Bitcoin Forum

Ok when I start it a console runs in the background and the GUI in the front.
Is that how it's supposed to be?
Can we hide the console?

I'm using it on Debian if that matters.


Also it's considered now safe enough for significant amounts of coin? What's the encryption it uses for the wallet?
What's the best backup practices?

There are a couple of commands to start Java apps: 'java' and 'javaw'.
The former shows a console, the latter does not.

If you change the shortcut that starts MultiBit I suspect the console will disappear.

Re: safety, stability etc.
The main risks of any desktop bitcoin wallet now are:
1) You lose your private keys. Deterministic wallets are better in this respect but as long as you've got backups and create new backups when you create new receiving addresses you should be good. You can write down the private keys on a bit of paper if you really want.
2) People steal your wallet and password. Trojans and keyloggers are still a problem until we get hardware wallets.
3) You forget your password. As there is no record of your password anywhere this can cause you to lose access to your bitcoins.

I think if you have significant amounts of bitcoin you need to 'go offline' ie have a separate offline system using Armory - I think Electrum supports offline tx too but personally I would go with Armory. A machine that has your private keys on that has never been online is a tough target to attack without physical access.

For myself I am happy to have 'a few months salary' amounts in MultiBit but if you are talking larger amounts I would put them offline.

The encryption uses scrypt as the key definition function (I think from memory  it's 16K iterations)  and then AES 256 bit for the encryption. Per wallet there is a random 8 byte salt and initialisation vector for the AES. These latter two are stored in your wallet - they are mainly there to stop rainbow table attacks.

Legal blurb: MultiBit is licensed under the MIT license - please read. It is not guaranteed to do anything and you use it at your own risk.

all sounds great and really thank you for the great answer! :)


I'm starting it from the startmenu shortcut and it starts with the console, is there any disadvantage to making it start without the console the way you said?

There is no disadvantage I don't think.
All the logging goes into a file "log/multibit.log" in your user data directory so you don't lose anything.

The current command: line for the shortcut was

/usr/bin/java -jar /home/user/multibit/multibit-exe.jar

i changed it to
/usr/bin/javaw -jar /home/user/multibit/multibit-exe.jar

and it doesn't start (just a console shows for brief second and then quits)

I think the "/usr/bin/whatever" are typically links to where on your system you have java installed.

(and you can use "alternatives" to switch between them).

Most likely you have a link setup for "java" but not for "javaw".


Probably the easiest is to find where you Java installed on your system and reference it directly.
I don't know where that will be on Debian.

If on the command line you do:
> alternatives --display java

you might see the current java path (in which case the javaw should be in the same directory).

On my Centos 6 box it is:
/usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.6.0-openjdk.x86_64/bin/java

in /usr/bin i have java and javaws

java is executable type pointing to /etc/alternatives/java
javaws is shell script type pointing to /etc/alternatives/javaws


the files in alternatives seem to point to yet files on 3rd location

but anyway, can javaws be the javaw you are referring to?


thanks for the help!

Javaws is java web start so it is not what you are after.

Hmmm, you might have to live with the console appearing. I mainly use Ubuntu and Centos so don't know how to configure it exactly on Debian. You might be able to switch it off in a 'Java preferences' perhaps.

ok i'll look into it , thank you for your help and time! :)