Testnet

[indolering]

There have been a few requests as of late asking about the testnet. Apparently, there was only 1-3 computers up at anytime, which sounds like life-support to me.

I would like to propose that we have namecoind spawn a testnet client by default. Having a functioning testnet (and faucet) is really vital to the project and we need to make sure it is up and running if we want to attract developers. As is, namecoind won't let me run both at the same time!

I'm ignorant of the technical details of the testnet setup, so forgive me if there is something I am missing.

[domob]

There have been a few requests as of late asking about the testnet. Apparently, there was only 1-3 computers up at anytime, which sounds like life-support to me.

I would like to propose that we have namecoind spawn a testnet client by default. Having a functioning testnet (and faucet) is really vital to the project and we need to make sure it is up and running if we want to attract developers. As is, namecoind won't let me run both at the same time!

I'm ignorant of the technical details of the testnet setup, so forgive me if there is something I am missing.

You can run both on the same machine, you only have to start two namecoind daemon processes with different configuration directories (using -datadir=). At least that's what I do. I can confirm that I see about 2-3 testnet nodes. I have one running now, but it seems that the difficulty is much too high ... the number of blocks was stuck for several days at 23155, and now it is 23159. I don't know whether this means that a miner joined and mined four blocks during the weekend or whether I didn't get the remaining blocks at first, but even if it is the first that's not really a good block rate. My node is mining at 3 MH/s, but that only gives me a block every month or so at the current difficulty. What would be needed is a condition that resets the difficulty to 1 when no blocks have been found in a while (like the Bitcoin testnet does, IIRC).

[indolering]

You can run both on the same machine, you only have to start two namecoind daemon processes with different configuration directories (using -datadir=). At least that's what I do.

Ahh, great! I still think we should have some kind of dedicated resources on this. As people just float in and out of the project, I'm concerned about one person just taking it upon themselves to keep testnet up and running on their own servers... But having EVERYONE run a testnet seems like a bad idea too.

I guess we could ask all of the DNS people to run testnet as well?

What would be needed is a condition that resets the difficulty to 1 when no blocks have been found in a while (like the Bitcoin testnet does, IIRC).

Sounds like a reasonable solution to me, but a faucet would still be a good thing to have around : )

It looks like there are at least 2 private Bitcoin testnets too.

[moa]

Yes, it sounds like the testnet needs difficulty resetting.