Blockchain stalls on Testnet (and Main Network) - mist wallet 0.8.8, geth 1.5.6-stable

Question

I am new to Eth. I got the mist wallet, version 0.8.8 I got the geth 1.5.6-stable I am running everything on Linux Mint 18. The CPU is not an issue, RAM is not an issue, Connectivity is not an issue. The number of peers on the Main Network is 25, and on Testnet 10.

The download of the block-chain on the Testnet stalls saying 282 blocks left. The download of the block-chain stalls in the Main Network stalls at 668,493. Every time I restart, the number of blocks that need to be downloaded goes up.

I am aware that people already had this issue, but I am not aware that anyone had the same issue with the Testnet. I have tried downloading using: geth --cache=1024 --jitvm but I do not see any progress (I am not sure if I am supposed to?) and the number of blocks to download in a wallet does not go down (I am not sure if that is the way it works).

I would like to download the block-chain data (lets say, with geth and be able to see some kind of a progress), and import it into a wallet, but to remain secure without downloading a third-party data. I would also like for the download not to stall.

Any advice? Please explain all steps since I have started using Eth just a few days ago.

Answer 1

Here is an answer for all newbies who were experiencing the same problem as I did. Important point to note is not to download the block-chain via wallet. Use wallet after downloading everything first. I am using linux mint and you will have to adjust to these steps with other OS-es.

Install Ethereum/Geth by doing:

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ethereum/ethereum
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ethereum

PS I am not sure if Geth will be replaced in the near-future, if it does, edit this post.

1. If you already started using the wallet, remove the chaindata folder from ~/.ethereum/geth/ Otherwise, go to step 3.
2. Make a new folder at the same location called caindata (reason for doing this is because you might have too many files in one folder and linux may halt/freeze trying to list them all).

3. In your shell, start downloading the chaindata by issuing a command:

   geth --fast --cache=1024 --jitvm

4. If you stop, you can continue issuing a command:

   geth --cache=1024

5. It takes about two days for everything to download with a good Internet connection. Also, you may want to make sure that you got enough RAM and at least 50GB of free space.

6. You may download everything and start Syncing without knowing that your download has finished (it should have been made more obvious). What I did in this case, I simply stopped (ctrl+c) and opened a wallet. Then, I lost another day thinking that the number displayed in a wallet is how much block-data I have to download (I did not know that Geth and wallet are working together). Also, the wallet chain-data that was downloaded was about 45GB, and using the Geth it was 11GB; which confused me. You should have a very small number of block-chain data to download when you enter the wallet, and that is how I knew that downloading was OK and done.

Just to note, I have previously tried other currencies and their wallets. Without naming them, I got very disappointed and decided not to bother with the world of crypto-currencies. I have to say that Eth wallet, in comparison, is well-developed, and that people should learn to be more patient, involved, and creative, when dealing with the open-source. The only thing I dislike is that it eats RAM and looks frozen if you are not high on RAM.