Apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere. I don't recall us ever reaching a solid conclusion on it.
A node that has pruned its block chain cannot serve the chain to new nodes. So there are three options for bootstrapping a newly installed node: 1) Have some kind of special archival nodes that never prune (advertised via the services field?). Encourage people to run them, somehow. 2) Ship a post-pruning block chain and tx index with the client downloads, so the client starts up already bootstrapped. 3) Some combination of both. It's safe to assume some people will keep unpruned chains around no matter what. But for many users (2) is easiest and archival nodes would be put under less load if they were used only by users who wish to fully bootstrap from only the code. I remember some people, Greg in particular, who were not a fan of approach (2) at all, though it has the benefit of speeding startup for new users as there's no indexing overhead. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
