Bitcoin Forum

I'm trying to set up a bitcoin client to run entirely from a thumbdrive, using the latest MS client.  I find that it puts the wallet.dat, blk0001.dat, and blkindex.dat files in an entirely insecure location, namely on the C: drive in the appdata subdirectories.  I don't want that behavior at all, and need to know how I should go about getting the client installed onto the thumb drive to use the copies of these files I have on the thumbdrive itself and to not write data to the C: drive or the registry whatever.

 

The most surefire way to get that to happen is probably edit the source (it's opensource right?) and change "C:\blahblah" to "<usbdrive>:\blablah".

You're probably right about that, but I dont have the skillset required to modify the source.

Try something like http://www.vmware.com/products/thinapp/overview.html

You could make a batch file containing:

@echo off
bitcoin -datadir=./data

That way, the wallet.dat and other files will be written to your thumbdrive.

a USB client is exactly what i'm looking for as well.

I use something like this. My program WalletBuddy allows me to set up a removable device and will copy specified wallet(s) as well as the Bitcoin executable and related files automatically. I haven't updated it in a long time though since it mostly works for me as-is, and I'm not sure the version in github has this feature. If anybody's interested, I could polish it up and release a new version, it's pretty much at the 20% of the remaining work requires 80% of the effort phase. :)

To do it manually, copy all Bitcoin program files to a folder on the drive, say E:\Bitcoin. Then create a batch file to run "bitcoin.exe -datadir=.\data".

are the program files in a different location than where the wallet.dat resides?

Yes, in my case, the program files are in E:\Bitcoin, while the data files (blocks, addresses, wallet, etc) are in E:\Bitcoin\data.

-datadir=.\data tells Bitcoin to look for a subdirectory called data in the current directory.

where do i get a copy of WalletBuddy?

https://github.com/Fnordsoft/Bitcoin-Projects/tree/master/Desktop%20Applications/WalletBuddy

As far as I know, nobody has vetted my code to ensure it's not going to steal your wallet, but I promise that it won't.

I'll try to fix a couple of bugs I've run into and push a new version to github today. It works but it's not super user friendly.

being a non techie i have no idea how to download, install or use github programs.  not your fault, but would love to try it.  sorry

would you rather a thorough 23 pages DIY howto or splash out 5 btc for a usb key in mail with the .exe + 125000 blocks in the blockchain?

i already have a 4G Ironkey that i use.  r u using BitterTeas Wallet Buddy program or ur own?  i might be interested.

can u send me the DIY?

Here are the binaries, you can download and install from here. I suggest you wait until later today, I will try to put out version 0.1.2.

https://github.com/Fnordsoft/Bitcoin-Projects/tree/master/Desktop%20Applications/WalletBuddy/binaries

started writing it. (mnml howto install git software, download from github, etc)

I'm getting 404 error for anything starting with Fnordsoft at github. was it removed or something?

Sorry about that, I had changed the name of my repository, but later realized it was stupid to do so. Thankfully, github support quickly reverted the change even though they say you only get one name change.

It should be good now, though I have not yet had time to commit the additional changes I mentioned.

Thanks! works OK now.
the msi installer from March looks promissing.