I have downloaded and installed the 0.12 bitcoin core client and am running it on my very old linux server at my home.  I'm doing this not because I expect to win any BTC doing this. I'm doing it because I want to participate in the network. In the hopes that I would actually help in some way.

But it strikes me that all of my CPU cycles will simply be wasted if I never contribute a winning block. Basically, at this point, my server will receive and forward transactions across the network and that's it.

Two basic questions:

• Apart from forwarding transactions, is there any value in my running the code?
• If not, is there a way to disable mining and just do transaction forwarding?

Thanks.