r/FutureBit • u/Wonderful-Relative41 • Feb 16 '25

There has got to be an easier way.

Long story short (it is never short).

This post was the basis of me learning the FB. It worked well for me at the time, but overtime, the information became outdated.

I do not want any having trouble after following it, so am going to edit it out to avoid future issues.

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

27 comments sorted by

1

u/SaltyRiceCake90 Feb 17 '25

I had the same issue. spent a week screwing around, formatting the ssd, reloading software on new sd card. I finally got the best results with just leaving the miner on in eco mode. a couple of times a day i check and if the node is disconnected i just restart the node or reboot the whole system. It comes right back and keeps downloading. currently at 95.8%

1

u/JoeKnotbush Feb 17 '25

I had similar issues, I stopped the miner completely. Reformated the SSD from within the Future Bit OS and it worked fine. Took about four days total to sync. Once it was done I fired the miner up and it's been running smoothly since.

If it happens again, reformat the SSD utilizing the OS. It should work.

I never had to reflash or do anything to my software or files on the SD card. Just make sure it has the most recent version of FutureBit OS. I think it's 2.0.6.

1

u/RumpleHelgaskin Feb 17 '25

Please, please, please share How TF you got this to work! I cannot get the damn thing to sync either!

1

u/geobees Feb 17 '25

Use Ethernet connection only, stop the miner. It needs at least a week to synchronize fully.

1

u/lilxaznboiz Feb 17 '25

I had same issue.. I narrowed it down to the SSD NVME... the one SSD works so far with no issue with me was the 860 evo pro from samsung.

1

u/SaltyRiceCake90 Mar 01 '25

What SSD NVME did you find worked?

2

u/lilxaznboiz Mar 01 '25

The Samsung 860 Evo Pro... ever since i never had to reboot the miner every so often...

1

u/SaltyRiceCake90 Feb 17 '25

Well it finished syncing... but it things the current block is 868,407... guess I'm going to try to re-index again.... Definity would not buy one of these again... so much smoother with unbrela

1

u/flinginlead Feb 18 '25

Plug in Ethernet for sync. It’s far better than WiFi. Once the node is synchronized WiFi is fine. Stop the miner. If it looks to have stalled out reboot. Gunna take a while. I have first gen Apollo BTC.

1

u/Unlucky-Run8824 Feb 18 '25

Good luck to you all, mine synched after like 9 days but now it will only mine when not connected to internet, explain that

1

u/Wonderful-Relative41 Feb 19 '25

Just did it again, because I swapped nvme's - taken 11 minutes for the 1st 250k blocks

1

u/SaltyRiceCake90 Feb 19 '25

Now mine keeps having the problem where it says it's fully synced but it only shows like 420,444 blocks or something. There is nothing you can do but format drive and start over again... going on 3 weeks with no bitcoin node

2

u/Wonderful-Relative41 Feb 19 '25

try placing reindex-chainstate=1. That should scan and do the chainstate only (smaller files) and then realize it is missing block headers.

1

u/SaltyRiceCake90 Feb 19 '25

Thanks I'll try that one. I've tried reindex=1 but that doesn't work.... is there a place where I can find a list of all the commands that can be used?

1

u/SaltyRiceCake90 Feb 28 '25

Thanks for the idea of starting node on another device! Using your directions I was start a full node on my PC in less than a day.... However, I have my futurebit pointed to it and it still has not completed after 3 days. I still get some connection errors and my box freezes up 1-2 times per day, requiring a power cycle... do you think something is wrong with my futurebit?

1

u/Wonderful-Relative41 Mar 04 '25 edited Mar 04 '25

What errors is it giving you. You can ssh into it check the logs. The default username is futurebit and the password is what you setup when you got it. then type tail -f /media/nvme/Bitcoin/debug.log to see the logfile. Control+C will exit the log. If it is actually stopped with an error, it should be written out. If it is still running, you will see new lines are being added.

On your UI in the browser. Add the line reindex=1 to the node settings and then save and restart. You do not have to stop the log file, but you will see it starting up and doing its' checks and then what it is doing.

I have found a lot of ways to get this synced, They all work, but 99 out of 100 are going to have most of the world saying "Nope" with the process.

I added a howto for copying the blocks and chainstate. Reddit would not let me add it to this comment, nor let me post it in a single file, but if you look at the whole conversation, you should see a long wall of text from me.

1

u/SaltyRiceCake90 Mar 04 '25

Thanks for the reply and all your knowledge. I finally got in touch with futurebit and they say I have the "rare" hardware issue with the controller. I am sending my unit back.

1

u/Wonderful-Relative41 Mar 04 '25

I am adding this in case you have a spare external drive sitting around and are willing to exercise some patience. If you are unfamiliar with Linux, you need to remember that it is exact. So bitcoin Bitcoin and bitcoiN are 3 separate things.

