Yeah.  I just wasnt sure if there was something I had missed in the genesis, or if the minimum was coded into the client.

This was answered when bm changed it in the client.

Looks like we need a new genesis file.
commit 2f0065d593dfd06deda970f9a8df59a930c50bff
Author: Daniel Larimer <dan@bitshares.org>
Date:   Thu Aug 20 13:23:25 2015 -0400

    genesis file specifies 101 min

//Edit: ah, found it on the release/tag page.

Bytemaster is the minimum witness count hard coded or in the genesis?

I think what he means is: if we vote in more witness (maybe include init witness) then the number of active witnesses will automatically increase.

For those who have interest, I started another chain. Chain id is still "5508f5f743717fe2c78445364f62a72badd7532974d26f089af2062228b532eb"
./witness_node -s 114.92.254.159:62015  --genesis-json aug-19-puppies-test-genesis.json


Actually there is a trick to restarting block production after so much time has passed.

First add a the following checkpoint

[HEADNUM+1, "00000000.....00"]

With that checkpoint you will be able to produce the next block.   Once you have produced the block, other nodes can add a checkpoint with that freshly produced block and you will be up and running again.

Every time a checkpoint is reached it resets the required undo history to 0.  Adding a checkpoint at HEADNUM will reset it to 0, but the next block you produce will have missed over 1000 blocks so is immediately beyond the reach.  Therefore, we need to "checkpoint" the "next block" for which we do not know the ID yet.   

So the real question is, why were we missing so many blocks?   Who got voted in and why did you stop producing?

Witnesses please add this so we can go on:
./witness_node ...... --checkpoint '[40903,"00009fc7e518d750f653ba0ca25a3067bd304f30"]'
[/s]
//Update: 1000 seconds have passed so quickly. Rescue failed. Have to wait until enough witnesses come online.

General question (since I could not find this elsewhere):

Is there a genuine place from where I can download "an up-to-date" BitShares blockchain? Setting up a new client is easy, but syncing it takes long and sometimes does not work such that the whole process needs to be repeated again and again (my slow little pc, c847/8gb, often has problems here and it takes days to re-sync/re-download the chain)... As such, it would be awesome to have an official and always "up-to-date" download link for the BitShares blockchain.

That said, my question is if such a download link is already there (and I could not find it), or would it be a great addition to the BitShare's homepage?

EDIT: Also 8gb ram seem sometimes not enough for a re-sync (using v0.9.2)... is that true? Did some one else make similar experiences?

I don't know if there is a download link for the blockchain.
8GB RAM is more than enough. If you're using Windows or Linux, try run  'bitshares_client' rather than GUI for initial syncing. After in-sync you can press ctrl+d to close it then open GUI.
Wish you good luck.

Maybe we still have chance? According to the log, the 'recently_missed' number is increasing.

...
{"recently_missed":47937,"max_undo":1000}
...
{"recently_missed":47981,"max_undo":1000}
...
{"recently_missed":48685,"max_undo":1000}

Retrying..

Quote from: abit on August 20, 2015, 07:20:38 am

I'm stuck at 40902 now. Looks like the testnet is dead again?

Yes, same for me, I was late for the party. If you already are a block producer maybe you can retsart your witness and try checkpointing option just for fun? Maybe you can get it back to life?
Option's obviously it's already there:
https://github.com/cryptonomex/graphene/blob/9c0c588ed62165886a510775d76c8524c50c09c5/libraries/app/application.cpp

Regards

Good idea. I am going to check how to set checkpoints. If you or anybody know please post here, thanks!