Nostr

FYI

Because I didn't want to have to reboot, instead of making the existing 2 Gb swap file larger, I added a new 8 Gb one, and set it to a higher priority.

Interestingly, RAM usage has indeed gone up, and it's now hovering around 4.6 Gb out of 8 (3.2 -ish previously), at the expense of the cache. Swap usage however is basically the same, just 1.9 Gb out of the current 8+2= 10 Gb.

Even more interestingly, the monitor system now shows a more frequent receiving of data, as opposed to previously were it was showing brief bursts of around 5 seconds every one minute or so.

I hope this means somehow Bitcoin Core is now processing more stuff and retrieving blocks at a faster pace.

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Discussion

Judge Hardcase 1y ago

That's interesting. So in addition to making use of more RAM, by increasing the total memory space (RAM+swap) from ~10 GB to 18 GB, running Bitcoin Core is actually consuming more total memory. It's almost as if Core was (still is?) performing its own memory throttling (making its own decisions about which data to store in memory vs read/writing directly to disk) based on your total memory space. Maybe it does this in an attempt to optimize performance while processing the massive utxo set (if so, it would seem it's just not doing a very good job).

Judge Hardcase 1y ago

PS. it also seems strange that the swap usage is exactly the same - as if it's not even using the additional swap file. Is it possible the change you're seeing now is actually a result of previously lowering the swappiness parameter - and it just needed a reboot or something to finally take effect? Because the change you're seeing now is pretty much what I would have expected to see from just lowering the swappiness.

hh 1y ago

I haven't rebooted. I added a swap file with higher priority instead of making the original one larger precisely to avoid rebooting. I don't dare interrupt Bitcoin Core.

Judge Hardcase 1y ago

Understood. It seems entirely likely to me that without rebooting, the alterations you are making to the swap environment aren't even actually applied yet (until reboot that is). The growth in RAM usage could simply be a factor of Core's memory requirements growing as it progresses through processing its history of transactions.

hh 1y ago

At this point, it's all voodoo, mate 😂

hh 1y ago

I went from 2Gb swap to +8 in an additional swap file for a total of 10Gb.

It's been running a few hours now and RAM usage is up to 5Gb out of 8 now, from 3.2-ish originally, and swap usage down to 1.6Gb from 2 originally.

Swappiness down to 0 now from 60 originally.

However, Bitcoin Core doesn't show any improvement 🤷🏻‍♂️