Is there a way of setting up a node on umbrel or raspberry pi?
I think as the network fees increase for bitcoin, Litecoin Will offer certain advantages.
I’d like to support the network
Yes, it works very well! I have a Canakit Pi 4b with 4GB RAM running a full Litecoin node. It has been running for nearly a year. An old 500GB hard disk is attached to the USB 3.0 port through an external enclosure.
It is running Litecoin Core v0.21.2.2. The full, unpruned blockchain, is currently using 141GB of disk space. The Core software can be downloaded at Litecoin - Open source P2P digital currency. Get the aarch64 version for the Pi.
The initial block download can take a long time on a Pi. The intial download is CPU intensive so the faster the CPU, the faster the download completes. I don’t remember how long it was going to take that first time but it might have been a day or two for the Pi to get it done. If you have a faster computer available, you can do the initial download with that computer onto your external HDD or SSD. Once it’s done, plug into the Pi, configure Core software on the Pi to use the external drive and it will hum along using less than 10 watts of power to run the node.
A few other points to consider:
- To be a full node, port 9333 needs to be opened on your router’s firewall so other nodes can pull from your node.
- Plugging into a UPS is good idea to prevent short power outages from possibly corrupting the blockchain database.
- Using an SSD in an external case requires an external power supply to the external case. My experience has been that the Pi cannot deliver enough power through the USB port to keep the SSD powered consistently, especially during times of high disk utilization.
- Using an HDD in an external case has shown to be stable without the external power as long as the Pi isn’t loaded down with other processes. I use the external power anyway to ensure no problems.
- A corrupted blockchain database can, but does not always, occur when the external drive unexpectedly disconnects from the Pi or when a power outage occurs. If this happens, run a scan of the drive to fix any filesystem errors, and run the Core software again. It will stop if the database is corrupt. If not corrupt, it will pick up where it left off.
- A periodic backup of the blockchain database is highly recommended in case of database corruption. It is far faster to recover from a corrupted database copying from the backup since you don’t need to do an initial block download of the whole database again.
- At times, other nodes are pulling heavily on your node, which can be a problem if you have slow upload speeds on your internet connection. Other times, the nodes are quiet and there is almost no outbound traffic. A 1.8Mbps upload DSL connection works OK under high outbound load unless other uploads are happening at the same time on your network.
Incidentally, this 4GB Pi is also running a Bitcoin Cash node (it’s not full) on the same external HDD that the Litecoin node is using. They both hum along side by side without any problems.
Another Canakit Pi 8GB is running a full Bitcoin node on an external SSD.
So that’s a long answer to your question. Hopefully you can support the network too!
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I dislike Raspberry Pis because of the USB way the SSD is connected.
I had an Umbrel Bitcoin node and several times had corrupted data because of the wiggly waggly way the disk is connected to the pie.
I am moving to thin clients and also will have a look at proxmox for ease of automatic snapshots in case of power outages.
Anyone knows of ready to use Litecoin Core docker containers?