~/.ethereum takes a lot of disk space. What can I clean up without having to sync from scratch?

Question

I am using cpp-eth on freebsd 10.3 with SSD and ~/.etherium takes about 41 Gb of disk space:

~/.ethereum # du -sh *
    4.0K    config.rlp
    41G     d4e56740
    0b      geth.ipc
    4.0K    keys.info
    4.0K    keys.info.salt
    16K     network.rlp

~/.ethereum/d4e56740 # du -sh *
    39G     12041
    2.8G    blocks

~/.ethereum/d4e56740/12041 # du -sh *
    6.9G    extras
    32G     state

Is there anything in these folders that I could remove without having to sync all over again? This is my first sync and I am still about 100 000 blocks short.

Answer 1

you had to use --fast and --cach check What is Geth's "fast" sync, and why is it faster?

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..

you couldn't clean anything from the .ethereum folder you have to free some space from outside.

update : you could move the folder to another free location and run your client using the new directory path

Answer 2

For the next one stumbling upon my problem. This is how I solved it using Bellaj's suggestion:

I used rsync to move the .ethereum folder to my HDD which had plenty of space for the blockchain. Then I started the cpp-eth with the following command:

# eth --db-path /hdd/path/to/my/blockchain/.ethereum

Then I pointed out the new location for ethconsole:

# ethconsole /hdd/path/to/my/blockchain/.ethereum/geth.ipc

Answer 3

I solved this by creating a symbolic link for ~/.ethereum/geth/chaindata. But you can do the same for wherever your client is storing the blockchain.

Just create a matching directory structure on your other disk e.g. mkdir -p /mnt/e/.ethereum/geth/chaindata.

Move everything from the current directory and delete the old directory. mv ~/.ethereum/geth/chaindata/* /mnt/e/.ethereum/geth/chaindata; rmdir ~/.ethereum/geth/chaindata.

Then create your symbolic link e.g. ln -s /mnt/e/.ethereum/geth/chaindata ~/.ethereum/geth/chaindata. And start up the client again.