I’m running a small farmer on a Raspberry Pi 4. The Full Node has been syncing for about 24 hours, and the status is Not Synced. Iterations and height have been steadily increasing. Farming Status is syncing. It appears that Chia no longer farms while syncing. What is happening with my plots? Is there a way to transfer whatever’s already been happening on my Pi to my PC? Or is the farming currently happening on the Pi unproductive?
While plotting is independent of being synced / having an Internet connection to the blockchain, farming requires the farmer to be synced.
If your Pi is not synced, you are not farming your plots and you cannot win any block-rewards (XCH).
Plots are not accessed by the farmer while out of sync, and you can give another device (PC) read access to your plots. As long as the (PC) farmer is using the same privateKey (mnemonic phrase) as the Pi farmer…
1 Like
That’s really helpful and clarifies a lot about how farming works. I think my main connection issue is related to port forwarding on 8444, because I’ve been unable to connect to the PC as well, and the full node on both machines no longer works.
Having multiple farmers on the same network can confuse the software.
you should run 1 farmer, and you can have multiple harvesters (like one on the Pi, and one on the PC)
plotters are independent, you just need to provide the farmer + pool keys and the harvesters need to be able to read the completed plot location.
I suggest you get your farmer going on your PC, harvester on the Pi
and at some point after that works you consolidate everything to the Pi… I assume that’s your goal to use the low energy usage of the Pi to keep your farm going.
The block-chain data that the syncing process downloads from peers is stored in a local database, you can copy this from the PC (after it completes the sync) to the Pi… it should speed up the sync process on the Pi by a lot.
That’s a helpful overview. It’s still confusing why watch 'chia show -s -c’ and watch 'chia farm summary' on the Pi give detailed and dynamic information on estimated network space, difficulty, iterations and height when it’s not connected. Shutting down the PC farmer/full node still has no impact on the Pi’s ability to connect when the Pi is also running as a node. Initial attempts at running the node off the PC and the harvester off the Pi failed to connect, so I thought I’d try the Tom’s Hardware method recommended by Chia. Both techniques are running into connection and sync issues, hence the Pi harvesting into the void.
I’m wondering if the sync issues on the Pi are more related to processor speed than an inability to connect - the recommended setup guide does say sync will take a long time, and that harvesting will still occur.
I have a Pi but don’t use it for Chia (and don’t want to because it would be all HDD storage or connect to the NAS server) for the reason I will explain… Slow speed of the Pi.
Example of a lower powered system and challenges: On my NAS server running a 4C/4T Opteron 2.1GHz + boost, 16GB DDR3 (not ECC) and a 512 boot SSD, I never got it to sync. I know it is VERY much more powerful than a Pi. I ended up just copying the DB file from my synced plotting system to the server and that allowed me to get to a fully synced state. Once 1.1.6 came out, I stopped having issues with the server losing sync and then getting out of sync and then having to let it catch up. I am running Windows 10 on my plotting system and Server 2019 on my NAS server.
Your recommendation to copy the DB file is very interesting. Do you think I’ll have success connecting by copying the DB file from the plotting machine to the Pi as you suggested? I know it will be much slower, but I’m happy to just run it as a hobby if the DB file will get everything connected. I’m connecting through a residential ISP behind a GCNAT. I am able to harvest and farm from my PC without UPnP enabled, but currently not the Pi.
Copying a fully synced copy of the blockchain DB would work and at least get you within a couple of hours at worst of being synced. It is worth a try if you copy your original DB on the Pi just in case.
I don’t know how to do it on Linux but with Windows, it is just as simple as make sure the Chia app and all traces of Chia on your synced (or nearly synced) system are closed (clean reboot usually does that). Then copy the DB to a USB drive. Then Reboot the 2nd system and make sure the all traces of Chia are closed. In your case, take the DB from the USB drive and overwrite the DB in Linux in the .chia folder and you are closer to synced than before.
As far as I know, you cannot harvest or farm, only create plots when a system is out of sync.