Anatomy of the Bitcoin Node filesystem

There are man explanations like this, but this one is mine.

Just in case anyone was curious. I dug up some good posts on this and thought I'd distill it as best I could. I'll be using Windows file separators, but fee free to change them in your head.

If you name a -datadir argument, this is what will land there. If one is not named it defaults to %APPDATA%\Bitcoin

• <datadir>\bitcoin.conf - The config file
• <datadir>\debug.log - The log file
• <datadir>\*.dat - Info on fees, peers, bans and mempool
• <datadir>\blocks\index\* - Metadata for the block store
• <datadir>\chainstate\* - The UTXO database

If you name a -blocksdir argument, this is what will land there. If one is not named it defaults to <datadir>

• <blocksdir>\blocks\blk*.dat - The raw block data
• <blocksdir>\blocks\rev*.dat - The Undo files. List of spent UTXOs for each block

If you name a -main.walletdir argument, this is what will land there. If one is not named it defaults to <datadir>\wallets or just <datadir> if the wallets subdirectory doesn't exist.

• <walletdir>\wallet.dat - The wallet file with private keys and UTXOs
• <walletdir>\db.log - Database log of access to wallet
• <walletdir\database\* - More database logs

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Note that -datadir, -blocksdir and -main.walletdir can all point to different storage. The things you need to keep in mind:

1. -datadir should be your FASTEST storage
2. -blocksdir should be your LARGEST storage
3. -main.walletdir should be your most SECURE storage

As a footnote, testnet will throw a testnet3\ in everything, and would require a -test.walletdir switch to set the wallet directory.

Submitted September 22, 2020 at 11:11AM by brianddk https://ift.tt/3mJItvJ