geth never completes syncing for rinkeby

Question

My aim is to synchronise a full node for the Rinkeby network. It seems that geth does not finish synchronisation. I have had it run for over three days, but it is stuck at the last few blocks.

> eth.syncing
{
  currentBlock: 4507244,
  highestBlock: 4507319,
  knownStates: 64751595,
  pulledStates: 64748954,
  startingBlock: 4507164
}
> eth.blockNumber
0 
> admin.peers.length
1
> net.peerCount
1

When I rerun eth.syncing, then the highestBlock increases, but currentBlock doesn't.

I have tried installing different versions for geth (1.8.X, 1.9.0) I also enabled network time synchronisation via timedatectl set-ntp true as suggested in this post: Geth is stuck syncing

I run geth via geth --rinkeby --cache 2048.

My machine has 12GB RAM and 8 CPUs.

Any help would greatly be appreciated. Thank you.

Try adding --cache 2048 to Geth run command. – eth7 Jun 05 '19 at 14:18 — eth7, Jun 05 '19 at 14:18

alberto · Answer 1 · 2019-06-05T16:27:13.603

1

Last days I synched my Rinkeby node, the problem is that you are still syncing because you haven't downloaded all the state entries (pulledStates and knownStates). From now (my node):

> eth.syncing
{
  currentBlock: 4507935,
  highestBlock: 4508064,
  knownStates: 90697511,
  pulledStates: 90697511,
  startingBlock: 4507600
}

This phase takes a lot longer than the downloading of the blocks.

With the command geth --rinkeby --cache 2048 you are syncing in default mode (fast). This mode downloads the blocks and the state entries concurrently.

edited Jun 05 '19 at 16:27

answered Jun 05 '19 at 16:11

alberto

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Are you saying that I simply need to wait longer to complete syncing? – mcb Jun 05 '19 at 16:32
Maybe, you can read about here (check the HDD related questions): https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/issues/16875. I use SSD. – alberto Jun 05 '19 at 16:38

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 19 '20 at 03:59

You will have to be patient to sync a node.

It took me 60 hours to sync Rinkeby in fast mode. There were 125M state entries and the folder size was 38GB after synchronization. With time, both these numbers will grow.

You can type eth.syncing in Geth console. If you get 'False' as output, it means that syncing is finished. Otherwise you'll get various details about the blocks and the states.

By typing eth.blockNumber you will get the current block number. If the output is 0 then the syncing is not yet complete.

Here is the image when syncing was complete(all the states were pulled) and I started downloading the chain segments. Synchronized Rinkeby

geth never completes syncing for rinkeby

2 Answers2