.
I was thinking that we didn’t need to overblow the download from Github, as most times (after the initial download) you are upgrading. So, would have the blockchain.
Also, although Github don’t do “binary” downloads you are thinking we could still use them. We would need to check that is within the rules.
I also remember now that Chinacoin had a download blockchain (from Github), up to a checkpoint. Although you just unzipped that to seed the directory.
Also, when I re read the thread header, it made me think you meant keeping the compressed version, and only downloading further from there, which I didn’t quite get on first read. ie the browser can look in multiple locations for the blockchain.
I haven’t got an SSD yet, but my son has. They are expensive but fast hard disks, so are usually more limited in storage space than a mechanical drive.
I can see both, the compressed blockchain, and being able to split it the blockchain would be a big advantage. That sounds like a very interesting novel idea, and an achievable / useful development goal.
-
In principle the blockchain is already cut into pieces on your hard disk.
There is a parameter to define the largest size of a file storing the blocks. The default limit is 100MB and if that is reached a new file is opened.
on my harddrive the .feathercoin/blocks directory looks like this:
blk00004.dat blk00005.dat blk00006.dat blk00007.dat blk00008.dat index # a subdirectory rev00004.dat rev00005.dat rev00006.dat rev00007.dat rev00008.dat -
I’ve sorted my problem.using the flag
-datadir={driverletter}:\{folder} -
Can we use torr?
I need to look into it more, but I’m sure I could set up a torr client on a PI to helps seed the file, would need to find a way to limit the download though so I don’t eat up all my bandwidth, if enough of us did that it would help share the load and could work
-
Of course a torrent could be used after we move to a standard directory, so that no user intervention like move or copy is needed to get the blocks to the right location on the disk.
