I am new to Umbrel and am trying to set up a Bitcoin Node. it may be that what I am seeing is normal based on my hardware and the current size of the blockchain, or I am doing something wrong. I re-installed the whole setup a couple of times because I thought maybe I tinkered with setting too much, so I thought a clean install may make a difference.
I have a Raspberry Pi 5, with 8 gigs RAM. I am using a Samsung 2 TB SSD external drive. I boot from the SSD and have no uSD drive. Yesterday I set it up again and installed Bitcoin Node. I did make 1 setting change which is I turned off Tor because I read that it could slow down initial synchronization. In the past I tried increasing the dbcache, but this time I did not. During the initial synchronization I see 10 peers and my location looks accurate. It takes about a day to get to ~65% and then it slows down, taking about an hour to increase the sync by .1%. I stop seeing peers, maybe 1 will pop up. The globe graphic will show my location as drastically wrong. The temperature is consistently <45’C. I have an ice tower on the Pi and there is no case. I see flashing on the ethernet port and on the SSD , so it looks like data is flowing. I only have Bitcoin Node installed. The first day when I look at the Umbrel and Bitcoin Node webpage I will see the Bitcoin status fairly quickly, showing me percentage and peers. But once it goes slows It takes a long time. My internet speed is 11Mbps up and 244 Mbps down. The pi is wired, not wifi. Bitcoin Node has been running for a day. I have uploaded logs, I see lots of errors. But I don’t know what they mean.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I’m doing this for fun and to learn.
It that really your Internet Speed? That is VERY VERY Slow and the remote Peers are dropping you because you are too slow to stay connected to.
As the Blockchain grows in size … so does the SIZE of the blocks! In the beginning the block sizes were small and you got them fast because they were small.
Your Internet Speed is so, slow, I don’t see how you will be able to keep PEER Connections to complete the sync process.
I have 5GB UP/DOWN Internet Speed and it still took 3 days to complete the sync process with always maintaining 11 PEERs.
The sync Process is also very RAM and Disk IO intensive and can generate heat but it sounds like your cooling is in check but thought I would add that here for others to know too.
Yeah, that is the speed. I thought that was considered average for cable modem, which is what we have. I may have to give up on having a node. For now I’ll let it chug along and ignore it as best as I can.
Find someone near by you and get a copy of it. I have posted on this community some where how to make a backup of the files. I have my backup on an external SSD that connects via USB enclosure. If I lost my Bitcoin Core Blockchain data or it got so corrupt that I had to completely resync, I would only have to start from where my last back was done.
But I also have a Development UmbrelOS running in VM (VMware Workstation), so, I have a copy of it there too.
Your internet speed is fine, the hardware is very important. It is not uncommon for a full sync to take multiple days, I have devices that will take ~2 days, I have devices that could take weeks.
First thing I would try is increasing the Cache size. This can speed things up a bit assuming no other issues.
Open up your node app, and navigate to Optimization > Cache, with your available amount of RAM I would say try at least 4096 and see how things go.
You can leave Tor on, in your logs there are quite a few errors with i2p. Not sure if you have any firewalls or isp restrictions that may be causing it, but this shouldnt be a big deal with Tor/Clearnet also enabled.
It’s been reported that from v29.2 (if I’m not mistaken, you can check bitcoin core’s github) the initial sync could be slower than the usual, so just to make sure I’d go with v28, and then upgrade to v30.2 (latest) or whatever you prefer, so I’d give it a try.
Also increase the cache as Crayon said, at least for initial sync, then you can (and should) go back to normal.
You can also allow clearnet for initial sync and then just tor or tor+i2p if you like.
With mine the slowdown seems to be around the time the blockchain begun being spammed with images and such. Another reason to run Knots and BIP110 everyone.
It’d be the same anyway, the blockchain info is the same for any Bitcoin instance, being Knots, Core, or whatever, installing Knonts won’t accelerate anything, and you’d probably ending downloading things (especially mempool) twice.
But that’s not what the topic is about, and doesn’t make a lot of sense to “start” that debate here
For this topic it’s exactly the same to use either Core, Knots, Librerelay, or whatever.
You should convince the miners, not us.
Again, this is not what the topic is about, you remind me of vegetarian people telling everyone what to eat or not XD
The problem is the USB 3.0 port when connected to an external SSD: this causes a data transfer issue and so a very slow sync after 65% (too slow, impracticable). If you connect your SSD to the 2.0 USB port, syncing works correctly and smoothly, although not extremely fast. To reach 100%, if you have a good internet connection, as of today (January 2026) it will take you about 7-10 days.
You’re partly right. I have a NVME drive installed on my RPi 5 via PCIE and its taken well over 2 weeks for the IBD. I have 1Gbps internet as well to match.