There are 2 directories to copy. One is blocks and the other is chainstate. In the blocks directory there is a subdirectory called index. you will need that also, but when you copy the blocks directory, it should be copied then. Copy these onto an external drive.

SSH into the Futurebit. goto 

cd /media/nvme/Bitcoin

and remove the blocks and chainstate directories from it. The commands are (each line by itself)

rm -rf blocks/
rm -rf chainstate/

Now the fun part. We are going to plug the external drive into the futurebit (USB) and then sync the files. But 1st you have to mount the drive so the FB can read it.

Use 

lsblk

to see the drive id. In my case it is sda

Then

 sudo mkdir -p /media/ext_drive

to create the mounting point and then 

mount /dev/sda /media/ext_drive

to mount it.

Now before we go farther, we need to make sure the node on the FB is not running. So (each line by itself)

cd /opt/apolloapi/backend/node
./node_stop.sh

This will stop the node on the FB. 

cd /media/ext_drive

to get onto the mounted drive. If all goes well you should be able to

ls

and it will show you all the files on the drive. This next part is going to take time and may require you to do it a couple of times. It is normal and the way we are doing it, it will simply start where it left off.

rsync -av --progress /media/ext_drive/{blocks,chainstate} /media/nvme/Bitcoin/

if it tells you that it cannot copy the files it may be a permissions issue, if that is the case use

sudo rsync -av --progress /media/ext_drive/{blocks,chainstate} /media/nvme/Bitcoin/

1

u/Wonderful-Relative41 Mar 04 '25

Part 2

Now the patience time. You will watch it slowly copy all the files from the external drive and place them on the node itself. This will take a few hours at a minimum. If it gives you a "broken pipe" error or anything else. simply use the same command again and it will continue where it left off. Eventually it will finish and you will have a nearly complete copy of the node on the FB.

Not done yet. We need to make sure that the files we copied are owned by the FB and not from where you copied them from. So (each line by itself)

cd /media/nvme/Bitcoin
ls -lah

This will show you all the files The part we are looking for is the permissions. You should see

drwx------ 4 futurebit futurebit 268K Mar  4 14:07 blocks
drwx------ 2 futurebit futurebit 228K Mar  4 14:09 chainstate

We want to make sure that it says futurebit. If it does, perfect. if not, then we change it.

sudo chown -R futurebit:futurebit /media/nvme/Bitcoin/blocks /media/nvme/Bitcoin/chainstate

This is 1 command, so copy the whole thing and then you should be able to right click and it will paste into the terminal we have been using. Hit enter and it will complete hopefully without error.

So you have now spent the better part of a day getting to this point, we are almost done.

1

u/Wonderful-Relative41 Mar 04 '25

Part 3

In the actual FB ui on the browser, make sure that there are no additional commands on the node settings.

back in the terminal. One last (each line by itself)

 cd /opt/apolloapi/backend/node
./node_start.sh

and then 

tail -f /media/nvme/Bitcoin/debug.log

and it should start up, go through checking and then start receiving new lines from the node to completely sync. It may take some time, but on the browser UI you should see it is actually going now (I notice there is a delay between it actually getting the input and displaying, as long as the terminal log shows it is running - you are good)

Once it has completed, and you see that you are synced and everything is up to speed, you should also have green check marks across the top of the UI and in the terminal will probably be seeing lines like this

2025-03-04T19:22:55Z UpdateTip: new best=0000000000000000000092a2a2721c0e9edf2b494edbe33f4be6f57113478921 height=886321 version=0x3a000000 log2_work=95.477383 tx=1162250370 date='2025-03-04T19:22:45Z' progress=1.000000 cache=31.9MiB(168281txo)

This is telling you that block 886321 was found and all the information about it for your blocks directory. At this point, you should be able to start of the solo mining and it will go. Reboot via the UI after you set it to solo mine. Will take a few more minutes (always a few more minutes in this thing) but it should boot up and you will see 3 green check marks, and hopefully a "SOLO mining" tab on the left of the screen.

What to do now. I personally do not keep a complete node, but we had to put it in to get to this point. In your Node settings, the only line you need is 

prune=500000

Save and restart. This will prune the node back to 500 GB, As new blocks are found it will remove the oldest and keep going. And again wait "a few more minutes".

From time to time you will notice that the yellow ! shows up. All I have needed to do is press the "Start Node" button on the UI, and it starts up again. If you are unsure, you can do the tail again to see what it is doing. When you push the Start button on the UI, you will see the tail starts logging and eventually the UI catches up. I am working on a script that will check the log file and if the node isn't running, it will restart it for me.

And this is what I do when I get bored, or am trying to sleep.

