Thx. That is it. I am online now.

Ready for another test transaction.
Do I need to keep something specific in mind before I do so?

I just installed fresh, recent bitcoin-QT providing alternative blockchain location during installation/first run.
Then I placed a config file "bitcoin.conf" into the blockchain data directory with the following content:


Here is the QT debug log: https://pastebin.com/kM6uqwVa

Man, that is such a relief!

I did restore the paper backup on my day to day PC after I let the bitcoin core download the entire blockchain fresh again.
I assume the massive problems with armory from the other thread were because of the blockchain beeing corrupted in some way; I moved it multiple times between multiple PCs using USB drive (with different OS's) and downgraded bitcoin core at some point (supporting older blockchain format) and later back up again.
This might have been the reason why armory got stuck on block 300K-something for days - but may be it was the week CPU :-) Does not matter now.

I see my restored wallet (armory was ready after just one hour), and I see my 0.01 BTC outgoing test transaction from january and the most important part - I see the rest BTC as a spendable amount in the same wallet!

Jeez am I happy to see that!

A recap from this and the another thread of mine:

1) I had an initial amount X BTC on a legacy address (1.......) in a wallet restored from paper backup
2) I did a successfull test transaction to a segwit address (3......) on my trezor about 0.01 BTC
3) Armory reported the full balance going out and then the remaining amount coming in again. The block explorer confirms this: one legacy input address and two segwit output addresses.
4) But the remaining balance was "not spendable", because my armory back then was stuck in the past block 300K-something
5) Now after fresh paper backup restore on another PC and with fresh blockchain data I see the remaining amount in my restored wallet.

Unfortunatelly armory shows me "node offline (513764 blocks)".

Now I need final assistance how to proceed from here to be ablo to transfer the rest out. I am in advance user interface and did nothing sofar after armory reported ready syncing the transaction history.
Bitcoin core is managing the blockchain running in parallel.
Armory is set up not to manage bitcoinditself.
Both (bitcoin-QT and Armory) are pointed to the blockchain data in a non-standard location.
Bitcoin-QT is set up to start the RPC server by means of "bitcoin.conf" entry "server=1". bitcoin.conf is inside the blockchain data directory.

Please provide me with detailed instructions, since I will not risk any klick without beeing instructed to do so :-)

Hi,

there I am again. I had a real hard time to get armory running on windows to restore an old paper wallet.
At the end, I did not manage to do so because of the hardware beeing no powerfull enough in the long run.

I will close that disscussion there and open a new topic because I have a real bad feeling about one thinkg.

As you can read in my initial post here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2771447.0 - please have a look at that first post only.

You will see, that I was able to make one and only one test transaction from my restored non-segwit address to a segwit address on my trezor.
As a result I have seen a strange result after the transaction. From the memory I can describe it as follows:

1) My small test amount went to my trezor address (and has been received there correctly)
2) All the rest went out as well from the non-segwit address to a second segwit-address and the total balance of my armory wallet was OK but not spendable - armory was stuck in block three hundred something and did not get the confirmation.

I can see the result today on blockchain info exactly like this: one input, with two outputs leaving 0 BTC on my input address.

I left it at that point and then started to ask for help in the other thread to get armory to fatch the entire transaction history up to the recent blocks five hundred and something.
Long story short - I did not manage to get it this far and just gave up until I have a new PC.

BUT, during the process of try and error I deleted the "armory user-directory" completely one time.

Now the final question: Is my old paper wallet of any use now there is this nice sounding info at the beginning, that the "Paper wallet is *Forever*".
I kind of had that in mind, deleting my armory user directory, beeing sure the paper wallet is all I need until the end of days of that wallet.

Now - does that *Forever* mean, that also all future addresses from that wallet, including the segwit adresses are save to be restored?

If not - I am preatty fu...ed!

Please give me the true now *goatpig*, so I can start getting drunk for the rest of the year.

This should not become a philosophical discussions here.
I am quite experienced in any mainstream OS out there, started win MSDOS back in the late 80s and all windows versions all the way.
I managed linux servers of all flavours and was working on linux desktops as well as Mac OS on day to day basis.
I experimented with virtualization tech on all these platforms a lot.
And yes - I have as well built some custom PCs as well along the way - this is self evident looking at above.

