Diagnostic mode - docker errors

DIY Community Support
1

I was having trouble building a second server on a Raspberry Pi4 in an Argon case with a M.2 SSD. I came to the conclusion HERE that I had been duped and sold fake 1TB SSD’s. I found I also had file system errors downloading the Bitcoin blockchain history on a Start9 server running in Proxmox which I took as confirmation that the SSD’s were the issue.

Now I have installed a good quality locally sourced 1TB SSD in the Raspberry Pi and find it has gone into Diagnostic Mode with a big error log pointing at a docker error. The initial log in the Bitcoin service logs pointed at a “Lost connection” but this may have been the docker repo?

I have tried re-starting, re-building etc using the Diagnostic mode buttons. I also tried the disk recovery but the result seems to be the same.

Is this likely something corrupt on the Pi’s SD card? Is it worth putting a newly flashed SD card into the server and trying to recover from the SSD? FYI: I had only one service installed (Bitcoin) and the failure happened during the blockchain download. There was also a power cut at home during the download.

Any insight would be appreciated

Thanks,
Garry

2

Hi. I’m happy to assist. But if you’re going to spend a lot of time troubleshooting, and trying to get a system working, you need adequate hardware for the job. In 2025, attempting to run a Bitcoin node on a Pi is going to be a never ending exercise in frustration. And even if you manage to complete the IBD, a month or more from now, you’re going find it buggy, with constant time-outs and errors to deal with. And… best of all, it will only get worse, as the UTXO set continues to grow, and transactions inside blocks get more and more complex, requiring more computation to verify. 1TB is just barely enough space to run a full archival node, and won’t be adequate for much longer. A Pi is fine for running other service, such as a Nostr node, with the noStrudel client, Vaultwarden, and even NextCloud will do okay. If you want to run a full archival bitcoin node stack with the mempool visualization service, wallets connected to electrs, and a lightning node, you’ll be best serviced to start with a more powerful machine, with at least 16GB of ram, and a 2, or 4TB ssd.