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I've reset my raspberry pi because after configuring Samba, bitcoind started downloading the blockchain much slower. Removing Samba didn't return it to the original speeds so I figured starting with a fresh Raspian SD card might speed things up again.

I am following the same instructions to install bitcoin-cli but this time I get this error

Error: Failed saving settings file:
- Error: Unable to open settings file /mnt/bitcoin/Coins/Blockchain/settings.json.tmp for writing

The full instructions I'm following are here. I've used the same drive mounted at the same place as before. I don't have a file settings.json.tmp. I do have settings.json and I naively cloned it and named it settings.json.tmp, but it didn't help.

This is how I'm installing it:

tar xvf bitcoin-0.21.1-arm-linux-gnueabihf.tar.gz
sudo install -m 0755 -o root -g root -t /usr/local/bin bitcoin-0.21.1/bin/*

And this is how I'm trying to start it:

bitcoind -daemon --datadir=/mnt/bitcoin/Coins/Blockchain

I guessed maybe that the problem was that this time I was installing version 21.1 whereas before I was using version 21.0, I still had the old .tar.gz file so I tried installing the previous version, but got the same error.

Then I tried creating a new blockchain folder at /mnt/bitcoin/Coins/Blockchain2/ but I get the same error. If that's a fresh folder, why would it try to read any files?

Does anyone know what the problem is here? Googling the error returns absolutely nothing.

I would appreciate any help.

EDIT: Extra info

I've just tried creating a new folder in the home directory instead of the hard drive and it worked. So why not on the hard drive? When I try to sudo rm settings.json.tmp I get rm: cannot remove 'settings.json.tmp': No such file or directory. Why is it trying to read a file that's not even there?

EDIT 2: ls -l /mnt/bitcoin/Coins/Blockchain/

Here is the output of ls -l /mnt/bitcoin/Coins/Blockchain/:

total 16896
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root       37 Jun 18 17:19 anchors.3386
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root       37 Apr 23 11:42 banlist.dat
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root        5 Jun 12 20:40 bitcoind.pid
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root   262144 Jun 18 14:41 blocks
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   262144 Jun 18 08:43 chainstate
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 12969496 Jun 18 17:19 debug.log
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   247985 May 19 15:27 fee_estimates.dat
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root       18 May 19 15:27 mempool.dat
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2623946 Jun 18 17:19 peers.dat
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root        7 Jun 12 20:40 settings.json
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   131072 Apr 23 11:42 wallets
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  • Is settings.json.tmp perhaps a symlink to a non-existing file? What does ls -l /mnt/bitcoin/Coins/Blockchain2/ tell you?
    – Pieter Wuille
    Jun 18, 2021 at 23:52
  • @PieterWuille I added the output as an edit to the post because trying to format it in a comment wasn't working. As you can see, the .tmp isn't there. I wondered if it's causing the issue because of permissions, but I believe I didn't have to change any permissions when it worked before I reset. And the permissions look good here anyway I think (user has read and write, that's good yes?).
    – Alfie Stoppani
    Jun 19, 2021 at 1:12
  • Well it's failing to open the settings.json.tmp file for writing. This may indicate that you don't have write permissions. Are you running Bitcoin Core as root?
    – Pieter Wuille
    Jun 19, 2021 at 1:26
  • @PieterWuille Yep, haha, that was it. I did sudo bitcoind -daemon --datadir=/mnt/bitcoin/Coins/Blockchain and it's working. I just kept the same alias that I used before. I don't get why it didn't need root before. Thanks so much for your help. 🦄
    – Alfie Stoppani
    Jun 19, 2021 at 1:36

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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I wasn't running it as root. Once I ran it with sudo bitcoind -daemon --datadir=/mnt/bitcoin/Coins/Blockchain, it worked as expected.

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