[Ethereum] How to run geth at 512Mb RAM Digital Ocean droplet

digitaloceango-ethereummemory

When geth process consumes too much memory it gets killed (not at all gracefully) by Digital Ocean.

Partly solved the problem by implementing swap – Setting up geth Ethereum node to run automatically on Ubuntu. But still recieved one kill within 2 mln blocks download running geth –fast –cache=16.

Similar question: Is it possible to decrease RAM usage of go-ethereum(geth)? The answer here is – NO.

Is there a way to limit geth memory usage or maybe kill it "more gracefully" than Digital Ocean with something like monit?

Best Answer

It seems like 2 Gigs of swap and swappiness 30 is enough to run geth with no crashes with just 512 Mb of RAM.

It is almost 2 months now. I'm in full sync (block 3097083). And had no crashes ever. So I'm marking this answer as the right one.

I'm also monitoring geth with monit which will restart geth if it crashes.

My config in detail is here - How to run geth at 512Mb RAM Digital Ocean droplet

Install geth - Mac

https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/wiki/Installation-Instructions-for-Mac

Open Terminal.
Install homebrew by pasting this line and hitting enter : /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
Install geth by running each of these in terminal one at a time (copy, paste, hit enter, wait)

brew tap ethereum/ethereum

brew install ethereum

Run geth fast

Open Terminal and type geth --fast and hit enter

Delete chaindata

If you have already started syncing Mist you may want to delete your chaindata. I would recommend doing this as it ensures you get the full benefits of --fast, and allows you to start fresh. For those re-syncing after months, it'll help eliminate corrupted chain files, ensure no problems from before homestead - > after homestead, and help get rid of bloat.

Open Mist and go Accounts - > backup - > accounts.
If you have any accounts, copy the files inside keystore (they look like UTC-2016-5-16.......) to your Desktop AND a USB drive (or two). These are your encrypted private keys. If you lose these, any ETH inside these accounts will be inaccessible and lost forever.
Go up a folder level and find the chaindata folder. Delete just this chaindata folder. Alternatively, you could move it to your Desktop if you think the sync might not work and you want to recover it later.
Then run geth --fast

UPDATE: geth --fast has been deprecated. Use geth syncmode="light" insted.

[Ethereum] Hosting Ethereum on Digital Ocean

If you plan on running a full client on a VPS from digital ocean you can access it using ssh and just copy the client and/or files such as accounts and contracts:

$ scp -r directoryWithEthClientAndFiles/ VPSHostName@xx.xx.xx.xx:/path/to/remote/directory
$ ssh VPSHostName@xx.xx.xx.xx
# Enter password if user/pass authentication is enabled
$ cd /path/to/remote/directory
# Launch geth
$ ./geth

To run a GUI app such as Mist you need to run:

$ export DISPLAY=:0

on the remote machine.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Ethereum] How to run geth –fast on OSX

Install geth - Mac

Run geth fast

Delete chaindata

[Ethereum] Hosting Ethereum on Digital Ocean

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