Published on: 2014-08-10T18:07:54+00:00
In an email conversation on August 10, 2014, Bob McElrath discussed a hardware problem that can cause synchronization in the blockchain to fail. Although mentioned as a separate issue, he advised considering it. Another email from mbde at bitwatch.co raised concerns about a high number of orphaned blocks during synchronization and questioned if this could be due to malicious parties generating low difficulty block chains not part of the main chain. Orphaned blocks are common during synchronization when the blocks are further ahead in the chain than the user's current synchronization progress. A solution called headers-first synchronization was proposed, which verifies the headers first and then downloads blocks from multiple peers in parallel without order consideration. However, this solution is not yet production-ready.The email thread revolved around a synchronization issue faced by the user while running a new node. The user reported observing 38,447 orphaned blocks, accounting for approximately 19.5% of their progress at a height of 197,324 blocks. They expressed concerns about the high number and questioned the possibility of malicious parties creating non-main chain block chains with low difficulty to slow down the sync process. Detailed information regarding the build and version used was provided, along with a compressed debug.log file for further analysis. Jeff Garzik, a Bitcoin core developer, responded to the thread and mentioned ongoing work on the "headers first synchronization" category. Until completion, he suggested downloading bootstrap.dat via torrent.To address the synchronization issue, Bob McElrath explained that Bitcoin is sensitive to hardware problems such as single bit flips in memory or computation. He recommended running a Python script attached to the email to check for sha256 mismatches. The script repeatedly runs sha256 on random data and displays a message if a mismatch is found. Under-clocking the CPU and RAM was suggested as a potential solution for hardware-related issues. The email also included links to the build and version information, as well as the compressed debug.log file and Python script mentioned earlier.In summary, the email thread discussed a synchronization issue faced by the user while running a new node. The user observed a high number of orphaned blocks, expressed concerns about possible malicious activity, and provided build and version details along with a compressed debug.log file. Suggestions were made to address hardware-related issues and a solution called headers-first synchronization was proposed but not yet ready for production. Jeff Garzik recommended downloading bootstrap.dat via torrent until the synchronization issue is resolved.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T10:13:34.636634+00:00