Just installed Bitcoin Unlimited 0.12, is there anything I need to do to start xtreme thin blocks?

[_mr_e]

Anything special I need to do or is the software automatically taking advantage of other BU nodes?

 

[freetrader]

It helps if you add some IP addresses of BU nodes with addnode= statements in your bitcoin.conf.

You can obtain some BU node IPs using e.g.

https://bitnodes.21.co/nodes/?q=80001

I believe you need to look for nodes advertising NODE_BLOOM service.

 

[_mr_e]

Thank you. Another q: Where does the installation store the default data-dir on windows? I set the data dir during installation and I am trying to figure out where that path is stored... There doesn't appear to be be any -data-dir property specified on the shortcut I run, nothing in the installation directory, what is telling it where to set the data-dir?

 

[sickpig]

@_mr_e

look at
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin#Bitcoin.conf_Configuration_File

it should be %APPDATA%\Bitcoin\

 

[_mr_e]

I don't have an %APPDATA%\Bitcoin\ folder at all. That's why I'm confused. When I installed BU I pointed it at an external hard drive of mine, so the Bitcoin folder is actually there. I need to figure out what is actually pointing it to that external hard drive.

 

[freetrader]

You might need to run a Windows file search for "Bitcoin" over the drive(s) where you suspect you installed the datadir. That should find it, unless maybe you decided to give it a different name during installation...

Just double-check whether it contains the files you'd expect for a Bitcoin installation.

If you still have trouble finding it, you might be able to look at the registry key

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Bitcoin\Bitcoin-Qt\strDataDir

 

[_mr_e]

There it is, in the registry key, that's what I was looking for. I knew where the bitcoin dir was, I just wanted to change this path. Thank you

 

[Peter Tschipper]

@freetrader @_mr_e The nodes that you connect to have to advertise the NODE_XTHIN service..they will be for BU nodes using protocol version 80001 and found on bitnodes as @freetrader mentioned.

If you have the debug window open and you click on a peer you're connected to you'll see the list of services that , that peer advertises. So you'll see something like "Services: NETWORK & BLOOM & XTHIN"

 

[_mr_e]

Would it be possible to have a setting whereby BU could just spider the p2p network and connect only to NODE_THIN nodes on its own? That would be pretty cool.

 

[Peter Tschipper]

@_mr_e We could , but that's extra work for something only temporarily needed. When Classic merges XThins then we probably won't need to use addnode anymore (or only in some cases) since there will likely be at least one Xthin node connected for each user.

 

[_mr_e]

So if it finds one it will only exchange blocks with that one? I'm just thinking it would be great to be able to run your node in XTHIN only mode to ensure minimal bandwidth usage.

 

[Peter Tschipper]

@_mr_e If you want to run in XTHIN only mode then you use "connect-thinblock" instead of "addnode". That will ensure you always download an XTHIN. If you use addnode it will try to download an XTHIN first from any connected XTHIN nodes (after it has received the first inv for the block). If it can't get an XTHIN within 10 secs it will download a regular block, ensuring that at least one XTHIN node will get the block before propagating it to the rest of the XTHIN network. In that way we don't end up splitting the network. But if you have bandwidth issues or for performance reasons always want an XTHIN then use "connect-thinblock=<ip>"

 

[freetrader]

we don't end up splitting the network

Peter, If I understand you correctly, you want to avoid that xthin nodes only end up talking to xthin nodes.
Maybe in the future there could be parameters that determines how much of the connection slots the software will try to fill with a particular technology. Then one could set e.g. a default as 50% old-style P2P and 50% xthin nodes. I think as long as the defaults are sensible it should avoid a network split, no?

 

[Peter Tschipper]

@freetrader I suppose we could do that but my hope was and still is that this gets adopted by the other projects and we won't have to do any of this. Will that happen in the near future, probably not with Core coming out and saying this wasn't on their map. So if there was something someone could come up with that would safely track xthin nodes and maybe keep a list of peers that were xthin nodes and use a percentage of some sort...something along those lines would be great and better than using "addnode".