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I don't understand quit well what are the requirements on the disk volume to run a full node of ethereum and what is its expected growth.

e.g. for now I have the following volume distribution across different ethereum folders on an ubuntu machine (listed only the biggest chunks):

16G ./.ethash
12G ./.ethereum
12G ./.ethereum/chaindata

what's exactly there (.ethereum and ./.ethereum/.chaindata seem to have the same size)?

how much disk space does the mining activity require (that's the reason for space in the folder ./.ethash or not?)?

Edit: additional info - content of ./ethash running the ls -l command there

drwxrwxr-x 2 ubuntu ubuntu       4096 Jul 24 07:22 ./
drwxr-xr-x 6 ubuntu ubuntu       4096 Jul 23 18:16 ../
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu 1409284744 Jul 24 07:43 full-R23-03b8bc47a10d1baa
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu 1367339400 Jul 24 00:20 full-R23-1250db2965df18ca

You see big binary files.

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I don't understand quit well what are the requirements on the disk volume to run a full node of ethereum and what is its expected growth.

See this previous thread: What are the Ethereum disk space needs?

16G ./.ethash 12G ./.ethereum 12G ./.ethereum/chaindata what's exactly there

The chaindata folder contians the downloaded copy of the blockchain.

(.ethereum and ./.ethereum/.chaindata seem to have the same size)?

.ethereum is the parent to chaindata. The fact they're the same size just means that all/most of the data in .ethereum is also in chaindata.

how much disk space does the mining activity require (that's the reason for space in the folder ./.ethash or not?)?

The .ethash folder contains the DAG, which is required for mining, and which should be around 1.5 GB at present. It's possible your 16 GB directory contains several older DAGs, though it's difficult to say without seeing the contents.

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  • The disk volume usage is the result of 1 day of machine's existence, i.e. the old DAGs were downloaded in 1 day, is there an option to exlude them? would geth --fast exclude them?
    – Max Li
    Jul 24, 2016 at 9:59
  • What is the content of the .ethash directory?
    – Richard Horrocks
    Jul 24, 2016 at 10:01
  • I listed its content in the edit to the question.Basically, some huge binary files
    – Max Li
    Jul 24, 2016 at 10:13
  • Okay, they are both DAG files. The DAG is regenerated every 30,000 blocks (~100 hours). To make sure the transition from one DAG to the next is efficient, the next DAG is generated ahead of time, which is why you have 2 of them. I can't see why your first set of figures would be listing that directly as 16 GB, given the two DAGs only amount to ~2.8 GB (which is as expected).
    – Richard Horrocks
    Jul 28, 2016 at 21:03

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