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Bitcoin Core question:

Am I missing something here, or?

There is no longer a static example bitcoin.conf, so you have to generate it dynamically using a script (contrib/devtools/gen-bitcoin-conf.sh), but that script is not part of the binary distribution? (right?)

And there isn't documentation listing the meaning of all the configuration options to put into the file (which is what you get by running the above script, I believe)? (maybe I'm wrong? my searching is drawing a blank). As an example of that, see this:

https://github.com/MrChrisJ/fullnode/blob/master/Setup_Guides/bitcoin.conf

.. but that's very old, and obv it's better to be able to create your own.

It used to be the case a long time ago that running bitcoind would autogenerate a bitcoin.conf, but that's no longer true either.

How does someone running bitcoind from the binary distribution, figure out how to set config options?

josie 2y ago

the output of gen-bitcoin-conf is shipped with the binaries. so every binary release now comes with a fully commented out bitcoin.conf file that is guaranteed to be correct for that release e.g up to date options, accurate help text. if you found an example where it wasn’t, let me know!

gen-bitcoin-conf takes the output and documentation directly from bitcoind —help, which is the source of truth.

i agree the comments could be better, but it should be documented in bitcoind —help. otherwise, we end up with multiple sources of truth, and a massive maintenance burden.

in fact, the old “documented” example was out of date and in some cases completely incorrect, which is why i wrote the gen-bitcoin-conf script

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Discussion

josie 2y ago

also, nothing against lopp’s work but encouraging users to get their config from some 3rd party on the internet is a nightmare. you can reeeeaally fuck up someone’s node with the config settings , and most users using sites like lopps probably aren’t able to vet whether or not the explanations and generated configs are malicious or not.

i’ve been planning to slowly add more detailed examples to the help output of bitcoind, would love to collab if you have ideas/suggestions

josie 2y ago

TLDR; there is a full, up to date, commented config file shipped with each release, and this file is the output of gen-bitcoin-conf.

users can also dynamically generate the file themselves if they are running bleeding edge master or a non-release compiled version of core

waxwing 2y ago

Josie,

thanks for the detailed answer!

So it seems my question was just out of date.

Because I can see now that in the *latest* binary distribution, indeed a full commented bitcoin.conf is right there at the top level of the directory tree.

It wasn't there in v0.21 but it is there in v24+ so it must have changed in between.

So what we have now is exactly how I expected it to be.

I agree that auto-generation from a website isn't great.

josie 2y ago

yep! the PR was merged in may 2022 iirc, so it should be available as early as v23.1.

you can also use the script to generate an accurate config for any previous release. so let’s say you want a full commented out config for 0.21 - all you’d need to do is download 0.21 (or compile it) and then set the BITCOIND env variable before running the script