I tried “fast catchup” on testnet always with the same device and without changing the .json and it works perfectly and also very fast:
pi@raspberrypi:~/node $ ./goal node status -d testnetdata/ -w 1000
Last committed block: 429
Sync Time: 694.8s
Catchpoint: 11320000#5HSFH424JSO7FSQCHDOF4SL7WACEMEZ6JGJ7VKDFVC4SYXA4PQIA
Catchpoint total accounts: 266145
Catchpoint accounts processed: 266145
Catchpoint accounts verified: 266145
Catchpoint total blocks: 1000
Catchpoint downloaded blocks: 1000
Genesis ID: testnet-v1.0
Genesis hash: SGO1GKSzyE7IEPItTxCByw9x8FmnrCDexi9/cOUJOiI=
So the problem is on the mainnet … I try to change the CatchupBlockDownloadRetryAttempts on the mainnet to 20000 and let’s see what happens.