user196: bitcoind is extremely slow to start (~5-20 minutes). I'm not talking about keeping up with the blockchain, that would be perfectly fine, I'm talking about an initial phase where it doesn't even respond to requests: any call to it returns "error: couldn't connect to server" (either from command line or from web).
Is it a known issue, is there a workaround?
OSX 10.6.8, bitcoind 0.7.0 (but happened with earlier versions too).

user2593: You very probably have a massive wallet.dat file.
This happens with Instawallet's bitcoind, it takes an hour to start up, it spends this time loading the wallet.
If you want to make sure :

Stop bitcoind
Open up a Terminal, and type :
$ tail -f ~/Library/Application\ Support/Bitcoin/debug.log
Press ⌘K to clear the scrollback and window
Start bitcoind

You should see some output when the client starts, if the problem is actually with loading the wallet the output should stop for a while on 'Loading wallet'.

196: <p><code>bitcoind</code> is extremely slow to start (~5-20 minutes). I'm not talking about keeping up with the blockchain, that would be perfectly fine, I'm talking about an initial phase where it doesn't even respond to requests: any call to it returns <em>"error: couldn't connect to server"</em> (either from command line or from web).</p>

<p>Is it a known issue, is there a workaround?</p>

<p>OSX 10.6.8, bitcoind 0.7.0 (but happened with earlier versions too).</p>
 2593: <p>You very probably have a massive <code>wallet.dat</code> file.</p>

<p>This happens with Instawallet's bitcoind, it takes an hour to start up, it spends this time loading the wallet.</p>

<p>If you want to make sure :</p>

<ul>
<li>Stop bitcoind</li>
<li>Open up a Terminal, and type :
<code>$ tail -f ~/Library/Application\ Support/Bitcoin/debug.log</code></li>
<li>Press ⌘K to clear the scrollback and window</li>
<li>Start bitcoind</li>
</ul>

<p>You should see some output when the client starts, if the problem is actually with loading the wallet the output should stop for a while on 'Loading wallet'.</p>
