Post
Topic
Board Hardware
Re: Official FutureBit Apollo II/BTC Software/Image and Support thread
by
MegatronOHMICAVT
on 13/11/2024, 20:24:11 UTC
A follow up question about doing IBD and overcoming what seems to be too much stress for the RAM & processor.

I've got a backup NVME with about the first-half of the IBD on it. I would like to see if there's advice on the procedures for starting a node (Apollo BTC installing 2.0.5) by using the backed-up blockchain data.

Its a 2TB NVME drive in the node, with a 1TB NVME connected via USB and a flashed micro SD to install the system.

Questions are things like which folders need to go over and in what order should steps be taken from initial boot. Thank you!
[/quote]

/blocks  &  /chainstate
OK I haven’t done this before but I have been reading about copying the Bitcoin Core blockchain to another system and this is what I plan to do when I receive my Apollo II later this week.
I have a fully synched v22 Bitcoin Core node running on an Ubuntu PC that I’ve been playing with and I will copy it over to the new 2 TB SSD to avoid re-downloading the entire blockchain again, which might take me a week.
Bitcoin is installed on my Ubuntu PC in the home directory in the hidden folder .bitcoin. There are three subfolders within .bitcoin,   /blocks, /chainstate  & /wallets.
/blocks is 699.6 GB
/chainstate is 12.5 GB
I will not be moving over the /wallets folder or the individual files in the .bitcoin folder, files like bitcoin.conf mempool.dat, peers.dat... These are specific to that PC install and I believe the ones on the Apollo II system will already be in place or will be created on statrtup.
So basically I am moving over just two folders under the .bitcoin folder,  /blocks  &  /chainstate. That’s it.
Here’s what I plan to do when I receive the system.
Connect a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Power on and log into the Apollo system with minimum configurations settings. Stop the miner and node if they are running. Use a file manager on the desktop to make sure the file structure is the same on the SSD,  “cd /media/nvme/bitcoin” to look for the blocks and chainstate folders. If they are there then rename them to oldblocks and oldchainstate just to save them for now. Shutdown the system, remove the SSD and put on a USB/pcie adapter into my Ubuntu PC. I will put a fan blowing on the SSD during this copy as this will probably be the most work this SSD will ever experience, copying 700+ GB to it in one go. Obviously the Bitcoin Core node will not be running on my PC to ensure the files are all closed properly. After a successful copy, shutdown the PC, move the SSD back over to the Apollo II system and power it on and complete the setup.

I think it will work. Maybe someone else can chime in if this process looks reasonable or if I’ve left something out. Hope this helps. Good luck mining...

[/quote]

Thanks for this. Its what I'll be attempting. Except I'll have the drives connected to the Apollo rather than a different PC.