BTX Node 0.6.5 (Linux)

Linux only. Mac and Windows stay on node-v0.6.4 and need no action.

This brings Linux up to date with everything Mac and Windows received in 0.6.1 through 0.6.4, fixes a setup bug that only shows up on Linux, and is straight with you about what happens at block 185,000.

Read this before you update

BTX changed how blocks are proven at height 185,000. Checking those new proofs needs an Apple Silicon Mac or one of the very newest graphics cards. That is the node software's rule, not ours, and most Linux machines are outside it — every AMD card, and every NVIDIA card older than the current generation.

If yours is one of them, your node will stop at block 185,000 and this update does not change that. We ran this exact build on exactly such a machine before publishing and watched it: it reached 184,999, asked for 185,000 over and over, and stayed there.

What does change is the silence around it. Your node now knows where the real end of the chain is instead of believing 184,999 is the end of the world, and a Block checking line on the status screen tells you which mode your machine is in. A node that cannot go further says so, instead of looking perfectly healthy and going nowhere.

On qualifying hardware the node follows the chain past 185,000 normally.

Your node is still a full node either way. It keeps the whole chain and serves it to other people. "Basic" grades the checking, not the node.

Setting up is fast again

Finding the start of the chain can take the node the better part of an hour, and during that time it looks like nothing is happening. The app used to conclude something had gone wrong, throw away the verified snapshot it had just downloaded, and start building from the very beginning instead. That is the difference between being ready after a coffee and not being ready by tomorrow.

It now waits properly and uses the snapshot the moment the node is ready for it. This only affected fresh installs, never an existing node.

Everything Mac and Windows already had

• The node recovers on its own instead of quietly giving up on some blocks and needing a restart.
• Updating hands over cleanly. The old node is asked to stop and given time to finish writing to disk before the new one starts, with a retry if it is still busy.
• Quitting lets the node finish shutting down rather than cutting it off after ten seconds, so it starts fast next time.

Known rough edges, said here rather than in a support thread

• A node can stop advancing after several hours, even with peers connected and ahead of it. Restarting gets it moving. There is a fix for this in the BTX team's newer work, but taking it today would stop the node starting at all on machines without qualifying hardware, so we have left it.
• The background fill of older blocks can stall. The node keeps following the chain but never becomes a complete archive, so some older blocks stay missing. This matters only if you point a wallet or explorer at your own node and ask about history.

Install

AppImage — make it executable and run it:

chmod +x BTX-Node_0.6.5_amd64.AppImage
./BTX-Node_0.6.5_amd64.AppImage

deb:

sudo apt install ./BTX-Node_0.6.5_amd64.deb

Existing installs update themselves. Nothing to re-download: the update swaps the node program and leaves your copy of the chain where it is.

Under the hood

The bundled node is the same one Mac and Windows 0.6.4 carry, built from source from the BTX team's in-progress 0.33.3 branch at commit 1e51f0d1, because the network needed these fixes before a tagged release existed. We move to the official tag the moment it lands. It reports itself as v0.33.2 because that branch has not bumped its own version string yet; that is expected, not a mistake.

Full notes: https://easybtx.com/node/changelog