From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from sog-mx-1.v43.ch3.sourceforge.com ([172.29.43.191] helo=mx.sourceforge.net) by sfs-ml-3.v29.ch3.sourceforge.com with esmtp (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from ) id 1Rv1qr-0006eN-1J for bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net; Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:22:01 +0000 Received-SPF: pass (sog-mx-1.v43.ch3.sourceforge.com: domain of gmail.com designates 209.85.212.175 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.85.212.175; envelope-from=grarpamp@gmail.com; helo=mail-wi0-f175.google.com; Received: from mail-wi0-f175.google.com ([209.85.212.175]) by sog-mx-1.v43.ch3.sourceforge.com with esmtps (TLSv1:RC4-SHA:128) (Exim 4.76) id 1Rv1qn-0004PB-3q for bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net; Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:22:00 +0000 Received: by wibhq7 with SMTP id hq7so190868wib.34 for ; Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:21:51 -0800 (PST) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.180.78.98 with SMTP id a2mr38924382wix.17.1328685711074; Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:21:51 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.180.103.227 with HTTP; Tue, 7 Feb 2012 23:21:51 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: References: Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 02:21:51 -0500 Message-ID: From: grarpamp To: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 X-Spam-Score: -1.2 (-) X-Spam-Report: Spam Filtering performed by mx.sourceforge.net. See http://spamassassin.org/tag/ for more details. -1.5 SPF_CHECK_PASS SPF reports sender host as permitted sender for sender-domain 0.0 FREEMAIL_FROM Sender email is commonly abused enduser mail provider (grarpamp[at]gmail.com) -0.0 SPF_PASS SPF: sender matches SPF record -0.1 DKIM_VALID_AU Message has a valid DKIM or DK signature from author's domain 0.1 DKIM_SIGNED Message has a DKIM or DK signature, not necessarily valid -0.1 DKIM_VALID Message has at least one valid DKIM or DK signature 0.4 AWL AWL: From: address is in the auto white-list X-Headers-End: 1Rv1qn-0004PB-3q Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Scaling at the end user level X-BeenThere: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.9 Precedence: list List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:22:01 -0000 > I never did track down this exact issue but it's an artificial > slowdown.. meaning compression and whatever else wouldn't help much. I meant for anyone who wanted to distribute the dataset as a project. > It has something to do with the database file locking and flushing.. > on some systems I've seen the block chain get fully done in 10-20 > mins and on others it slows down to the point where it will never > catch up.. but not in a way that's related to the age of the computer > or anything. You might want to experiment if you want to track this > down.. try building your own libs Rather than use dated/modified packages, I compiled current versions of all component sources manually. > and compare different operating > systems, on the same hardware to get a more 'true' comparison maybe. True. Used them all before, happy with BSD for now. Just knowing what the general setup is on those zippy systems should suffice. ie: blindly fishing for such a zippy system to compare through various install tests doesn't sound too appealing. It's different than benchmarking. Datapoint: The system below is not zippy. > I think everyone is vaguely aware of the problem but it has not > been tracked down and eliminated. I don't think the problem is > within bitcoin itself but in how truthfully the database file is > actually written to disk. Am I correct in guessing that, given a certain height, the data in blkindex and blk0001 should be the same across instances? # file blk* blk0001.dat: data blkindex.dat: Berkeley DB (Btree, version 9, native byte-order) Pursuant to comparison, what is the format of blk0001.dat? > If it really gets flushed to disk every > block like bitcoin wants it to be, then there is no way that you > could get more than 50-60 blocks per second through it (due to > rotational latency), but on some operating systems and versions/options > it seems to end up caching the writes and flies through it at > thousands of blocks per second. The problem is similar to what's > mentioned here: http://www.sqlite.org/faq.html#q19 I'm not running Linux with asynchronous data and metadata turned on by default if that's what you mean :) ZFS, disk crypto, standard drive write cache. Looking at it, I'm largely buried in that crypto at 8MB/sec or so. > Perhaps it's as simple as some default in the db lib.. and it seems > to default to different things on different version/operating > systems/filesystems. Hmm, I compiled everything with the defaults. Will go back and look at bdb options. I don't think there was anything interesting there. I'd bet a lot is tied to the fs and cpu. Single core p4@1.8 512k/2g isn't much up against ZFS+disk crypto. It seems to take its time and roll up all but the last database file (of a hundred or more) on receiving sigterm. Is it supposed to roll and delete the last log too? Can I safely delete everything but the blk* files? (wallet excepted of course :) Currently, in KiB... running: 853716 database 747881 blk0001.dat 290601 blkindex.dat 4361 addr.dat 137 __db.005 137 __db.004 137 __db.003 137 __db.002 41 __db.006 25 __db.001 sigterm: 750569 blk0001.dat 291497 blkindex.dat 8465 database/log.0000000nnn 4361 addr.dat database/log.0000000133: Berkeley DB (Log, version 16, native byte-order)