1. 
   borneq commented at 3:30 pm on January 6, 2017: none

   I have Ubuntu under Virtual Box and I try keep 100 giga block on shared folder to save space.

   1. Install Virtual Box on Windows host
   2. Install Ubuntu, for example 16.04
   3. Let Windows directory G:\vbshare be shared folder
   4. In Ubuntu : sudo mount -t vboxsf vbshare ~/host
   5. In this dir can be (but not necessary) blocks
   6. Install bitcoin-qt
   7. Choose /home/andrzej/host/.bitcoin as data dir

   Expected behaviour

   Loading blocks

   Actual behaviour

   When bitcoin-qt start tell me in Polish: “Błąd otwierania bazy bloków” (error opening blocks database)

   

   Screenshots.

   If the issue is related to the GUI, screenshots can be added to this issue via drag & drop.

   What version of bitcoin-core are you using?

   0.13.2-xenial1

   Machine specs:

   • OS: Ubuntu
   • CPU: i3
   • RAM:8 GiB
   • Disk size: 1TB
   • Disk Type (HD/SDD):HD
2. jonasschnelli added the label Block storage on Jan 6, 2017
3. 
   jonasschnelli commented at 3:55 pm on January 6, 2017: contributor

   Sudden shutdowns (happens quickly with virtual machines) can cause a block (database) corruptions. What you can do in a such case is to delete the blocks/ and chainstate/ directory and start Bitcoin-Qt (or bitcoind) again and resync the chain.

   Once we have something like this (regular incremental UTXO dumps #8037), this is probably the simplest and most effective solution (although it takes again a while to re-sync the chain).

4. 
   achow101 commented at 5:28 pm on January 6, 2017: member

   There have been issues in the past with using network shares (which is what VBox shared folders are) as the network share does not always do things properly. See #7981
5. 
   unsystemizer commented at 7:24 pm on January 6, 2017: contributor

   I’ve never seen that network shares are supported for Bitcoin Core database storage, but especially in this case (vboxsf).
6. 
   juiceayres commented at 7:41 pm on February 1, 2017: none

   I have a rpi node running in pruned mode seating in front of 1TB NAS (only supporting samba). Decided to run a full node using NAS storage for /blocks ; got the same error described in #7981. Apparently the problem is leveldb not properly supporting cifs.
7. 
   unsystemizer commented at 2:13 am on February 2, 2017: contributor

   Well, there are issues about SMB too, but this is vboxsf as I mentioned above. I haven’t looked, maybe it’s a modified Samba protocol. In any case neither of the two is supported.
8. 
   laanwj commented at 8:43 am on February 2, 2017: member

   What you could do is moving and symlinking just the blocks directory to your external storage, and leaving the rest of on the local filesystem. In my experience this works - the part of bitcoin core that have problems with “weird filesytems” are BerkelyDB for the wallet and LevelDB for the block index / utxo set. The block storage is based on just dumb files.

   Let Windows directory G:\vbshare be shared folder

   Just to be clear as you mention “shared”: no part of the state should be shared between multiple running instances of Bitcoin Core at any time. This will cause awful corruptions.

9. 
   juiceayres commented at 9:44 pm on February 2, 2017: none

   Could we have natively support for a different blocks path in future? For example -blocksdir in config to move the block data elsewhere.
10. 
    borneq commented at 9:47 pm on February 2, 2017: none

    Is -datadir; rest data apart from blocks like wallet are small
11. 
    MarcoFalke commented at 12:56 pm on May 9, 2020: member

    For example -blocksdir in config to move the block data elsewhere.

    Yes, this is now available.

12. MarcoFalke closed this on May 9, 2020

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13. DrahtBot locked this on Feb 15, 2022

Contributors
borneq jonasschnelli achow101 unsystemizer juiceayres laanwj MarcoFalke

Labels
Block storage