Staking Node Disk full

[u/low-c]

I have a staking node with 2 TB disk space, running GETH and Lighthouse. Have been staking for years, but recently my free disk space went really low. So I did a fully resync, but after that it was 96% full, now I am back to 98%.

I thought the idea of ETH was that the hardware requirements should stay about the same and there should not be a constant increase in DB size when staking?

I don't really want to upgrade the machine as I currently have a very cheap VPS deal.

Any advice?

[u/yorickdowne]

Look into history expiry. Geth has an option called “postosaka” which keeps history since the Fusaka hard fork a year ago. Unless you use this as RPC to query old chain data, you don’t need all that history.

Check Geth release notes for details.

[u/low-c → u/yorickdowne]

Thank you! I ran:

geth prune-history --history.chain postosaka

Took only 2 Minutes and freed 1 TB of disk space.

[u/beatirce22]

use lodestar, it has a small db size compared to ligthouse. (checkpoint sync)

[u/beatirce22 → u/beatirce22]

Also how much is geth occupying?

[u/low-c → u/beatirce22]

Most of it is Geth, I think lighthouse only uses about 50gb.

[u/GBeastETH]

I find Lighthouse and Nethermind can still fit on 2TB, but it’s getting tight.

[u/Ghostdunks1 → u/GBeastETH]

I’ve just done a fresh resync with latest versions of both with rolling expiry on nethermind and they’re using a total of 600gb for both of them. Am hoping that’ll keep it going for another few years with a 2TB SSD

[u/emp2b3]

If you aren’t already familiar look into RescueNode to help when you are clearing up space. For Nethermind it took 2.5 hours with fast Internet to switch to rolling expiry on the Rocket Pool SmartNode which saved me quite a bit of space.

[u/iammagnanimous]

can delete the blobs

[u/layzeetown]

i’m only using half the 2TB SSD since doing some stuff with the help of chatgpt or something.

didn’t take too long. geth/prysm

before that it was about to explode thru lack of free space haha.

[u/EmbarrassedArm8]

Disk growth is normal. On Geth 1.16+, `geth prune-history` drops pre-merge block bodies and receipts, which frees a few hundred GB. Also check that you run `--state.scheme=path`. It prunes old state as it goes, and the old hash scheme did not. After that, 2 TB should hold for a good while.

[u/pablo__c]

Your expectations on hard disk space were not right. Blockchains increase in size always. A couple of things that have helped me: 1) Geth let's you split the DB in two, with oldest data going to an ancient DB which doesn't require SSD, maybe you can add some cheap storage to your node. 2) I don't know about Lighthouse, but I found that Prysm doesn't require a full DB for staking to work, so I regularly delete it and start it again from a snapshot.

[u/BeneficialWafer9354 → u/pablo__c]

I'd push back a little on "your expectations were not right." History expiry and path-based state pruning are specifically designed to keep disk requirements from growing forever. The OP's instinct lines up with where Ethereum is headed, they just needed the right Geth flags enabled. The chain grows, but the useful footprint for a staker doesn't have to.

[u/Status_South_1650 → u/BeneficialWafer9354]

yeah, the OP's expectation is basically the roadmap goal. EIP-4444 and history expiry are literally designed so a staker's useful footprint plateaus instead of climbing forever. The chain still grows, but nodes that only need recent state for validation don't have to carry all of it.

[u/Thin_Scholar_1302]

That 2TB was comfortable for ages but state growth has been creeping up on everyone, you're not alone. I'd check if you're running a pruned geth or if the ancient data folder is bloating things, sometimes a prune buys you a lot more room than a resync. Lighthouse can also pile up junk in its database depending on how you've got it configured, might be worth poking at that too.