[BUG] My Raspberry Pi 4 4GB currently misses / doesn't finish plenty of signage points in a row
See original GitHub issueDescribe the bug There seem to be phases when my Raspberry Pi 4 GB farmer is missing several signage points in a row. As a consequence, the farmer is not participating these challenges.
E.g. around height 113661:
$ chia farm challenges
Hash: 0x52aceefed2de9a7653456e3906dd7cebd8eac57edcbcea28140741bac4689860Index: 1
Hash: 0x52aceefed2de9a7653456e3906dd7cebd8eac57edcbcea28140741bac4689860Index: 0
Hash: 0xc847981b22e0ade25ad4e8bdeee45839876c82dda55d90d3a5472330c4ac5d32Index: 63
Hash: 0xc847981b22e0ade25ad4e8bdeee45839876c82dda55d90d3a5472330c4ac5d32Index: 62
Hash: 0xc847981b22e0ade25ad4e8bdeee45839876c82dda55d90d3a5472330c4ac5d32Index: 61
Hash: 0xc847981b22e0ade25ad4e8bdeee45839876c82dda55d90d3a5472330c4ac5d32Index: 60
Hash: 0xc847981b22e0ade25ad4e8bdeee45839876c82dda55d90d3a5472330c4ac5d32Index: 37
Hash: 0xc847981b22e0ade25ad4e8bdeee45839876c82dda55d90d3a5472330c4ac5d32Index: 36
Hash: 0xc847981b22e0ade25ad4e8bdeee45839876c82dda55d90d3a5472330c4ac5d32Index: 35
Hash: 0xc847981b22e0ade25ad4e8bdeee45839876c82dda55d90d3a5472330c4ac5d32Index: 34
Hash: 0xc847981b22e0ade25ad4e8bdeee45839876c82dda55d90d3a5472330c4ac5d32Index: 33
Hash: 0xc847981b22e0ade25ad4e8bdeee45839876c82dda55d90d3a5472330c4ac5d32Index: 32
Hash: 0xc847981b22e0ade25ad4e8bdeee45839876c82dda55d90d3a5472330c4ac5d32Index: 31
Hash: 0xc847981b22e0ade25ad4e8bdeee45839876c82dda55d90d3a5472330c4ac5d32Index: 30
Hash: 0xc847981b22e0ade25ad4e8bdeee45839876c82dda55d90d3a5472330c4ac5d32Index: 29
Hash: 0xc847981b22e0ade25ad4e8bdeee45839876c82dda55d90d3a5472330c4ac5d32Index: 28
Hash: 0xc847981b22e0ade25ad4e8bdeee45839876c82dda55d90d3a5472330c4ac5d32Index: 27
Hash: 0xc847981b22e0ade25ad4e8bdeee45839876c82dda55d90d3a5472330c4ac5d32Index: 26
Hash: 0xc847981b22e0ade25ad4e8bdeee45839876c82dda55d90d3a5472330c4ac5d32Index: 25
Hash: 0xc847981b22e0ade25ad4e8bdeee45839876c82dda55d90d3a5472330c4ac5d32Index: 24
Missed signage points 38 until 59, inclusive. That’s 22 uninished signage points in a row.
I have already limited the number of target_peer_count
to 30, guessing my Raspi may be overloaded during some p2p network bursts, but this did not resolve the issue.
I have added logging statements to find out under which conditions signage points don’t get added.
A failing signage point always seems to happen when verify_n_wesolowski
doesn’t manage to return True
eventually, i.e., all wesolowski tries for this signage point return False
.
Expected behavior All signage points shall finish.
- OS: Ubuntu Server 20 LTS
- Machine: Raspberry Pi 4 4 GB
Issue Analytics
- State:
- Created 2 years ago
- Reactions:9
- Comments:81 (6 by maintainers)
Top GitHub Comments
It seems I have found a solution to this issue for my setup.
My current theory for this issue is that there is too much filesystem IO going on on the Raspberry Pi’s SD card when Chia’s config directory
~/.chia
is located on the SD card. After all, not only OS-related IO is going on on the SD card, but any Chia-related filesystem IO such as SQLite database IO and Chia logging. SD Card-based~/.chia
is set up when following the current Raspberry Pi Chia installation documentation, therefore I expect many if not all Raspberry Pi Chia users facing this problem with “normal” Raspberry Pi-recommended SD cards.To bring this issue theory to test by resolving the issue, I changed Chia’s config directory
~/.chia
from SD card to a separate (and fast) USB 3.1 flash drive (thumb drive):Monitor your logs. If everything goes well like it did for me, all signage points should now finish correctly:
From 1 to 64, all signage points within a sub slot now finish.
I have been using this solution for four hours now and so far haven’t missed finishing a single signage point. In two days, I will be able to report back full-day statistics.
In case this solution (i.e., moving
~/.chia
onto a separate device) turns out to be a viable solution, and other Raspberry Pi users facing this issue can resolve it by following this solution as well, I recommend updating the Raspberry Pi Chia installation documentation accordingly.P.S.: In case you added an additional external drive because of this and this solution works well for you, in all euphoria don’t forget to mount this new drive on boot by adding a new entry to
/etc/fstab
.P.P.S.: When things have worked well for some time, it will be save to free space on the SD card by deleting
~/.chia-backup
, though it’s always nice to have some backup of your SQLite databases around in case the live versions get corrupted for some reason.@grocheireland:
If logging looks similar to this …:
… then everything looks okay: “Finished signage point” increases one by one, and even though there were
Signage point 28 not added
in between, they were recovered from as you can tell by the line “Finished signage point 28/64”But if logging looks similar to this …:
… then things go wrong as reported with this issue here. It missed finishing signage points 25 and 26. Meaning your farmer didn’t check if it is eligible for winning Chia for those signage points missed.