Bitcoind server spontaneously shutting down

Question

I'm running the latest version of the headless bitcoind server on an Ubuntu micro instance on AWS and every hour or so it spontaneously shuts down. It's hard to get any meaningful data from the debug log because it seems to happen completely randomly. This is a brand new install on a brand new AWS box. I'm also running the testnet, by the way.

If you can think of meaningful data I can provide, please tell me, but I'm at a loss here! Does anybody know what could be going on?

Edit:

After some more research, I think it's because of the limited memory in a micro EC2 instance:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=21451.0

Answer 1

Add some swap space and your problems will disappear.

Answer 2

I think you choose the micro instance because that is for free for one year :)

You need definitely more RAM on the ec2 instance, here's how:

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-add-a-swap-file-howto/

Answer 3

Indeed, adding more swap will keep your coin from having a panic shutdown. Here's how to add swap on Ubuntu 12.04.4 (tested) and likely other versions:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=64M count=16; sudo mkswap /swapfile; sudo swapon /swapfile;

This command will create 16 64MB blocks of swap, totalling 1GB of extra swap, which should be plenty if you're just running bitcoind. If you are running multiple coins I would have at least 2GB.

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=64M count=32; sudo mkswap /swapfile; sudo swapon /swapfile;

Answer 4

bitcoind uses a ton of memory while it's downloading the blockchain. Check out these steps on how to set up your swap space correctly on Ubuntu:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-add-swap-on-ubuntu-14-04

Additionally, you can check out the torrent download of the blockchain. As long as you trust the file, this can help speed up the time to download the blockchain.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/blockchain/bootstrap.dat.torrent/download