Bitcoin Forum

Armory has an exhibitor booth at the conference in two days, and I've been racing to finish this demo feature.  I don't have time for full testing&integration before the conference, but it should be good enough to demo it on testnet.   But I do need people to dig in and tell me what I messed up.   What combination of things doesn't work?  What's going to embarrass me?


What's New?:

There is a branch of Armory in the repo called "Backup Center".  I have also linked a standalone executable for Windows 64-bit (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1139081/ArmoryTestingReleases/ArmoryStandalone_BackupCtrDemo.zip).  This contains a completely revamped backup system in Armory.  Like.  Really revamped.  

• Backup center to help you decide how you want to backup
• Optional SecurePrint feature to encrypt your backups with a code displayed on the screen
• Can now print imported keys on paper backup (with SecurePrint!).  Though, no restore yet for SecurePrint imported keys.
• Newly-created wallets now only require backing up half the amount of data!  And everything is backwards compatible.
• A full M-of-N backup-and-restore interface!
• The M-of-N system can do any mixture of printed sheets, files and with or w/o SecurePrint

These new features are not ready for mainnet/prodnet.  ONLY USE THIS ON TESTNET.  But I hope that I'll be able to get my QA in place to release in the next two weeks.


To claim the bounty:
The bounty is big and dangerous for me.  It's a lot of money I might give away for very little.  But this also won't be easy to redeem!  So here's the conditions to receive the bounty

• I will award up to 4 bounties, to those who give the best feedback.  Preference given to those who respond first.
• A email must be sent before 4pm EST, Thurs.  Use alan.reiner@gmail.com.  You must not post your findings here, because I need people to actually test it, not just see other bug reports and send it to me trying to claim the bounty
• You must have found bugs.  I know a few that I can easily work around in a demo.  So I know there are bugs to report.   If you are really testing it, you'll find a couple for sure.  The more you convince me that you actually, thoroughly tested it, the more likely you are to get the bounty.
• You need to be patient.  There's going to be a lot of copy-and-pasting of backup data.  Probably lots of typing.  This is why the bounty is so high -- it might be boring and take you an hour or two.  Try copying the backup info into a text editor, and use that for copy-and-paste into the backup dialogs
• You need to provide feedback.  Beyond just finding bugs, you get points for telling me what was confusing.  What could be improved.  How to rearrange things.  Etc.

Also be patient, because I won't have time to evaluate bounties until next week.  I have a lot to do before the conference, so I'm eating bug reports now in a hurry.  I will go back through the emails next week (after things have settled down), and figure out who gets these bounties.  

Testing Focus:

DO NOT TEST DIGITAL BACKUPS OR "EXPORT KEY LISTS".  That's not part of this exercise.  Just the single-sheet backups and the fragmented.

Test creating backups. Restoring them.  With SecurePrint, without, new wallets, old wallets (don't worry about the "Version 0" M-of-N backups), mistyping data, mixing up data.  Mixing paper backups, files, SecurePrint, plain, all when restoring M-of-N (yes, you can do that!).  Also, I could use some testing of Armory in general, to make sure I didn't break more stuff.  Tiny things/quirks are appreciated, but you get points for the most-definitely-not-right-and-impacts-usability bugs.

To use it in online mode on testnet, you'll have to disable auto-bitcoind in the settings and run it yourself.    I have only tested in offline mode.  There's probably lots of juicy bugs in online mode, which is partly why I'm limiting the bounty to 4 people.  



Now. I must sleep....


EDIT:  I just wanted to point out that one of the bugs is that the dropdown menu from the main screen does not take you to the right place.  You have to use the new button in the upper-right to get to the new "Restore Wallet" dialog.  It's kind of a lot of work to rebuild the Windows executable, so I'm leaving it for now.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1139081/BitcoinImg/restore_button.png

I will award up to 4 bounties, to those who give the best feedback.  Preference given to those who respond first.
- YOUR PRODUCT IS AWESOME

You must have found bugs.  
Picture of a bug I found
http://www.bugs.com/bugs_database/other_bugs/large-img/RiceWeevil_large.jpg


You need to be patient.  There's going to be a lot of copy-and-pasting of backup data

backup data backup data backup data backup data backup data backup data backup data backup data backup data backup data backup data backup data backup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup databackup data


Hope this is what you're looking for.

