Help with very slow mist sync

Question

I have seen other posts in reddit where users experienced slow sync times. I am using windows 10 and version 3.7 (I saw on gitter that other users on windows 10 had trouble with version 3.8 crashing).

My download speed is 4.19 MBS. I have adjusted clock to (time.nist.gov). I am still not able to sync and it has been hours, probably at least 10 and I am only halfway through.

Any suggestions? Also I notice that when I close and reopen, only about a third of the time am I offered the option to "skip search for peers". Lastly, I tried to open an account when not in sync. I was able to enter and confirm password, however no new account showed.

1. Is it a problem with Windows ?
2. Is it a problem with network speed?

Answer 1

I am using Windows 10, Mist Wallet 0.7.2 which includes geth v1.3.6, a non-SSD hard drive and ethernet connection to 16Mbs modem.

I had incredibly slow syncing of the blockchain, even with 25 peers and was actually having to to quit and restart Mist just to download another few blocks. I had installed the Mist Wallet for Win64 from here, which also includes a CLI called geth. (nb. apparently x32 editions don't contain geth?)

I followed numerous different recommendations, however none worked until I deleted the blockchain data using geth and kicked the whole process off again.

Rather than using the Mist sync process, I removed the chaindata and then ran geth --fast:

• Opened the cmd prompt

• Navigated to the directory containing geth.exe and opened it

• Copied the file path from the bar Explorer

• Typed cd path/to/geth (replace path/to/geth with what you copied) and hit enter.

• Typed geth removedb and hit enter.

• Once the blockchain was removed, I ran geth --fast

This above is also described here.

The download has now got to block 500,000 in 30 minutes which had previously taken 3 days!

If you are on a Mac, you would do this...

• Right click on the ethereum-wallet.app and select 'show package contents'

• Open 'contents', then 'frameworks', then 'node', then 'geth' and voila.

• Then you should right click on geth and select 'show info'.

• Copy the location marked 'Where:'.

• Open Terminal and type 'cd `

• Then type: ./geth --fast

Other recommended changes to Windows I had performed were:

• Ensuring my PC clock time was synchronised with internet time (it was accurate)

• Manually setting the Windows page size as per: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2813275/disk-usage-100.html

• Disabled Superfetch

• Specifically opened the Ethereum ports for TCP 30303 and UDP 30301 on my router as described here: Which TCP and UDP ports are required to run an Ethereum client?

Whether any of these contributed to it being much faster after the geth removedb I'm not sure, but each of those may well help you.

The complete download of 1,500,000 blocks finished after about 10 hours, so the blocks definitely appear to take longer to download the greater the block number, due to the increased number of transactions contained in each block.

Answer 2

Geth is a CLI Ethereum client that helps the Mist Wallet application connect to the Ethereum network (you also have the option to use the C++ client, but Mist defaults to using Geth currently). If loading Mist (or Geth) is taking a long time to download/load the blockchain, try this:

1. Download geth
2. Run geth with the --fast option. Example: geth --fast
3. After geth has finished syncing the blockchain in the console/terminal window, open your Mist Wallet application if you are using it. It should load with the latest blockchain data.

The "Ethereum Fast Syncing" option is very new and there are still some bugs pre-homestead. However, if you're able to find a node that is running the latest Ethereum client version, it should be able to perform a fast sync with you, saving download time and hard drive space.

More about fast sync in Ethereum:

• Post on Reddit with details.

Answer 3

Running geth.exe instead of downloading the blockchain with mist is working for me. Its in the resources/node/geth folder of mist.

Answer 4

Don't forget --cache if you're using Geth

Everyone mentions --fast but you probably also need --cache=1024 (and --jitvm may also help). Without it, you are running with the default which is --cache=16.

If you are starting from the beginning, use: geth --fast --cache=1024 --jitvm

If you already have some of the blockchain, use: geth --cache=1024 --jitvm

Depending on your RAM, you can also try with higher values, like --cache=2048.

Source

If you are using the geth client, there are some things you can do to speed up the time it takes to download the Ethereum blockchain. If you choose to use the --fast flag to perform an Ethereum fast sync, you will not retain past transaction data.

Note

You cannot use this flag after performing all or part of a normal sync operation, meaning you should not have any portion of the Ethereum blockchain downloaded before using this command. See this Ethereum Stack.Exchange answer for more information.

Below are some flags to use when you want to sync your client more quickly.

--fast

This flag enables fast syncing through state downloads rather than downloading the full block data. This will also reduce the size of your blockchain dramatically. NOTE: --fast can only be run if you are syncing your blockchain from scratch and only the first time you download the blockchain for security reasons. See this Reddit post for more information.

--cache=1024

Megabytes of memory allocated to internal caching (min 16MB / database forced). Default is 16MB, so increasing this to 256, 512, 1024 (1GB), or 2048 (2GB) depending on how much RAM your computer has should make a difference.

--jitvm

This flag enables the JIT VM.

Answer 5

I am running Windows 10 on a slow Core i5 1.7GHz w/ 8GB.

If you have part of the blockchain downloaded already, you can't use --fast.

• The major thing that sped things up for me was stopping Superfetch in the task manager. It is under one of the Service Hosts. It was fighting geth for hard disk resources.

• I also stopped other heavy processes (Dropbox, OneDrive, Skype, etc.).

It seemed that my computer was processing blocks so slowly that my P2P connections on the network would drop me, so syncing would stop while geth looked for new connections.

Also, eth<> is correct. uping your cache helps the speed a bit. I used --cache=4096. It speed things up by about 50%.

Anyways, I'm now downloading at a pace that will update me to the current block (1,571,255) in around 10 hours.

Answer 6

Mist also have geth.exe , eth.exe in it's packages. in CLI geth alone also slow compared than before DAOHUB.

I estimates that there are so many new geth nodes , compared existing nodes. So, slow synchronization.

And If you're a little bit more fast and stable synchronization then just execute geth.exe theirs no overhead on MIST ux.