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Lenovo E460, 8GB RAM, Fedora 26, bitcoin core command line version 0.16.0, All blocks completely downloaded on a flash drive with 256GB capacity.

I rebooted my machine today without stopping the bitcoind before and since then the following happens: 1) starting "bitcoind -daemon -datadir=/path/to/flash/drive" 2) I see with "top" the process 'bitcoind' running for about 30-45 seconds 3) Suddenly under same process id the process names changes to "bitcoin-shutdown" and disappears a second after. 4) Stop or new start of bitcoind is not possible, message is "Error: Cannot obtain a lock on data directory /path/to/flash/drive. Bitcoin Core is probably already running." 5) Only way to start bitcoind again is to reboot the linux. Then loop 1)-5) starts again.

Any help appreciated! Thanks!

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17
  • can you post the error log?
    – zhiyan114
    Apr 18, 2018 at 21:33
  • This is what I see when sarching for the PID in the journalctl: -- Reboot -- Apr 18 21:40:23 user.fritz.box audit[3373]: ANOM_ABEND auid=1000 uid=1000 gid=1000 ses=3 subj=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023 pid=3373 comm="bitcoin-shutoff" exe="/usr/local/bin/bitcoind" sig=6 res=1 Not sure if this is enough. If not in what path are the log/error log files? Thanks!
    – Marc O
    Apr 18, 2018 at 21:43
  • Might need to post the whole log, try to use pastebin.com and paste the whole log into it. Usually under your bitcoin data folder (file named: debug.log)
    – zhiyan114
    Apr 18, 2018 at 21:47
  • Thanks! Found it, see here: pastebin.com/embed_iframe/09eG9h9Q
    – Marc O
    Apr 18, 2018 at 21:57
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    the .lock file had 0 Bytes. Didn't delete it. Would need to change the permission. Still helpful where it is empty anyway?
    – Marc O
    Apr 19, 2018 at 0:03

1 Answer 1

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The solution is time consuming but easy. The flash drive was finally reporting read/write errors after a harsh shutdown. Formatting it and new install of bitcoind and loading all blocks again (I had no other drive where I could have copied this amount of data to and wanted to exclude potential issues with the old file permissions).

So the next few days I assume the machine will be busy. However now at block 8000 the CPU is only using 1-2% (Intel Core i5 with 8GB RAM on fedora linux)

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3
  • Higher dbcache will improve performance. Also, this will destroy your flash drive. Those are not designed for I/O heavy database loads.
    – Pieter Wuille
    Apr 20, 2018 at 15:53
  • Thanks Pieter, I started bitcoind now with dbcache=40000 and maxconnections=40 but still only 2% CPU and 3% memory usage. Any idea?
    – Marc O
    Apr 20, 2018 at 16:58
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    Yes, don't use a flash drive. It's not designed for heavy database loads.
    – Pieter Wuille
    Apr 20, 2018 at 17:44

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