How to setup a LAN network with only one bitcoind client downloading the blockchain? I want to do the following:

I have one small server PC at home. I want to install bitcoind on that machine to download the blockchain information. Then I want this machine to accept RPC calls from my LAN network and setup all other bitcoin clients on my LAN network to use that server machine for blockchain info and transaction broadcasting.

I already setup a bitcoind client on the server with the following bitcoin.conf values:

server=1
rpcuser=MyRPCUser
rpcpassword=MyRPCPassword
rpcallowip=192.168.0.*
rpcssl=1
rpcsslciphers=TLSv1+HIGH:!SSLv2:!aNULL:!eNULL:!AH:!3DES:@STRENGTH
rpcsslcertificatechainfile=server.cert
rpcsslprivatekeyfile=server.pem


Note that I did follow the instruction for creating a SSL certificate.

What should I do on the client machines? I tried bitcoin-qt -rpcconnect=[server-ip] but it seemed to just start regularly continuing to download the blockchain from where it stopped last time.

Besides, is it possible to let Bitcoin Armory also use a bitcoin client via RPC instead of the one of the same machine? Or does it really require a remote bitcoind &lt;-&gt; local bitcoin client &lt;-&gt; armory setup?
You need to use connect in your configuration file, rpc_connect is something different, it means that your client delegates its commands to another bitcoind.

If one client connects normally and other clients connect to it using connect = ip.of.main.client it will work the way you want it to.

Conversely you can prevent a node from connecting to anything by using connect = 0.0.0.0.

EDIT : I understand better now. You need to use rpc_connect = ip.of.master.bitcoind on the 'slave' node, and connect = 0.0.0.0 to prevent it from loading the blockchain and you should be all set.