TESTNET for upcoming 0.4 release

Protocol
1

FOR DEVELOPERS ONLY:

I figured I’d get two different ppcoind’s running on testnet.

I recommend other people who have spare machines laying around doing nothing, it might be a good idea to get one humming on testnet so we can try out how 0.4 performs on a 0.3 testnet, etc.

TESTNET is for testing fake peercoins and should not be used with any real coins or your main computer.

Sample ppcoin.conf file for testnet.

# Enter TESTING / fake mode
testnet=1

# my private rpcuser info
rpcuser=pick-a-username
rpcpassword=pick-a-password

# which hosts can access my wallet
rpcallowip=127.0.0.1

# do not generate blocks unless you really need to
gen=0

# run in daemon mode as a background process
daemon=1

# run as a server accepting rpc commands
server=1

# how many peernodes can connect to me simultaneously
maxconnections=25
 
# Note: Testnet is not to be used with real coins or real peercoin addresses. Be careful.
2

Did I miss something? Is it already available?

3

Sunny said that as soon as he pushes the 0.4 release candidate up, it will work on testnet only in the beginning.

So I’m taking a pro-active approach by creating a testnet node and getting use to the ideas of how testnet works so I can help test 0.4 as soon as it gets released for testing.

www.peercointalk.org/index.php?topic=2400.msg19779#msg19779

4

Good idea. Do we have a Testnet faucet?

5

Yes: http://testnet.peercoinfaucet.com/

6

Can I have a question on this? I would like to try one issue I have in mind on testnet. I want to know if I can modify the wallet so that it does not split large stakes and the network still accept these blocks. (I would call it attack, but it is a very weak attack, so maybe it is too strong word.) The questions are:

  1. Is this testnet the good place to do that?
  2. Since this experiment needs minting, is there a way, how to speed the process up for testing purposes? (Let’s say instead of maturing process between 30-90 days, it would be happening between 1-3 days, which is time I can easily wait.)
  3. Is there some form of blockchain explorer I could use to visualize the testnet blockchain?

Thank you!

Edit: I see that the blocks are generated faster here, one per 2 minutes. This probably answers my question 2 - I should be able to wait for 10 days for the test.

7

I don’t remember seeing anything that would prevent you to do that. So I think it will work.
The split/combine thresholds are only used at block creation time, not when they’re received.
I don’t think it’s a problem though. You only alter your own contribution to the security of the network.

I think so.

On testnet, the minimum age to mint is 1 day: https://github.com/ppcoin/ppcoin/blob/master/src/main.cpp#L2234

I don’t know any, but it would be useful.

8
Is there some form of blockchain explorer I could use to visualize the testnet blockchain?

Snakie’s blockparser should be straight-forward to set up, but AFAIK, there’s no web front-end for it, so you’d need to run it locally and point it against your testnet database. I’m going to send a note to see if (s)he’s got any recommendations on how to include a UI, or if there’s an existing framework that this could be tweaked to work with. I’ll provide an update if I hear anything back.

9

Thank you very much! The blockparser looks great! I think I will be able to extract all necessary data.

10

I tried to compile the blockparser, but I run to this error under Ubuntu 12.04:

c++ -- cb/peerstats.cpp lnk -- parser /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lcql collect2: ld returned 1 exit status make: *** [parser] Error 1

Apparently, Ubuntu is missing CQL library. I looked for solution, but I found nothing relevant. Is there some better solution of this problem than reinstallation of Ubuntu to newer version? Thank you!