In theory, both branches work with and without txindex.  You only need txindex if you want to load data over RPC from bitcoind.  Benefits of RPC loading are (1) you see unconfirmed transactions, and (2) large new blocks show up faster because most of the transactions are already in (provided that you frequently force a catch-up by loading a page or running in --no-serve mode).  See the comments about "default-loader" in abe.conf or Issue #17 about setting up RPC.

You might even manage to run in RPC mode without txindex, given an already loaded database, but this situation is vulnerable to a condition where bitcoind processes an output and its spending input before Abe loads the output.  So I specify txindex.

Note that I mistakenly documented a need to run "bitcoind -rescan" the first time with txindex in effect; that should be "bitcoind -reindex" instead.

In practice, I sometimes see the following error [EDIT: fixed] with bitcoind 0.8.1 when a blockfile other than the current one contains trailing NULs (zero bytes).
I work around it by trimming the NULs from the file (using /usr/bin/truncate in Linux and the blkfile_offset value from the error trace) and restarting.  I would like to fix this in the code.

In theory, reading the blockfiles while bitcoind runs is unsafe due to race conditions and the use of an undocumented feature.  In practice, I do not recall this ever causing a problem until Bitcoin 0.8, and the problems related to running simultaneously with 0.8.x are fixed.  Abe checks each block's Merkle root so as not to load a corrupt or incomplete block, so at worst, an error should involve resetting the datadir row to the start of the current file (or pass --rescan to Abe for a slower but easier fix).


I am sure there is some file that will be a certain size, but I don't know it.  My blocks, index, and chainstate directories are similar to yours in size, and I have a confirmed working txindex.  The way I know is by finding a transaction all of whose outputs are spent, and fetching it with "bitcoind getrawtransaction".  If it says "transaction not in index" bad, if it gives you a hex string, good.


Thank you for your support.