Bitcoin-qt data on external drive

2

I have done the instructions listed here: How to move Bitcoin data from Application Support on an external drive [Mac]

It works fine for a flash drive connected the mac, but I wanted to have the data read from my network storage device (ReadyNAS). Bitcoin-qt comes up with the following error when I link it to the NAS:

EXCEPTION: N5boost12interprocess22interprocess_exceptionE       
Operation not supported       
bitcoin in Runaway exception 

Any ideas on what this could be?

k3tan

Posted 2014-03-22T22:19:00.223

Reputation: 21

Answers

1

It is trying to acquire a lock on the lockfile in the data directory, which likely fails due to not being supported on the network file system you use to access your NAS.

Even if that could be safely ignored (the lockfile is just there to prevent you from running multiple Bitcoin Core instances on the same directory), it is a warning that more problems exist. In general, running a database on a network filesystem is a bad idea because of lack of support for operations or guarantees that databases require. It would either just not work, be very slow, or get corrupted very easily.

However, this is all because of the databases used (blocks/ index/, chainstate/ and wallet.dat). The block data itself is not a database, and could be moved elsewhere. Bitcoin Core does currently not support moving just the block data elsewhere, though.

Pieter Wuille

Posted 2014-03-22T22:19:00.223

Reputation: 54 032

0

I quite literally just had the same problem. Downloaded 0.90 on Mavericks, connected to my FreeNAS box in Finder, made a directory to hold the block chain, told Bitcoin-QT to save the block chain there in the dialog and got the same message:

A fatal error occurred. Bitcoin can no longer continue safely and will quit.

EXCEPTION: N5boost12interprocess22interprocess_exceptionE
Operation not supported
bitcoin in Runaway exception

Rob

Posted 2014-03-22T22:19:00.223

Reputation: 1

This could be better as it's own question or a comment adding more info the problem.John T 2014-03-23T17:57:03.070