Bitcoin Forum

Hi,

I had a bitcoin wallet with a few coins in it which I installed in my previous Ubuntu 16.04, in 2017.
I didn't use it very much but it was working.
Recently I upgraded (reinstalled) my Ubuntu version to 18.04.02. During the installation a new partition was created, including all my personal files which includes also the bitcoin files. All the bitcoin files are there (the wallet.dat and bitcoin-qt, blocks, etc.) but I can't start the wallet anymore.
Do I need to deinstall the wallet and reinstall it? If so, am I going to lose the coins I had?
And in case I do need to reinstall, how can I do it?

Many thanks in advance...

Just make sure you have your backup seed written somewhere. With that, you can restore your wallet if anything happens.

If for some reason you don’t have it, make a backup of your wallet file found at the ~/.electrum/wallets folder. Then, try reinstalling Electrum.

Edit: I misread the post and thought you were talking about Electrum. Sorry. In that case, it’s the wallet.dat file you should backup.

Before you do anything else, I would mirror your hard drive. You may have other things that you need to recover, and you may destroy them  by running recovery software or procedures.

Sorry, I was helping some other dude with his Electrum wallet so I automatically thought he was talking about Electrum... plus, I misread his post. :P

As others have posted.. make a backup of your wallet.dat.

ALWAYS have a backup of your wallet.dat stored in a secure location.. always..


You might start off with some basic information:

• What wallet version are you using ? Is it the latest ? 0.17.1  ?
• Why can't you start core anymore ? What is happening ? Do you get an error message ? If so, which ?
• How are you trying to start core ? From the 'menu' of directly from the binary ?

Chances are high that the menu entry doesn't work anymore because the files have moved.
You might be able to start core by directly calling the binary. Did you already try it this way?

Your bitcoin core client might point to the new partition, but your wallet.dat is still on the old one.

If the file is still there, then most probably you would need to move the wallet.dat file manually to the new partition.

Your old wallet.dat is in home/username/.bitcoin/wallets

Make sure you backup both wallet files to a USB stick beforehand just in case you mix them up

also make sure the bitcoin core (qt) is closed before you exchange the wallet.dat files

after you put it there, it will take some time to re-sync

/KX

If you still looking for a guide step by step to reinstall or install the bitcoin core wallet you can follow this How To Install Bitcoin Core on Ubuntu (https://linuxhint.com/install-bitcoin-core-ubuntu/)

Just don't forget the suggested above about your wallet.dat(Make sure you have a copy of this to other drive or move it to another folder) before you follow the instruction from the link above.

Always start with a backup of your wallet.dat file. As long as you have that you are fine, lose it and you are hopelessly screwed.

I just migrated to 18.4 a few weeks back. It is more elegant if you can back-up everything and start with a fresh install of Ubuntu rather than a update. I like to then download the entire blockchain with core. It takes a week, but then you are set for a long time.

Install Bitcoin Core

Add Bitcoin Personal Package Archive (PPA):


You will be prompted for a password. Enter the one you use to log into Ubuntu.

Next, update Ubuntu’s software package lists:


Now, install Bitcoin core itself. Enter “Y” when asked asked for permission to continue:


This command installs Bitcoin Core and all of its dependencies.