Is my node behaving normally?

I just started running a Bitcoin node for the first time, and I’m not sure if it’s behaving normally or if I have some bugs to work out, but it definitely seems like there’s something wrong. Sorry for the long post but I want to try and give any info that might help figure this out. See the last paragraph for a summary of my questions.

I compiled the code from source, I’m not running Umbrel or anything like that. It’s running on a Pi 4, 4gb. I didn’t make any changes to the code before compiling it, I just wanted to do it myself for the learning experience. I have DNS turned off in the bitcoin.conf file. I seeded using known nodes when I first ran bitcoind, and I have since removed those seed nodes from the bitcoin.conf file.

During the IBD, it would occasionally drop all peers. I was watching it somewhat closely during the download so whenever I noticed it, I would restart the node and it would go back to running. This has continued after the IBD as well, which just finished ~24 hours ago. Even while the node is running fine and maintaining a certain number of connections, it seems to drop a peer every few minutes and connect to a new one to replace the one it lost. Usually the disconnect shows in the debug file as “Socks5() connect to <peer address> failed: host unreachable.”

It usually finds a new peer within a few seconds when one gets dropped, but sometimes it loses all peers over a several minute period and drops to 0 connections, then it will repeat the debug message “Potential stale tip detected, will try using extra outbound peer.”

Also, when I restart bitcoind after it loses all peers, since no peers are written to the anchors.dat file, it will start up again with 0 peers and it will take sometimes over 3 hours to find a peer with that same “stale tip” debug line popping up every ~10 minutes. Eventually it will find a peer and download the blocks it missed, and after a few minutes it will be back up to 10+ peers and will stay connected for a day or so before it loses all peers again. After dropping to 0 peers I assume it will find new ones after another few hours if I just let it run, but I have always restarted whenever I noticed it lost all peers so I’m not 100% sure. I’m currently just letting it run after losing all peers to see if it will reconnect, but it is still saying “stale tip” after over 3 hours with no connections.

I’m connecting through Tor. I’m not sure if this is an issue with the way Tor is configured, an issue with how I configured bitcoin core itself, or not an issue at all and this is expected behavior. The tor connection seems to be working fine though. There are no tor errors showing up during bitcoind startup or any other time (I have the tor debug messages turned on). My internet connection also seems to be fine. I have gigabit fiber, and I’ve not had any issues with my internet connection as far as I can tell.

So I guess my questions are as follows: Is it normal to take 2-3 hours to establish a connection after starting bitcoind? Once connected, is it normal to drop a peer every few minutes and immediately get a new one to replace it? If so, is it also normal to occasionally lose all peers and then spend a couple hours looking for a new one? Is this a result of setting dns and dnsseed to 0 in the bitcoin.conf file, or are there other issues that could be causing this behavior? Is this just completely normal behavior for Bitcoin Core, or maybe just expected behavior when running over Tor, or maybe expected behavior when running over Tor with DNS seeding turned off? Any help for a new node operator would be appreciated.

EDIT: Ok, so this is embarrassing. I guess I’m glad I don’t have any comments on this post yet… because I think I solved my problem, and boy do I feel like a dummy. Posting this edit in case anyone ever comes across my post while trying to solve their own similar issues.

In addition to being new to running a node, I also have a new network setup. My firewall is a UDM-SE that I just bought a few months ago. I’m still learning about my Unifi equipment, and I think the way I had it configured was causing 100% of the problems. Unifi’s threat management system allows you to block Tor if you want to. I had it set to the default “medium” sensitivity, which includes blocking Tor… Doh!

I unchecked that box and my node came to life like turning on a light switch. I just restarted the software after turning off the Tor blocking on my firewall and instead of taking hours to find a peer it immediately connected after boot up. It’s been running for 10-15 minutes now, and previously it would have disconnected/reconnected from peers like 10 times by now, but it hasn’t disconnected from any so far.

I don’t really know why it was working at all though. I assume it has something to do with allowing established and related connections, but I still don’t fully understand how it was able to establish those connections at the start but it couldn’t establish them later after the peers were lost.