[XMR] Monero - A secure, private, untraceable cryptocurrency

[bitebits]

How can I tell if it is actually part of the network, if I am helping Monero with my node, or just wasting energy and bandwidth?

In the Daemon, enter the command 'status'. When you have 8+0 connections, you are not supporting the network.

If you get new blocks you are connected and are a part of the network

Yes then you are connected, but your node is not supporting the network (you need to open port 18080 and 18081).

EDIT1: port 18081 is used for RPC, thanks jwintern.
EDIT2: print_cn is a nice command as well to verify whether your node is not only downloading.

[jwinterm]

How can I tell if it is actually part of the network, if I am helping Monero with my node, or just wasting energy and bandwidth?

In the Daemon, enter the command 'status'. When you have 8+0 connections, you are not supporting the network.

If you get new blocks you are connected and are a part of the network

Yes then you are connected, but your node is not supporting the network (you need to open ports 18080 and 18081).

I don't think you need or want to open both ports, just the p2p port - 18080.

[papa_lazzarou]

... Maybe he is abandoning ship like Shen?

https://forum.getmonero.org/8/funding-required/87059/shen-noether-ringct-review-multisig-design-and-implementation

 

I just read two guys speculating...

[visdude]

How can I tell if it is actually part of the network, if I am helping Monero with my node, or just wasting energy and bandwidth?

In the Daemon, enter the command 'status'. When you have 8+0 connections, you are not supporting the network.

If you get new blocks you are connected and are a part of the network

Yes then you are connected, but your node is not supporting the network (you need to open ports 18080 and 18081).

I don't think you need or want to open both ports, just the p2p port - 18080.

...and how does one go about opening port 18080 on a Windows machine (not everybody runs Linux)? Elaborating on technical nuances such as this one would encourage interested non-tech savvy folks to participate in community activities instead of being discouraged due to "technicalities".

[bitebits]

...and how does one go about opening port 18080 on a Windows machine (not everybody runs Linux)?

No matter your PC runs Windows or Linux from your home's internet connection, you need to open port 18080 in your Router and point them to the PC running the Monero (or Bitcoin) node.

[Hueristic]

How can I tell if it is actually part of the network, if I am helping Monero with my node, or just wasting energy and bandwidth?

In the Daemon, enter the command 'status'. When you have 8+0 connections, you are not supporting the network.

If you get new blocks you are connected and are a part of the network

Yes then you are connected, but your node is not supporting the network (you need to open ports 18080 and 18081).

I don't think you need or want to open both ports, just the p2p port - 18080.

...and how does one go about opening port 18080 on a Windows machine (not everybody runs Linux)? Elaborating on technical nuances such as this one would encourage interested non-tech savvy folks to participate in community activities instead of being discouraged due to "technicalities".

Just forward them from your router as was previously shown and make a firewall exception and/or any port blocking software you use. The ports are always open and listening by default. It's awesome being a security engineer with everything designed with security as an after thought and patched in later.

[jwinterm]

...

...and how does one go about opening port 18080 on a Windows machine (not everybody runs Linux)? Elaborating on technical nuances such as this one would encourage interested non-tech savvy folks to participate in community activities instead of being discouraged due to "technicalities".

Connect to your router using your web browser, log in, open port 18080, then setup port forwarding for 18080 to the computer running the node. Windows probably already asked you if you wanted to make an exception for the firewall the first time you ran monerod, and you probably clicked yes, so you should be all set there.

[c789]

...

...and how does one go about opening port 18080 on a Windows machine (not everybody runs Linux)? Elaborating on technical nuances such as this one would encourage interested non-tech savvy folks to participate in community activities instead of being discouraged due to "technicalities".

Connect to your router using your web browser, log in, open port 18080, then setup port forwarding for 18080 to the computer running the node. Windows probably already asked you if you wanted to make an exception for the firewall the first time you ran monerod, and you probably clicked yes, so you should be all set there.

Here's a vid (not mine) on how to forward a port: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQXJ7sLSz14

When he's around minute 3:30 showing the internal and external ports, just put 18080 in both of those fields, and for the Protocol, select "TCP". The name field doesn't matter but naming it "XMR" or "Monero" would be descriptive. The "To IP Address" should be the IP address of your Monero computer, and you can find your IP address as described in the video.

[hyc]

How can I tell if it is actually part of the network, if I am helping Monero with my node, or just wasting energy and bandwidth?

In the Daemon, enter the command 'status'. When you have 8+0 connections, you are not supporting the network.

No. As long as you're connected to at least 2 other nodes you're supporting the network. It doesn't matter whether the connections are incoming or outgoing.

