I’ve run full blockchain sync and wanted it to be quick. For that I’ve allocated to VM 8GB of RAM. However I see that StartOS consumes only less than 1GB of RAM while syncing blockchain.
Do I miss something in configuration or syncing blockchain doesn’t require much RAM?
Bitcoin Core itself does not use that much memory, BUT the more memory you have, linux can (and will) use this memory for disk/file caching.
This shows as “available” in StartOS, since technically, if other processes need this memory, linux will use less for disk caching and give it to the process.
If you are using Proxmox, you can see this, after running the VM for a while in the “Summary” tab of your VM, proxmox shows all your VM memory being used, while in StartOS monitor screen, you still have plenty of ram ‘available’.
This is the difference between “Free” and “Available” ram.
More ram is always better since it will be used for disk caching. and Bitcoin Core uses A LOT of disk I/O.
I’ll add to this that the main use of RAM will be towards the end of the sync, as the UTXO set only started to balloon in May of this year. It has hit as high as 9-10GB, at which point your 8GB machine may start to choke. You can also crank the dbcache to assist, but be sure to drop it down again at the end of the IBD.
