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I tried bootstrapping bitcoind, but it's slowly downloading and downloading. I tried putting these files first, but it is still downloading something a bit, stays 100% CPU, iowaits, fills up the thawing free gigabytes and is not going to finish soon.

Is there somewhere ready-to-use $HOME/.bitcoin directory available for download to skip any lengthy initial phase?

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    Is it possible you are using an encrypted filesystem? Bitcoin is i/o heavy and bitcoin running on an encrypted filesystem is really slow. Commented Aug 13, 2012 at 16:53
  • With bitcoin v0.7 you can have it create blk000n.dat and regenerate the blkindex.dat from another blk data file: bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/4145/153 Commented Aug 13, 2012 at 18:21
  • But I'm unaware of any download that already includes all (currently three) blk*.dat files. Commented Aug 13, 2012 at 18:22

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If you're going to trust someone to give you a pre-indexed version of the blockchain, you are trusting them about the entire history of transactions. They can claim whatever they want (within certain bounds), and your client will accept it. If there is a mistake in the data (either deliberately or accidentally), it will result in the client rejecting the future valid chain at some point, potentially landing you in a side chain (which may be under control of the attacker). If many people would use the same source for their pre-indexed files, they would all end up on the same side chain, living in their own happy world. Both chains (the real one, and the side one) would allow every existing output to be spent once; if this happens on a large scale, it is a disaster for Bitcoin.

Of course, the long waiting times are a real problem (the upcoming 0.8 version should be significantly faster, though) but if you can't spend the resources and time to maintain a fully validating node (like the reference client implements), consider using a lightweight client like Multibit. It does not offer the same security, but it is better than trusting a centralized instance to tell you history.

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  • An Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T5850 @ 2.16GHz takes 2 days to process. Providing a reliable indexed bootstrap is simple: just checksum the whole package.
    – Eduardo
    Commented Mar 14, 2015 at 12:30
  • Then you're still trusting the person who computed the checksum. Commented Dec 30, 2015 at 3:58

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