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I'm trying to run bitcoind on an AWS debian instance. Running with the -daemon option would terminate with no indication as to why so I decided to run it under a screen. I started it last night (without options) and disconnected from the screen and verified that it was working. This morning the server had stopped so I reconnected to the screen session it was running on and the only message bitcoind gave was "Killed".
There's nothing in the logs that seems to indicate how or why this is happening and I'm at a bit of a loss. Can anyone give me some recommendations or insight on how to determine the cause of the issue?
1This often occurs when the machine runs out of memory. If so, there would likely be a message in one of your system logs (not the bitcoind log). How much memory does your instance have? – Nate Eldredge – 2014-01-30T18:07:07.803
1@SunWKim: I don't know exactly how AWS works, but it seems unlikely that this is due to Amazon's interference. Providers typically don't mess with what's running on a virtual machine; you've paid for the instance and you're entitled to use all its resources. If there were a problem, I'd expect them to shut down the instance completely, not go around killing processes on it. – Nate Eldredge – 2014-01-30T18:10:29.127
@NateEldredge - Thanks for the memory suggestion. I have ~589 mb and linux is reporting about 6mb free when the server is running so you're probably correct. You mention there is a system log that would indicate an out of memory exception? I know it's most likely the issue but for my own curiosity where would I locate it? (Linux newbie) – Spencer Ruport – 2014-01-30T19:21:53.380
Is this a free usage tier or AWS you have paid for? From my understanding, if you have to pay for AWS you are losing money since you will not mine enough in the long run to pay for the computing cost. – Sun – 2014-01-30T19:57:29.550
Yeah, that's probably too little memory. For reference, bitcoin-qt is using about 400MB on my machine right now, and of course you need some for the rest of the system. For logs, I'm not 100% sure about Debian but I would look in
/var/log/syslog, or if you haven't rebooted since the incident, rundmesg |less. – Nate Eldredge – 2014-01-30T20:36:44.130When Bitcoind is initially syncing the blockchain, it takes a lot more memory and CPU recources than when it's all caught up. I regularly saw 90+% CPU on a 1.5gb Ubuntu instance. But it all settled down once I caught up. – ChrisW – 2014-01-30T21:14:59.430
@SunWKim - I'm aware of this. It's purely for educational purposes both in getting familiar with bitcoin and linux. – Spencer Ruport – 2014-01-30T21:27:33.140
@NateEldredge - If you turn your comment into an answer I'll upvote/accept it. – Spencer Ruport – 2014-01-30T21:28:15.503