DNS seed "seed.bitcoinstats.com" doesn't support filtering while the comments says it does

kcalvinalvin commented at 10:58 am on April 19, 2024: contributor

Is there an existing issue for this?

I have searched the existing issues

Current behaviour

It’s stated in chainparams.cpp that “seed.bitcoinstats.com” supports filtering. However, this isn’t true.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/c05c214f2e9cfd6070a3c7680bfa09358fd9d97a/src/kernel/chainparams.cpp#L137

Expected behaviour

Since “seed.bitcoinstats.com” supports filtering for NODE_NETWORK, when asked for NODE_NETWORK, it should return archival nodes. It doesn’t.

Steps to reproduce

dig x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com.

 0[I] calvin@bitcoin ~> dig x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com
 1
 2; <<>> DiG 9.18.21 <<>> x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com
 3;; global options: +cmd
 4;; Got answer:
 5;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 60119
 6;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 25, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
 7
 8;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
 9; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1232
10;; QUESTION SECTION:
11;x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com.      IN      A
12
13;; ANSWER SECTION:
14x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       13.112.109.34
15x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       3.211.51.136
16x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       3.8.38.104
17x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       64.227.26.97
18x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       69.55.55.188
19x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       34.241.94.237
20x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       3.124.65.19
21x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       3.81.243.143
22x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       51.195.28.51
23x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       46.137.123.109
24x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       138.68.173.152
25x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       69.4.94.226
26x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       142.93.200.9
27x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       54.68.82.186
28x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       18.202.91.9
29x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       52.30.154.84
30x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       116.203.99.217
31x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       13.112.109.34
32x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       3.211.51.136
33x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       3.8.38.104
34x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       64.227.26.97
35x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       69.55.55.188
36x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       34.241.94.237
37x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       3.124.65.19
38x1.seed.bitcoinstats.com. 60    IN      A       3.81.243.143
39
40;; Query time: 312 msec
41;; SERVER: 1.1.1.1#53(1.1.1.1) (UDP)
42;; WHEN: Fri Apr 19 19:35:56 KST 2024
43;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 453

Of the returned addresses, these address do not support NODE_NETWORK

 013.112.109.34
 13.8.38.104
 264.227.26.97
 369.55.55.188
 434.241.94.237
 5142.93.200.9
 618.202.91.9
 752.30.154.84
 8116.203.99.217
 913.112.109.34
1064.227.26.97
1169.55.55.188
1234.241.94.237

One can easily check bitnodes data: https://bitnodes.io/nodes/3.8.38.104-8333/

A handful of the nodes here were also unreachable at the time of this writing.

Relevant log output

No response

How did you obtain Bitcoin Core

Pre-built binaries

What version of Bitcoin Core are you using?

v23.0.0 but this doesn’t matter here

Operating system and version

Also doesn’t matter

Machine specifications

I don’t think this matters for this issue

stratospher commented at 11:39 am on April 19, 2024: contributor

oh interesting! there’s some discussion in #29809 about how to update the comments for DNS seed filtering. also cc @naiyoma

kcalvinalvin commented at 11:45 am on April 19, 2024: contributor

I guess I should add that I don’t think the nodes returned by “seed.bitcoinstats.com” are good.

My assumptions is that it’s just caching all the nodes it’s previously seen and not checking if they’re still providing all the services it previously has.

achow101 commented at 2:12 pm on April 19, 2024: member

cc @cdecker

cdecker commented at 3:56 pm on April 19, 2024: contributor

I guess I should add that I don’t think the nodes returned by “seed.bitcoinstats.com” are good.

My assumptions is that it’s just caching all the nodes it’s previously seen and not checking if they’re still providing all the services it previously has.

Indeed, I am checking the infrastructure now. And it.look like the crawler died. I’ll see if I can get it back with reasonable effort.

1440000bytes commented at 9:02 am on April 20, 2024: none

I guess I should add that I don’t think the nodes returned by “seed.bitcoinstats.com” are good.

My assumptions is that it’s just caching all the nodes it’s previously seen and not checking if they’re still providing all the services it previously has.

