umbrel bitcoin node is stuck on 'starting'

got a weird issue with my umbrel node that I've been trying to sort out all day. it was running smoothly for the last few days, but now when I check the sync progress from the UI, it’s been stuck like this for hours. However, I looked at the logs through the terminal and it seems like the node is actually syncing just fine. I tried the fix mentioned here, but no luck, and I've also done the usual stuff like restarting the docker containers and rebooting. Still nothing. I'm not sure if I should just wipe it and start over or hang tight for a few more hours and see if it sorts itself out. Anyone else run into this issue or know a potential fix?

What's your total disk capacity? It might be the cause of this problem if you have a little space or it's nearly full. I found another solution on the Umbrel community. Would you mind trying this method below because some other users tried it and it worked, so it might fix your issue? Here's the method: https://community.umbrel.com/t/bitcoin-node-is-stuck-starting/12150/13

i have more than enough space for the last 5% of the blockchain (+200 gb of free space), also ram (16gb) and cpu (8 threads) should not be a problem either. this is basically the same as what i tried before, and i don't see any corrupted files errors in the logs, so i'm kind of at a loss as to what exactly is causing this, because everything seems to be working fine except for the node UI.

Have you checked current dbcache value? By default, it has value 450 which means Bitcoin Core only use 450MB to store UTXO data on RAM. It cause major slowdown during sync, especially if you store blockchain data on slow storage drive.

Are you using an external drive?  If so, try a different cable.

If you run getconnectioncount or getnetworkinfo how many connections do you have? Could be something external blocking and your node is just not getting info from other ones. Also getpeerinfo, should tell you some info too. Tor or clearnet? -Dave

I've never used Umbrel, so I'm guessing here: could it be it shows this until it's fully synced? That's more than 3 months behind. It's taking 4 seconds per block, that's quite slow.

this was one of the first things i increased to avoid any slowdown, i also have it running on a crucial bx500 ssd so i doubte storage speed was the problem. no, after the node starts it should show "running" and the sync %, latest blocks and some other info. anyway, thanks guys for trying to help, but i think it's fixed now. i still don't know what the problem was, my guess something got stuck in umbrel and it got cleared on it own after leaving it running and me stopping trying to fix it.

I have been doing IT support and networking for decades, and many many many times I have just had to stop and step away from the keyboard and let it sort itself out. No idea how or why things started working again, they just did. And digging through the logs to figure out what happened is just about impossible. Isn't tech fun. -Dave

I've had that SSD in a laptop, and it's okay for most uses, but terrible while writing data. The main problem: Low sustained write performance, and unless you have at least 12 GB RAM available for dbcache (to fit chainstate), your disk is going to write a lot. I prefer SSDs that don't drop write speed when writing a lot.

i would have preferred to run umbrel and the node on an nvme tbh. but i'm almost out of space and i don't like running a pruned node, so this was the fastest 1TB ssd i had lying around. as for performance, i haven't had any problem with it really, but that's maybe because i only used it for gaming, which does not involve much writing. i will probably be getting more storage space soon, do you have any good recommendation? i had dbcache set to 10 GB while the node was syncing. or read speed, i used to game on a shit SSD i got second hand and loading time alone wasted hours of my life.

Just in case, you may want to use either iotop or iotop-c to see whether the total I/O usage is near 100% all the time. Since you're not being specific, how about Samsung 990 Pro? It's frequently recommended on computer hardware website, although IMO it's overkill when Bitcoin Core is the only disk intensive application.

The last SSD I bought was a Samsung Evo. It's good for sustained writes. I usually check a few reviews before buying one. Budget disks aren't worth saving a few bucks if it means lower performance for many years to come. As long as it doesn't start active swapping, I don't think this can be the reason for slow syncing. That's terrible. Read speed is the main reason to buy an SSD

yeah, that's definitely overkill. i'll probably just check some reviews, get the best one for my specs, swap it with my current boot drive and use that for umbrel instead. it doesn't matter at this point as it's already fully synced. thanks guys i'm locking the thread since it served its purpose