Therefore I can surely say I am not an "avarage user" and I can asses whether a hardware is fully crap or not.
And I have a feeling of what a PC is capable of in terms of computation and I can surely decide what tradeof I can accept.
As I wrote at some point - I can wait, I have the time.

I do not agree with the opinion, that one has to have a top notch hardware just to run a crypto wallet.
Quite in contrary - I need a clean, dedicated PC to run the wallet, so I can not use my day to day hardware for this to be fully on the safe side. That is why I took an older but good PC I had spare.
You can think of this PC what you want, but there is no crap involved in DELLs precision workstation line, there never was.

I do appreciate the efforts put into this software. I really do because I am a developer myself.
But as all in life, great projects can also get better if a healthy criticism is allowed.

My critic point is this: A wallet software should be reliable and verbose about what it does at any stage because there is money involved.
Armory clearly does something without keeping the user informed. Then it reports a "redy to go" when it isn't so follow up issues arise.
Bitcoin Core runnin gas full node on the same PC does not seem to have a problem with the limited hardware and is ready to go in 30 seconds working on the same blockchain data up to the recent block, whereas armory get stuck at block 300-something and reports all ready to go after several days of "doing something".

Do not get me wrong, I really appreciate any effort of any opensource dev out there, especially ones like goatpig who manages a complex software like armory. My great respect for work like this.
If I was a python expert I would be ready to actively contribute to fix the problems I see.

But unfortunately all I can do is to express my experience after I tried to test the software and donate some BTC if I get an adress from goatpig.

So, the community can either appreciate my voice on this or keep the blinkers on and do not bother.

Agree. I would not do that. My plan is to look for electrum now which seems to be the wallet of choice for many.
I did not come very far with armory.

Thx

OK. I see I will not come any further here.

I will thank you for your support sofar, especially goatpig for keeping this software going and for the help.

But at the end I must honestly say, that armory seems to be only usable by its devs with deep knowledge about the internals and requires.
I am a dev myself but not really into python and not interested in learning python just to access my funds.
I know armory is powerfull, but there is no way a software gets any adoption if it is not robust enough to handle the basics for an avarage user or to run on average hardware.

Stil, all the best to you.

Hi all,

I am done with on other bitcoin client (armory) after months of no success accessing funds from long ago.
I know the funds are there because I was able to see the balance already, even managed to move a small test amount out of it.
But since then I am not able to repeat that and to get this thing going again.
It syncs and organizes stuff for days or weeks and then is unable to make an outgoing transaction.
At the end all I hear is, that my PC isn't good enough.
It is an old one but still not an ancient one. DELL precision T3500 workstation grade PC with 16GB RAM running windows 10 professional smoothly and fast.

This was my very first BTC experience back then using this armory client.

Now my patience is over and I look for an alternative way to accomplish the following:

1) Move all the funds to another wallet like electrum using the private key. It is just one single address.
2) Spend the BTC from electrum to my trezor
3) Access all forks which are worth it like BCH etc. in electrum after I spent the BTC on it.

Is it possible? If yes please point me to some trusted tutorials on how to do it.

thx

Finally. Armory was ready to build the database, organize blockchain and scan transaction history.
I was able to see my balance but "node ofline".
Now I started bitcoin core in paralell.
Armory went online and it shows green "connected" in the status bar. I could not be more happy.

So now I tried to get to stage 2. Sending my BTC out of this wallet.

Beeing in "advanced user" GUI I tried to "send bitcoins".
I entered the SegWit address of my trezor as recipient.
I left all settings to be default and adjusted the fee to be generous 15 sat/B (conservative auto gave 6.5 sat/B and trezor currently defaults to 8 sat/B for a "high" fee transaction).

Then I sent the whole amount unlocking the wallet.

5 seconds of nothing happening, then an error popup "The transaction that you just attempted to broadcast has failed with the following error: missing inputs"!

Is it safe to paste the armorylog.txt output on this?

Thx for the reply.

I do not mind to wait little longer for things to happen. I mean I let the processes run overnight for several days in the past.
No matter how processing intensive an operation might be, it must finish at some point right?

Bitcoin Core is able to start up and load the local 170GB blockchain below 30sec on this machine so the machine might be slow for todays measures but it certainly should be capable to get the work done in general.

