I decided to try to copy an already synced block chain from another node. However I ran into a little problem I hope you can help me with.
I did:
Closed down the Pi4 via Umbrel webinterface after 15% sync.
Moved disk to laptop and deleted “blocks” and “chainstate” folders and replaced them with “blocks” and “chainstate” folders from a freshly updated bitcoin core node.
Mounted the HDD back into the Pi4 and booted up.
I looked in the logs and got this:
...
2021-05-10T18:57:00Z init message: Loading block index...
2021-05-10T18:57:00Z Switching active chainstate to Chainstate [ibd] @ height -1 (null)
2021-05-10T18:57:00Z boost::filesystem::status: Permission denied: "/data/.bitcoin/blocks/index"
2021-05-10T18:57:00Z : Error opening block database.
Please restart with -reindex or -reindex-chainstate to recover.
2021-05-10T18:57:00Z Aborted block database rebuild. Exiting.
2021-05-10T18:57:00Z Shutdown: In progress...
2021-05-10T18:57:00Z scheduler thread exit
2021-05-10T18:57:00Z Shutdown: done
I then added “reindex=1” to the bitcoin.conf file. It changed the log slightly to:
Docker Containers
NAMES STATUS
sphinx-relay Up 11 seconds
specter-desktop_web_1 Up 22 seconds
btcpay-server_web_1 Up 37 seconds
btcpay-server_postgres_1 Up 47 seconds
btcpay-server_nbxplorer_1 Up 48 seconds
btc-rpc-explorer_web_1 Up About a minute
bluewallet_lndhub_1 Up About a minute
bluewallet_redis_1 Up About a minute
middleware Up About a minute
neutrino-switcher Up About a minute
bitcoin Restarting (1) 22 seconds ago
nginx Up About a minute
lnd Up About a minute
manager Up About a minute
dashboard Up About a minute
electrs Up About a minute
tor Up About a minute
Bitcoin Core logs
-----------------
Attaching to bitcoin
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z Using at most 125 automatic connections (1048576 file descriptors available)
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z Using 16 MiB out of 32/2 requested for signature cache, able to store 524288 elements
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z Using 16 MiB out of 32/2 requested for script execution cache, able to store 524288 elements
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z Script verification uses 3 additional threads
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z scheduler thread start
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z HTTP: creating work queue of depth 16
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z Using random cookie authentication.
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z Generated RPC authentication cookie /data/.bitcoin/.cookie
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z Using rpcauth authentication.
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z HTTP: starting 4 worker threads
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z Using wallet directory /data/.bitcoin
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z init message: Verifying wallet(s)...
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z init message: Loading banlist...
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z SetNetworkActive: true
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z Using /16 prefix for IP bucketing
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z Cache configuration:
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z * Using 2.0 MiB for block index database
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z * Using 24.8 MiB for transaction index database
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z * Using 21.7 MiB for basic block filter index database
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z * Using 8.0 MiB for chain state database
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z * Using 143.6 MiB for in-memory UTXO set (plus up to 286.1 MiB of unused mempool space)
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z init message: Loading block index...
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z Switching active chainstate to Chainstate [ibd] @ height -1 (null)
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:25Z Wiping LevelDB in /data/.bitcoin/blocks/index
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:26Z boost::filesystem::create_directory: No error information: "/data/.bitcoin/blocks/index"
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:26Z Error: Error opening block database
bitcoin | Error: Error opening block database
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:26Z Shutdown: In progress...
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:26Z scheduler thread exit
bitcoin | 2021-05-11T09:36:26Z Shutdown: done
That looks like a brilliant solution as far as I can understand it. Being a totally Pi newbie if you are still there visybl can I ask a really basic question: How do you copy the set of indexes, blocks, chainstate over from one SSD drive to the other, can you plug both into the same Pi and if so what instructions do you use to copy the files over? Sorry I realise this is a shockingly basic question to ask. The reason I want to understand fully is that the entire family want to have their own nodes, which would take a very long time if we had to download new blockchains for each.