How long is the first sync supposed to last?

Question

I've been running Geth (latest version) for around 12 hours and it's still not finished.

The command prompt shows this :

INFO [05-21|12:05:00] Imported new chain segment               blocks=1  txs=9   mgas=0.748 elapsed=40.047ms   mgasps=18.687 number=3742904 hash=f8fd6e…fce9f8

INFO [05-21|12:05:29] Imported new chain segment               blocks=1  txs=2   mgas=0.044 elapsed=16.018ms   mgasps=2.741  number=3742905 hash=04b0be…3d64cd

INFO [05-21|12:05:38] Imported new chain segment               blocks=1  txs=66  mgas=2.851 elapsed=95.126ms   mgasps=29.971 number=3742906 hash=157014…c50cc5

By the way, my Internet speed isn't that bad, check it out

Is this normal ? Should I try using another client such as Parity ?

PS : I've run Geth using this command line : geth --fast --cache=1024

Answer 1

Do following steps to check the sync state:

1.) open a new geth instance and type in geth attach 2.) now type in eth.syncing

This shows you the "currentBlock" and the "highestBlock".

Answer 2

Assuming you are using a Linux flavoured OS, you can check the sync status as well (run this as the user under which geth is running):

$ geth --exec eth.syncing.currentBlock attach
3991639

If it's not syncing, it will only display 'false'.

Or, if you want to get a little more fancy and see how many blocks / second are syncing, here is an idea:

A=$(geth --exec eth.syncing.currentBlock attach)
while true; do
  echo "Currently at block ${A}"
  sleep 1
  B=$(geth --exec eth.syncing.currentBlock attach);
  echo "Reached block ${B}"
  echo "$B-$A"|bc; A=$B
done

Answer 3

I think you should edit the question to ask, "How do I know when geth is done syncing?"

The question you asked was vague, but I believe this is the answer you were after:

Geth will continue running forever. Once it is "done", it will just sit there and wait for the next block. The "numbers" you refer to are block numbers, and they shall increment for all of eternity. Once your current block reaches the highest block, you are all synced up. As mentioned by 5chdn, the highest block can be determined by checking someplace such as etherscan.io.

I let Geth run for hours thinking that I was waiting for it to "finish" when in fact it had been done for a long time. As of this writing, the highest block is 3854270

Thanks to 5chdn's comment which was really the key to the answer.

Answer 4

If you start geth with "--verbosity 5", it will print out a bunch of debug info. It won't speed things up, but it will let you know that geth is not hung.

I think what people do is run geth. It starts churning on something. They wait and wait. And then they kill geth because it appears hung. If you do that, geth will just have to start that long process over again taking it even that much longer to sync.

Verbosity 5 lets you have the patience to let it run until it finishes because you can see that it's not hung.

Answer 5

INFO [05-22|08:14:16] Imported new chain segment               blocks=1   txs=2    mgas=0.067  elapsed=11.000ms  mgasps=6.104   number=3745188 hash=9b8973…920c7e

Has been running for about 32 hours. Ran Geth with geth --rpc --fast -cache=1024

Ethereum folder size: 17.9Gb

Answer 6

I personally prefer using Parity because of the snapshot feature they have. Using a GCE cloud instance I was able to sync the full chain in 30 minutes.

Here is an explanation of how it works : https://github.com/paritytech/parity/wiki/Warp-Sync-Snapshot-Format