September 27, 2026

Bitcoind 0.5.3 stuck at block 364,670 – what to do?

I compiled bitcoind using the same steps as last year. In particular I set DB_CONFIG:

set_lg_dir database
set_lk_max_locks 537000

Unfortunately once I hit block 364,670 (2015-07-10) I’m treated with:

EXCEPTION: 11DbException
Db::put: Cannot allocate memory
Bitcoin in ProcessMessage()

I tried raising set_lk_max_locks to 1000000 but that didn’t help. This happens immediately when restarting the node, so it doensn’t seem to be a RAM issue.

The ~/.bitcoin/database looks rather large, assuming this is the equivalent of todays ~/.bitcoin/chainstate and “~/.bitcoin/blocks/index`.

$ du -s ~/.bitcoin
92047404 # 88 GB
$ du -s ~/.bitcoin/database
42169668 # 41 GB

How can I get the synchronization to continue?

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