I have stopped using these DNS seeds. I found only 2 useful when I last tested:

seed.bitcoin.sipa.be seed.bitcoin.wiz.biz

kcalvinalvin referenced this in commit 89b512742e on Apr 22, 2024

jcvernaleo referenced this in commit f1bded4ff6 on Apr 23, 2024

besoeasy commented at 7:54 pm on April 30, 2024: none

yea seeds resolve to nothing, almost 80% nodes are down

1440000bytes commented at 9:02 pm on April 30, 2024: none

almost 80% nodes are down

Seeds are up but the results are down? Can’t do anything they are hardcoded forever.

Do not use them. dnsseed=0 and fixedseeds=0

virtu commented at 7:34 am on May 3, 2024: contributor

I have stopped using these DNS seeds. I found only 2 useful when I last tested:

seed.bitcoin.sipa.be seed.bitcoin.wiz.biz

I’m not sure the overall situation is that bad. It looks like at all times, at least two thirds of DNS seeds are returning ~70-99% reachable nodes.

Individual seeds/seeders have issues on occasion, but that’s not really a problem if they’re fixed eventually.

Since I’m monitoring the seeds anyway, I can set up some sort of alerting if that helps.

Emzy commented at 8:34 am on May 4, 2024: contributor

I have stopped using these DNS seeds. I found only 2 useful when I last tested:

seed.bitcoin.sipa.be seed.bitcoin.wiz.biz

These have a very low TTL set, which is fine.

The DNS seeds using the DNSSEC setup https://github.com/sipa/bitcoin-seeder/pull/85 will renew the DNS zone every hour and have a TTL of 1h set.

The DNS seeder https://github.com/sipa/bitcoin-seeder is only providing long running Bitcoin nodes. So caching for one hour is not an issue.

kcalvinalvin commented at 6:39 am on May 24, 2024: contributor

Just checking in on this. Seemingly nothing’s been changed since posting about this back in April

cdecker commented at 11:32 am on May 30, 2024: contributor

So just to add a bit of context here, I was using my own implementation of the seeder in order to add a bit of diversity. However that scanner has been flaky for quite some time and I am having trouble to find the time to fix up the scanner. I am planning to get back to this, however I cannot give a timeline, so if this is a real issue, please feel free to remove the seed from the code, and I’ll re-add it once it has been fixed up :+1:

mzumsande commented at 9:12 pm on June 5, 2024: contributor

Not sure if it’s helpful to do anything in between releases, but if it’s still broken in August, I’d suggest to remove it for 28.0 (a new seeder will be added in #30007, so the total number wouldn’t change).

cdecker commented at 9:34 am on June 17, 2024: contributor

I spoke with @emzy and I decided to revive this seed, and migrate to a more standard deployment as well. The overhead of the custom solution did not add enough quality, and caused the seeder to rot and break. Using sipa’s seeder will solve that, and reduce the burden of maintenance.

No timeline yet, but I’ll dedicate a couple of weekends

virtu commented at 2:41 pm on August 23, 2024: contributor

Only bumping this because there’s a good chance this seed will serve zero addresses by release time.

Seeder been stuck since January and has deteriorated from 37 down to currently 5 addresses:

0» for addr in seed.bitcoinstats.com x9.seed.bitcoinstats.com; do echo -n "unique addresses from $addr: " && host $addr | grep address | awk '{print $NF}' | sort -u | wc -l ; done
1
2unique addresses from seed.bitcoinstats.com: 5
3unique addresses from x9.seed.bitcoinstats.com: 5

1440000bytes commented at 7:38 pm on August 24, 2024: none

Only bumping this because there’s a good chance this seed will serve zero addresses by release time.

Pristine node count is already zero.

fanquake closed this on Aug 27, 2024

fanquake referenced this in commit c6d2d1cb66 on Aug 27, 2024

cdecker commented at 11:30 am on September 1, 2024: contributor

I was a bit too late getting this one fixed, apologies. But it is working again now. I’ll let it run for a while, let it settle in and prove it’s stable before aiming for reinclusion.

What would be the best way for that? Should I open a new PR, or do we want to revert the commit removing the seed? And more importantly, do we even need / want an additional seeder? If not I’m happy to shut it down permanently and concentrate on other ways to assist the network 🤗

fanquake commented at 1:05 pm on September 2, 2024: member

What would be the best way for that?

I think a new PR for re-adding is fine.

And more importantly, do we even need / want an additional seeder?

Opening an issue to gather opinions is probably the best way to have this discussion.

DNS seed “seed.bitcoinstats.com” doesn’t support filtering while the comments says it does #29911