How to configure the daemon to use a remote node?

Question

Two questions on using a remote node as below:

nicholas@mordor:~/monero4$ 
nicholas@mordor:~/monero4$ monero-wallet-cli --daemon-address node.moneroworld.com:18089
This is the command line monero wallet. It needs to connect to a monero
daemon to work correctly.
WARNING: Do not reuse your Monero keys on another fork, UNLESS this fork has key reuse mitigations built in. Doing so will harm your privacy.

Monero 'Oxygen Orion' (v0.17.2.0-unknown)
Logging to monero-wallet-cli.log
Specify wallet file name (e.g., MyWallet). If the wallet doesn't exist, it will be created.
Wallet file name (or Ctrl-C to quit): mordor
Wallet and key files found, loading...
Wallet password: 
Opened wallet: xyz
**********************************************************************
Use the "help" command to see a simplified list of available commands.
Use "help all" to see the list of all available commands.
Use "help <command>" to see a command's documentation.
**********************************************************************
Warning: using an untrusted daemon at node.moneroworld.com:18089
Using a third party daemon can be detrimental to your security and privacy
Using your own without SSL exposes your RPC traffic to monitoring
You are strongly encouraged to connect to the Monero network using your own daemon
If you or someone you trust are operating this daemon, you can use --trusted-daemon
Background mining not enabled. Run "set setup-background-mining 1" to change.
Starting refresh...
^Cight 71505 / 2890146
Refresh done, blocks received: 7752                             
Untagged accounts:
          Account               Balance      Unlocked balance                 Label
 *       0 42mEMY        0.000000000000        0.000000000000       Primary account
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
          Total        0.000000000000        0.000000000000
Currently selected account: [0] Primary account
Tag: (No tag assigned)
Balance: 0.000000000000, unlocked balance: 0.000000000000
Background refresh thread started
[wallet 42mEMY (out of sync)]: 
[wallet 42mEMY (out of sync)]: exit
nicholas@mordor:~/monero4$ 
nicholas@mordor:~/monero4$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Release:    22.04
Codename:   jammy
nicholas@mordor:~/monero4$ 

1.) about how much space does this use locally?

2.) can the daemon be configured to use the remote node and then the wallet just uses the daemon?

Answer 1

1. When running your own daemon, current space used in this recent answer:

An unpruned database ~170 GiB, pruned ~60 GiB.

A wallet using a remote node uses minimal disk space, but it still uses network bandwidth, as it has to download and scan blocks for transactions. The difference is it discards almost all the downloaded / scanned data.

2. You can't configure a "daemon" to use a remote node, it makes no sense, but you can configure a wallet to use a remote node.