Testnet DNS seed
5 messages, 24 to 27 Jan 2013. Started by Peter Todd.
Peter Todd (2), Jeff Garzik (2), Pieter Wuille
I setup a testnet DNS seed using Pieter Wuille's bitcoin-seeder, with some simple modifications for testnet. It's at testnet-seed.bitcoin.petertodd.org I also created static-testnet-seed.bitcoin.petertodd.org which currently has a single A record pointing to a testnet node I'm running to bootstrap the seeder itself.
Everything is running on a dedicated Amazon EC2 micro instance. Just IPv4 is supported right now as EC2 doesn't support IPv6; even tunnels are broken. I also haven't setup tor yet. I can do both if there is demand.
I guess the next step is to create a new strTestNetDNSSeed in the satoshi client, although it'd be better if at least one more person had a testnet seed to include in the list. Probably best to leave IRC enabled too.
Also, FWIW, it looks like the pnSeed list is way out of date...
Pieter: Have you written any start/stop/monitoring scripts for the seeder? My mods are at git://github.com/petertodd/bitcoin-seeder.git in the "testnet" branch. I'll send you a pull request once it's had some testing.
On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 2:01 AM, Peter Todd <pete@petertodd•org> wrote:
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> Everything is running on a dedicated Amazon EC2 micro instance. Just > IPv4 is supported right now as EC2 doesn't support IPv6; even tunnels > are broken. I also haven't setup tor yet. I can do both if there is > demand.
How long do you plan to run this? Indefinitely [presuming there is interest and users]?
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> I guess the next step is to create a new strTestNetDNSSeed in the > satoshi client, although it'd be better if at least one more person had
No objection
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> a testnet seed to include in the list. Probably best to leave IRC > enabled too.
Yes, IRC must remain enabled
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> Also, FWIW, it looks like the pnSeed list is way out of date...
Yes. Usually nanotube does the update when poked. That can happen, or something different.
A nice alternative might be a simple script that transforms Pieter's seeds.txt into pnSeed[]
On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 09:23:28PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
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> On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 2:01 AM, Peter Todd <pete@petertodd•org> wrote: > > Everything is running on a dedicated Amazon EC2 micro instance. Just > > IPv4 is supported right now as EC2 doesn't support IPv6; even tunnels > > are broken. I also haven't setup tor yet. I can do both if there is > > demand. > > How long do you plan to run this? Indefinitely [presuming there is > interest and users]?
Indefinitely. It's a pretty cheap thing to run, about $7.5/month. If anyone else wants I can give them a machine image copy easily too.
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> > Also, FWIW, it looks like the pnSeed list is way out of date... > > Yes. Usually nanotube does the update when poked. That can happen, > or something different. > > A nice alternative might be a simple script that transforms Pieter's > seeds.txt into pnSeed[]
seed.txt? You mean the dumpfile produced by bitcoin-seeder? That has uptime info, although only a months worth if I understand it correctly.
pnSeed probably should be filtered with SORB's dynamic ip list or similar too, and additionally add an expiry time. (1 year?)
On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 5:27 AM, Peter Todd <pete@petertodd•org> wrote:
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> On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 09:23:28PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote: >> On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 2:01 AM, Peter Todd <pete@petertodd•org> wrote: >> > Everything is running on a dedicated Amazon EC2 micro instance. Just >> > IPv4 is supported right now as EC2 doesn't support IPv6; even tunnels >> > are broken. I also haven't setup tor yet. I can do both if there is >> > demand. >> >> How long do you plan to run this? Indefinitely [presuming there is >> interest and users]? > > Indefinitely. It's a pretty cheap thing to run, about $7.5/month. If > anyone else wants I can give them a machine image copy easily too.
Cool. ACK on adding your seed to the ref client.
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>> > Also, FWIW, it looks like the pnSeed list is way out of date... >> >> Yes. Usually nanotube does the update when poked. That can happen, >> or something different. >> >> A nice alternative might be a simple script that transforms Pieter's >> seeds.txt into pnSeed[] > > seed.txt? You mean the dumpfile produced by bitcoin-seeder? That has
Correct.
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> uptime info, although only a months worth if I understand it correctly. > > pnSeed probably should be filtered with SORB's dynamic ip list or > similar too, and additionally add an expiry time. (1 year?)
That's fine. The main point was to create something scripted and repeatable. Then pnSeed[] becomes easier to maintain _and_ easier to audit. Right now it is a bit opaque with a list of hex constants. A script or makefile rule could do
cd src
../contrib/gen-seeds.py > seeds.h
and seeds might look like
#ifndef __SEEDS_AUTOGEN_H__ etc.
unsigned int pnSeed[] = {
0xABCD1234, /* IP addr 12.34.56.78 */
};
I think Satoshi liked them opaque and not easily searchable, so printing the readable IP address in a comment may not be desired. Anyway, that output would make updating the list more transparent and easy to maintain.
On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 05:27:52AM -0500, Peter Todd wrote:
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> seed.txt? You mean the dumpfile produced by bitcoin-seeder? That has > uptime info, although only a months worth if I understand it correctly.
It has information about all non-banned IPs that were ever connected to succesfully. The connectability% is a decaying average, with a time constant of up to a month, though.
I have a script ready which combines one or more seeds.txt's data into a pnSeed[] array C source code, by the way. I'll add it to the repository.