Bitcoin Core builders have been making an attempt to squash a cockroach of a bug that has bothered full node operators since 2020. This month, it looks like they may have lastly exterminated the pesky disk fill assault as soon as and for all.
The disk fill assault bodily annoys the machines that function full nodes. Attackers use instructions like LogPrintf, LogInfo, LogWarning, or LogError to pressure the arduous drives of victims to excessively write superfluous information to disk.
Particularly for affordable or older nodes that use non-flash storage with a spinning disk, this extreme logging overwhelms their arduous drives, filling it with pointless information.
Even for storage drives that use flash storage, extreme writes degrade the disk and may even crash the machine altogether.
Ending Bitcoin’s disk fill assault
In Bitcoin Core Pull Request (PR) 32604, which revived 21603 which revived 21559, which revived 19995—sure, the chain of extermination makes an attempt spans 5 years—senior Bitcoin Core developer Gloria Zhao merged bug patch 2d59977 into grasp department manufacturing final week.
The commit handed 19 checks, and no developer indicated NACK (unfavorable acknowledgement), a vote that might have indicated disapproval of this alteration.
Builders are hopeful that after this patch proliferates throughout the Bitcoin community with the subsequent launch of Bitcoin Core, the disk fill assault would possibly lastly die. The most recent model of Bitcoin Core is 29.0, launched April 14. Core sometimes releases upgrades each few months.
As a voluntary software program bundle that doesn’t enable automated updates, full node operators should all the time select to manually improve their software program.
About 16% of node operators are operating model 29.0. Different nodes run older variations of the software program.