[bitebits]

How can I tell if it is actually part of the network, if I am helping Monero with my node, or just wasting energy and bandwidth?

In the Daemon, enter the command 'status'. When you have 8+0 connections, you are not supporting the network.

No. As long as you're connected to at least 2 other nodes you're supporting the network. It doesn't matter whether the connections are incoming or outgoing.

Interesting, seriously. Could you elaborate on that (how are you contributing / in what sense)?

Secondly. If I say that you are not a full node when not uploading, would that statement be correct?

[owlcatz]

Here's a vid (not mine) on how to forward a port: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQXJ7sLSz14

When he's around minute 3:30 showing the internal and external ports, just put 18080 in both of those fields, and for the Protocol, select "TCP". The name field doesn't matter but naming it "XMR" or "Monero" would be descriptive. The "To IP Address" should be the IP address of your Monero computer, and you can find your IP address as described in the video.

Am I crazy, cuz I have never had to do any of that - My router has UPNP turned on, so it just works.

from monerod.exe window:

status
Height: 1232508/1232508 (100.0%) on mainnet, not mining, net hash 52.65 MH/s, v4, up to date, 11+21 connections

On my router in UPNP settings I see:

UPnP Portmap Table
Active   Protocol   Int. Port   Ext. Port   IP Address
Yes   TCP   18080   18080   192.168.0.22

                                                   ^^^ That's my PC running monerod.exe

[jwinterm]

Yes, yes you're completely insane

Seriously though, upnp is not generally considered to be very good in terms of security:
http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/118918/is-upnp-still-insecure

[owlcatz]

Yes, yes you're completely insane

Seriously though, upnp is not generally considered to be very good in terms of security:
http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/118918/is-upnp-still-insecure

Thanks, good to know, haven't seen that ever mentioned here before.

[adonai]

Can someone send me an invitation to the community slack plz?) contact me via PM for e-mail)

[BoscoMurray]

Can someone send me an invitation to the community slack plz?) contact me via PM for e-mail)

I don't think there is one. Folks hang in Freenode IRC: #monero  •  #monero-dev  •  #monero-otc  •  #monero-markets  •  #monero-pools  •  QQ Group: 272729907

[dEBRUYNE]

That's most likely a problem on ShapeShift's end. If you are exchanging XMR for BTC I'd advise to use XMR.to. Note that, if I recall correctly, Shapeshift has stated that they now recognize unconfirmed transactions too, but looking at your issue apparently they don't yet.

Regarding your other issue, see:

https://github.com/monero-project/monero/issues/1630

As for that other issue, it seems pretty serious.  Am I understanding git correctly that this issue has been found and fixed but not pushed out in a new release yet?  For the two txs of mine that were stuck last night when I posted this, it took HOURS to get confirmed into a block and the unconfirmed pool was up to around 75 txs, also for hours, until it eventually worked itself out.

A fix has been proposed here:

https://github.com/monero-project/monero/pull/1631

It has yet to be merged.

[dEBRUYNE]

Can someone send me an invitation to the community slack plz?) contact me via PM for e-mail)

PM needmoney90 on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/user/needmoney90

[bitebits]

Thinking about getting a Cryptosteel (anyone experience using it?).

When you backup your seed, there is only space for the first four letters per word. Is the below quoted text applicable to Monero as well?

you only need to assemble the first 4 letters of each word. Those 4 letters are unique and sufficient to recover the sentence and the entire bitcoin wallet. We did a frequency analysis and determined the minimum set of letters that are needed [is four]

[jacobmayes94]

i am trying to send monero from mymonero but it is showing i do not have a balance when i try and send yet shows a balance, they mentioned about a bug. I am selling this to a customer so I am trying to get it out of the wallet. It has not been spent.

[birr]

Thinking about getting a Cryptosteel (anyone experience using it?).
When you backup your seed, there is only space for the first four letters per word. Is the below quoted text applicable to Monero as well?

you only need to assemble the first 4 letters of each word. Those 4 letters are unique and sufficient to recover the sentence and the entire bitcoin wallet. We did a frequency analysis and determined the minimum set of letters that are needed [is four]

Monero seeds use the electrum wordlist.  The list was designed so that the first few letters uniquely define a word.
I heard it was actually three letters.  I'm not going to spend time searching for whether it's three or four.  
But here's a link to the wordlist
https://github.com/monero-project/monero/blob/master/src/mnemonics/english.h
Maybe you can use a script or spreadsheet, and compare the third letter in every consecutive word pair in that list.

I just did a quick visual scan of the third letter in a series of a few hundred of those words and didn't see any matches of the third letter in two consecutive words.