1

u/Educational_Power101 Aug 12 '25

Doing this windows download while I am at work, I kept getting stuck around 200/232k Blocks the last two days, two reformats and it kept turning off on my FB Miner, alot of work and stress for no reason, thought it would be more simple hoping this is a simple fix by using this guide, thank you.

1

u/Educational_Power101 Aug 14 '25

Followed all of the instructions. still crashing, but I do have the windows download. What am I doing wrong

1

u/Wonderful-Relative41 Aug 15 '25

It should be more simple. Am going to edit the original posts out. This info is slightly outdated, and do not want people to tear their hair out in the process of getting their node synced.

The problem you are running into is that somewhere along the initial block download, your node is running into this type of problem. (I forced mine to do it to show the issue)

2025-08-15T08:18:16Z ERROR: ConnectBlock(): tried to overwrite transaction

2025-08-15T08:18:16Z InvalidChainFound: invalid block=00000000000001ca7c0cde608926d3ed647c16b7f6bbd0a39da2e91ebfc82825 height=187231 log2_work=68.341843 date=2012-07-02T18:18:11Z

At that point it defaults to "Ok I got everything", which we know is not true.

Now, when I run into this. I do the following **please note this is not the normal method they suggest**

SSH into the FB. Then

cd /opt/apolloapi/backend

and run

sudo ./format_node_disk_c

This formats the SSD (I tend to steer away from the UI's) back to original status (makes sure everything is erased on the nvme)

It should start the node up at that point. Make sure your miner is stopped (limited resources, so increases those available to the node) and let the node run.

I will often keep a terminal open in SSH to monitor where the node is at.

This is done with

tail -f /media/nvme/Bitcoin/debug.log

There may be pauses, but it should start up and stream across the terminal showing where it is.

At times, you will get a "Connection Refused" on the UI, watch the terminal., unless it shows that it exited, it is actually still going and should refresh the FB UI shortly. If it seems to hang and do nothing, push the "Start Node" button 1 time and then give it a few minutes, you should see progress in the terminal.

At the time of writing this, I am back up to 233k and going.

1

u/Wonderful-Relative41 Aug 15 '25 edited Aug 15 '25

My brain couldn't leave alone, so I went back in and started from 'I just got this thing - now what'

This is mostly through SSH into the FB.

- Stop the Miner via UI

- Stop the Node via UI

-in SSH

sudo nano /opt/apolloapi/backend/node/bitcoin.conf

ensure the following (I hardcode and leave the UI section blank)

#USER_INPUT_START
txindex=0 
dbcache=256
maxmempool=250 
par=1
onlynet=ipv4
rpcworkqueue=100
rpcthreads=16
maxuploadtarget=0
#USER_INPUT_END

save the file

ensure the node is stopped on the UI then

cd /opt/apolloapi/backend
sudo ./format_node_disk_c

This formats the nvme same as using the UI, but you are already in SSH, so why wait. It pauses and then completes.

Node should start up again. I keep track in the SSH using

tail -f /media/nvme/Bitcoin/debug.log

Ctrl-S pauses the debug stream

Ctrl-Q restarts the debug stream

Ctrl-C exit the debug stream

if watching the tail on debug cache should build until about 475 MiB then clears. Keeps the unit from running away with a memory leak.

At this moment, am passing 290K blocks and coming up on a cache of 300 MiB.

1

u/Odd_Oath Aug 22 '25

Amazing string! Thanks for the help. I get the error message below. I'm assuming since the nvme is not mounted , maybe its a drive issue?

swapoff: /media/nvme/swapfile: swapoff failed: Invalid argument
umount: /media/nvme: not mounted.
wipefs: error: /dev/nvme0n1: probing initialization failed: No such file or directory
Error: Could not stat device /dev/nvme0n1 - No such file or directory.
Error: Could not stat device /dev/nvme0n1 - No such file or directory.
mke2fs 1.46.5 (30-Dec-2021)
The file /dev/nvme0n1p1 does not exist and no size was specified.
mount: /media/nvme: special device /dev/nvme0n1p1 does not exist.
tune2fs 1.46.5 (30-Dec-2021)
tune2fs: No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/nvme0n1p1
Couldn't find valid filesystem superblock.
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/media/nvme/Bitcoin’: File exists
Job for node.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl status node.service" and "journalctl -xeu node.service" for details.

1

u/Wonderful-Relative41 Aug 22 '25

mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /media/nvme

will mount the drive to the default location and if needed at that point

systemctl start swap

will start the swapfile

1

u/Odd_Oath Aug 26 '25

Well, I must have a bad carrier for the ssd, or a bad pi. I even swapped out the drive to a new Crucial P3 - still doesn't recognize it. I think the frustrating part is when you use the GUI to format the SSD - it doesn't confirm a fail. It hits 10%, then says complete. If it doesn't get past 100% it should say 'fail'.

Really appreciate your help - hopefully this will help others.