Cheers,
-Autodidactic

here's my wallet: 1G9SXneV2PfgRNjpZh8efTJhfFgaJG3LnF

By the way, teaser shots of the new features, if you can't actually get in to use the testing version...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1139081/BitcoinImg/new_backup_1.png

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1139081/BitcoinImg/new_backup_2.png

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1139081/BitcoinImg/new_backup_3.png

hot fucking damn, armory is getting better by the day!

I love armory!
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR DOING THIS.  :o  :-*

I wanna test  ;)

Is this the armory that sells weapons. Was it not shut own?

I think you better tell users to be careful of case for the secure code.

or maybe just eliminate case and make the code longer.

I had considered removing case and making it longer, but I really wanted it to be shorter to avoid having it significantly increase the amount of data to write/type.  I already think it's too long, but I need to make sure it has some kind of sanity check, and enough entropy to be useful. 

On that note: at the moment, it's 7 bytes plus a 1-byte checksum displayed in base58.  That is 56 bits of entropy, drowned in 16MB of key-stretching.   56-bits doesn't sound like a lot, but the keystretching takes my i5-2500K about 0.25seconds to compute.  If you had just a single CPU working on that, it would take 580 million years to go through the possible keyspace.  Even with a multi-million-CPU botnet, you're out of luck.  And GPUs won't be very useful with the 16MB required per thread. 

I figured the case-sensitivity was okay, because I'm displaying it in such a huge font, it's obvious what is upper and lower case.   It can still be changed, though...

Actually, base-58 already ensures that the font chars are distinct, so fair enough.  In fact, in many cases, you could correct case errors.

Another option is longer + more error checking.  Is the length convenience, or risk of a typo?

Also, I would remove characters like 1, I, i, 0, O, o etc. to prevent confusion.

Btw really looking forward to the M-of-N function, with this I can create my final, long-term Horcruxes. I'm thinking of adding one to my testament, since that document will probably be around pretty much forever (I believe there is a national archive of some sorts for these things). Thanks for all the great work!

this looks great, I can't wait. I'm not really tech-savvy enough to be much help with the testing, but I await eagerly for the release!

I am however mulling over the idea of a fire and water proof envelope w/ lock suitable for safely storing paper wallets at home. maybe with a magnet for hiding under or behind stuff, similar to those house-key hider-thingys. I saw it in a dream the other night, oddly enough, but it could be a nice real-world accessory. paper presents its own vulnerabilities, and strong boxes are just hard to stash and an invitation to theft.

i should probably begin by searching camping supply places, something like I described could already exist. still, you could probably market a branded "Armory" one for the die-hards ;-)

keep up the good great work!

If you think about it, just about anything that destroys paper, also destroys digital media.

Water:  paper will survive (it doesn't have to look pretty to be useful).   USB keys might survive, if you let them dry out 100%.  CDs will survive.
Direct fire: are goners
High heat (below 451 deg F):  Paper survives, CDs and USB keys probably won't
Bending & Stress:  Paper wins.  Clearly.
Shredding: paper at least has a chance here.  Good luck reconstructing a shredded USB/CD.

I'm curious what scenarios lead to a destroyed paper backup, but not USB/CD.   Or what would be a reasonably-inexpensive medium that could replace all this that would be more resistent to things.  Though, I think my point was that paper is far and away excellent without needing to search for other options.

A printed wallet with stiffer material would be better than paper wallets. Something like www.bit-card.com.

It is possible to put a paper sheet in an air tight plastic envelope. It can be done with little expenses at home with a laminator.
I found a wallet in a bathroom water tank a few years ago. It was there, in the cold water, for around ten years.
No paper money (someone took it before hiding the wallet). But the bus ticket subscription inside his plastic envelope was nearly perfect (and the plastic envelope was not water tight, it have a side open to change the ticket every month.
If it was laminated it would be as good as it was before being put underwater.

Mice

Children

Hey Alan, what's the status of this branch. Can these features be used on prodnet yet?

They were going to be merged into the new version that includes the persistent blockchain updates, though that update has been slower (and I've been more distracted) than I expected. 

However, it does still need some more testing... sounds like you are volunteering :)

Sure am! I'm just pulling the backupcenter branch into my clone now, then I'm going to test backup and restore on a new wallet first, and if that goes well I will do so on my savings wallet. It won't be my only backup, of course. :)

Sign me up!  More than happy to assist to improve time to market.