As it stands, we are continuously making improvements to both stability and memory usage. So please make sure you keep your client up to date! This means restarting your node and updating your software regularly from the `devel` branch (we recommend doing this at least once a day). If you can't find a solution to your problem here, feel free to hit us up on our [discord](https://discord.com/invite/XRxWahP)!
> **Note:** While the `master` branch of the `nim-beacon-chain` repository is more stable, the latest updates happen in the `devel` branch which is (usually) merged into master every week on Tuesday.
To update and restart, run `git pull`, `make update`, followed by `make medalla`:
```
cd nim-beacon-chain
git checkout devel
git pull
make update # Update dependencies
make medalla # Restart using same keys as last run
```
If you find that `make update` causes the console to hang for too long, try running `make update V=1` or `make update V=2` instead (these will print a more verbose output to the console which may make it easier to diagnose the problem).
If, after updating to the latest `devel`, you feel like your node is functioning significantly worse than before, we recommend you report the problem on [discord](https://discord.com/invite/XRxWahP), switch to `master`, and rebuild.
>**Note:** rest assured that when you restart the beacon node, the software will resume from where it left off, using the validator keys you have already imported.
### Starting over
The directory that stores the blockchain data of the testnet is `build/data/shared_medalla_0` (if you're connecting to another testnet, replace `medalla` with that testnet's name). Delete this folder to start over (for example, if you started building medalla with the wrong private keys).
### Keeping up with the head of the chain
As it stands, logging seems to be slowing down the client, and quite a few users are experiencing trouble either catching up or keeping up with the head of the chain. You can use the `LOG_LEVEL=INFO` option to reduce verbosity and speed up the client.
If you're experiencing a low peer count, you may be behind a firewall. Try restarting your client and passing `NODE_PARAMS="--nat:\"extip:$EXT_IP_ADDRESS\""` as an option to `make medalla`, where `$EXT_IP_ADDRESS` is your real IP. For example, if your real IP address is `35.124.65.104`, you'd run:
If you're experiencing RAM related resource leaks, try restarting your client (**we recommend restarting every 6 hours** until we get to the bottom of this issue). If you have a [local Grafana setup](https://github.com/status-im/nim-beacon-chain#getting-metrics-from-a-local-testnet-client), you can try monitoring the severity of these leaks and playing around with the restart interval.
If you’re experiencing sync problems, we recommend running `make clean-medalla` to restart your sync (make sure you’ve updated to the latest `devel` branch first though).
> **Warning**: `make clean-medalla` will erase all of your syncing progress so far, so it should only be used as a last resort -- if your client gets stuck for a long time (because it's unable to find the right chain and/or stay with the same head value) and a normal restart doesn't improve things.