Additionally, the local blockchain is not on a USB2 drive anymore but an a new intermnal SATA drive.

Anyway, just to startower. I deinstalled armory, deleted the database directory. Made a reboot, installed armory RC3 from github again, provided the custom path to the local blockchain using the CLI parameter "--satoshi-datadir" with the desktop shortcut.
Then I synced the blockchain with bitcoin Core, made a reboot again and started armory again.

Now I see "organizing blockchain" again for several hours. checking the log file I see this


What do the two errors about mempool.bin mean.
What exactly is happening now (CPU usage 50%)?
Is it worth to wait now or are those errors fatal?

Armory starts now without the error, but then the same pattern repeats.

"organizing blockchain", CPU 50% and the log is filled with this line like a 1000 times maybe

 
For me, from the outside it looks like a endless loop somewhere.

https://pastebin.com/bkKTJtr9

P.s. This is an old but high spec professional grade machine with best components inside even if it is 5 years old.
If it can run CAD, adobe suite products, multiserver docker enviroments and really memory heavy IntelliJ Idea IDE at a decent speed it can not be considered ancient hardware in any means just because it has only 2 cores and usb2.

This is the content of the armoryqt.conf.

Hi, if I understand you correctly, I should start ArmoryQT alone with the "manage bitcoind..." setting switched OFF.
Just did that, deleted current databases directory and the logfiles before. Rebooted th PC.
Then started ArmoryQT which immediatelz reported an error "unable to spawn the DB"

armorylog.txt: https://pastebin.com/0AsthNUL

p.s. my PC is "anemic"? :-) It is a dell workstation grade PC with intel xeon processor and 12 GB of ram. minumum software installed and windows 10 up to date. It is pretty fast actually just from the feel.
What makes it kind of exotic is, the fact that "Hyper V" and "docker for windows" is installed and their services are running.

Ohh yeah. I forgot.

armorylog.txt: https://pastebin.com/4tQMjgkK
dblog.txt: https://pastebin.com/STs8c094

Just to get the USB2 controversy out of the way. I installed an additional sata hard drive into this PC and moved the blockchain to that drive.

Bitcoin core has been fully synced and correctly pathed, shows current block height.

Deleted armory databse, changed the path to datadir as well and started armory again.
Since 6 hours now like before as well "Organizing blockchain" without any progress beeing shown just a green shade transitioning from left to right and spinner spinning.

"goatpig" or some other dev of this software, please have a look again in this thread. thx.

In regards to my hardware, it is a fairly decent one. It is a dell precision T3500 workstation grade PC.
The only thing which is different, than in the most cases is tha fact, that my blockchaindata is on an external USB 2.0 drive.

In regards to my final goal - yes I will transfer BTC out of it as a first step.
But later I will get to a point, where I can get to he BCH etc. forks.

If I can do both with an external wallet like electrum in a safe way, this would be great.
In that case it is sufficient for me to get general idea and order of the steps to take.
I think I will be ablo to research the details myself.

As of the "real guys" :-) I am still waiting for them to find some time to have a look in the log files again.
They got me on track first, but then did not show up again - I hope I did not discourage anybody in some way.

Please give me pointers what to do next. "Organizing Blockchain" forever. See my comment above.
Already killed armory once, and started it again. Again: "Organizing Blockchain" forever.
Bitcoin core runs continuously and is up to date.

The GUI got to a point "Organizing blockchain" and the spinner spins forewer (2 days probably), no progress is shown.

Please provide me with next steps to do you guru guys.

dbLog.txt: https://pastebin.com/bkUhL7Vc
armorylog.txt: https://pastebin.com/vzRBqCzF

Thx for your hints.

I am sure Bitcoin Core is pathed correctly, because there is the correct path in the debug window.
Here the prove from Bitcoin Core log:

https://pastebin.com/0CL0HUGD

I did kill armory and armoryDB, deleted the database,
changed the shortcut to point to the correct blockchain directory: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Armory\ArmoryQt.exe" --satoshi-datadir="F:\__BACKUP\_bitcoin_new".
Then started armory again.

And now something is moving :-) "Building Databases, 3%, 3 hours"

Will see tomorrow!

Here are is the armory log: https://pastebin.com/GRKPsnxK
Here is the ArmoryDB log: https://pastebin.com/7X2U0eKS