Reindexing Bitcoin Core

Hello,

Background:
I had a power outage a week or so ago, the first error “Red Umbrella” was that of “Failed to Start Containers”. After a re-flash of the mSD card it switched to “System Service Failure”. After going through multiple guides contained in the Umbrel troubleshooting guides I was able to get my node to at least let me log in via the web interface, but it was stuck “synchronizing” with no noted completion amount.

Through inspecting my logs, it appeared that my blockchain data was corrupt, so I started the process of reindexing (using the troubleshooting guide instructions).

Current Issues:
Its been about 24 hours and is currently sitting at blk01838.dat, so I was wondering if anyone could give me an idea of how many more there might be to go before its complete. In addition, every other line or so (from running the docker-compose logs -f bitcoin command) notes “ThreadRPCServer incorrect password attempt from 10.21.21.9:XXXXX”. I am uncertain how to resolve that issue. The logs also note the RPC services are not available, is there a way to start this back up?

In the event that reindexing is not successful, I noticed that the guide mentioned that the blockchain data could be deleted and the node allowed to simply redownload the blockchain. Are there commands to do this or do I need to connect the drive to a computer?

Any help on these issues would be most helpful. See below for the most recent debug log for any additional info that might be helpful. Thanks for your time.

umbrel-1650594010677-debug.log (48.6 KB)

Hi, personally after multiple re-indexing failures, whenever there is some kind of problem with the blockchain I just restart from scratch and I have built my setup to support that workflow.

Yes its painful, but at least I know everything is fresh and working and lets be honest if you have some amount of bitcoin on that node and or you use it for your software / hardware wallet you better make sure that everything is working flawlessly.

Few things:
If you stop umbrel and go in your bitcoin directory (were you have the folders blocks, chainstate, indexes, etc) you can simply remove all of that and restart umbrel. The command would be something like:

cd ~/umbrel/bitcoin
# (to confirm you are in the right folder)
ls 
rm * -fr

Bitcoin core will simply start from scratch and yeah it might take a few days based on your connection / hardware / etc.

My setup to avoid the long initial sync
Because I had in the past many failures and unexpected reboot sync issues and I did not wanted to spend like 10 days to get everything running again (I have a crappy connection), the way I speed up this process is by having the umbrel/bitcoin folder archived on a NAS (Network Attached Storage).

When I need to rebuilt my umbrel for whatever reason I just copy the archive which, although a few months old will still sync by several order of magnitude faster than redownloading / validating everything from scratch.

So far I did not even bother to update the archive (so far its around 6 months old), because the bulk of the sync is already done and syncing the last 6 months is done in a few hours anyway.

If you want to do that, you must stop umbrel before because you might copy the data while bitcoin-core is writing which for obvious reason is not a good idea.

@Sixapalooza Agreed with all @onigara said here, is a good approach to fix your issue.

I will add one more thing.

Another way could to sync from another running Bitcoin node from same LAN or trusted connection, without the need to shut down the node to copy the data disk to disk.
In your new node, use the following command to connect to existing running node and sync the blockchain data directly, on the fly.
Enter SSH into your new Umbrel node, then:
cd umbrel
sudo docker exec bitcoin bitcoin-cli addnode "192.168.x.x:8333" "onetry"
replace “192.168.x.x” with your existing running node IP.
This will make your new node to sync directly from your old running node, without need to be connected to internet, if you have a slow connection or Tor is making problems.
Once is finished, you can remove the IP from peers and go back to normal connection.

Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately, I don’t have another node I could use to speed up the process. I am fine with re-downloading it, although a pain. I may make a backup of the entire drive once its up and running again.

Just to clarify, are you just recommending I try to delete just bitcoin core or completely wipe the drive and try to restore using the seed phrase?

Also, did you guys have any thoughts on the RPC Services issue I was seeing?

Thanks for your time and help thus far.

That is because the wallet wasn’t unlocked correctly.
Is hard to say why.
You will need to run the debug log and see in deep what is going on.
But due to a hardware malfunction all can go wrong.