is my old laptop good enough to run a lightweight node? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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is my old laptop good enough to run a lightweight node?

2512 sats \ 22 comments \ @stack_harder 22 Oct bitcoin

ok, as part of my btc journey, i feel like running some kind of node is the next thing i need to do. i have a laptop I'm not using and was wondering if i could use it for running a partial node or something

it's an i5, but it's like 7 years old and has 50 gig free. it's so slow that it's almost unusable , especially if a windows update is happening (which it always is)

that being said, could this old piece of shit be capable of running any kind of node? if not, what are my price options for, ideally, a budget start, in node running?

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173 sats \ 5 replies \ @justin_shocknet 22 Oct

If it's an old spinning disk, upgrade that first... Lightning nodes are disk heavy and any issues with writes = RIP your channel states.

A cheap used SSD will be a big improvement but if its got a slot for an NVME do that.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @DesertDave 22 Oct

Oh man. I am syncing my node on a spinning drive right now. Can I copy it to a different disk without resyncing later?

11 sats \ 3 replies \ @justin_shocknet 22 Oct

Yea you can just stop the node process and then move it to the new disk like any other folder on the filesystem... just be very sure the process is stopped so that its not still trying to write as you move the folder

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @DesertDave 22 Oct

Perfect. I will probably finish this part and copy it over before setting up lightning then.

110 sats \ 1 reply \ @justin_shocknet 22 Oct

Is it just syncing over neutrino or are you doing a whole block sync with Bitcoin core? If you're syncing the whole blockchain I'd just stop that for now and move it, resume on the new disk, syncing core on a spinning disk can take a month of sundays

17 sats \ 0 replies \ @DesertDave 22 Oct

I am using bitcoin core on an pi 4 running umbrel. I'm not familiar with neutrino. I didn't realize that the spinning disk was why it was taking so long. I thought it was a bandwidth thing. Thats great information. I might work on that today. I'm excited to get it up before the 5th.

19 sats \ 0 replies \ @random_ 22 Oct

There is a reason you are not using it.

18 sats \ 0 replies \ @xz 22 Oct

In my experience of running nodes. Having battery backup power is not to be underlooked. IBD is problematic, or slow at best on limited CPU, memory. Can be mitigated quite a bit in bitcoin.conf. I'd defintely try it. 50g free, is going to be a big constraint, which is why I said about IBD. If you can copy the block chaindata across, that's help massively, but then you'd have to choose pruning with say a 500g external SSD (if you can't upgrade the internal drive) and pruning is quite tricky on lower spec hardware, in my experience.

You could fork out for a 1 to 2tb SSD, internal or external, and that would store your entire in blockchain, which is desirable for a LN node, because you don't have all the extra overhead of reorganizing the data when pruning (as well as all wallet transactions)

That's what I'm finding with pruning enabled. LND or your lightning implimentation isn't a huge problem with a small to medium sized node (say, less than 50 channels) on an average processor, with 8 or better still 16gb RAM. But if you want more services, like GUI for your LN node, it starts to require more processing/memory.

What speed is the CPU?

16 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 22 Oct

Read here: #439263

85 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 22 Oct

Laptops make great nodes because they have a backup power source. You'll just want to run a pruned node (guide from @TheBTCManual).

27 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 22 Oct

even much better a LN node in neutrino mode https://docs.lightning.engineering/lightning-network-tools/lnd/enable-neutrino-mode-in-bitcoin-core

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 23 Oct

that's handy because that laptop has to be plugged in at all times since the battery is trash. looking into a pruned node now

10 sats \ 6 replies \ @Butterfinger 22 Oct

I would run on a rpi4 or odroid m1 arm SBC, this laptop could be used to monitor the node just try installing debian on it and you will see how faster it is than windows.

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @DesertDave 22 Oct

I am curious. Why does a pi make a better node than an old laptop?

11 sats \ 4 replies \ @Butterfinger 22 Oct

It's my bias, I just like arm SBC, the advantages are that they consume much less energy, are very small especially those with ssd m2 support like odroids.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @DesertDave 22 Oct

That makes sense. I am off-grid so low power usage is a big deal.

11 sats \ 2 replies \ @Butterfinger 22 Oct

Also if we start thinking in terms of sats spent on energy, with the energy use of a laptop or nuc pc, one can build a node with a rpi4 or odroid that consumes like 2-6 watts and add a bitaxe for the extra eenergy to earn more sats. It may not make sense for a first world person, but in africa and other poor regions where energy is scarce it may.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @DesertDave 22 Oct

I love capturing as much energy as possible. I am all solar so if I don't use it, it gets wasted. So every little bit matters to me. What is a bitaxe?

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @Butterfinger 22 Oct

Oh my friend, are you ready to fall in love? https://bitaxe.org/

53 sats \ 1 reply \ @WeAreAllSatoshi 22 Oct

“Node” is so ambiguous. There’s Bitcoin nodes, and lightning nodes. Which are you thinking of?

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 23 Oct

to be honest, i didnt know there were different nodes lol. my thought was just a bitcoin node, at least to start

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @OgFOMK 22 Oct

An i5 is still a great processor. Add as much cheap memory as you can and get a 1 gig ssd drive. Keep it clean and dust free to maximize performance.