Bitcoin wallet suddenly stopped working

[Donnie Love]

My Bitcoin "wallet" application has suddenly stopped working. I get an error that reads:

EXCEPTION: 11DbException
DB::put: Cannot allocate memory
bitcoin in ProcessMessages()

This program uses Qt version 4.7.4.

Operating system is Ubuntu 11.10

[Eternity]

You might be running out of memory

[Donnie Love]

I don't see how that could be. I have 275 GB of free space. But if that is the problem, how can I fix it?

[lepirate]

I'd say hardware failure or the process leaking memory!

[Donnie Love]

"Leaking" memory? What does that even mean?
What I really need to know is: how do I get my Bitcoins out of there?

[lepirate]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_leak

You could copy your wallet to another computer and move them from there. You can also try to fix the problem by telling Bitcoin-QT to re-download the blockchain.
If it's a hardware problem you have to replace the memory card(s).

[deepceleron]

Probably one of the berkeley db files is messed up, a likely culprit is ~/.bitcoin/peers.dat. Delete it and the .lock file, and restart.

If that doesn't do it, you should make a backup of your wallet.dat, and start with the -salvagewallet option.

You may also need to rename (instead of delete) the "database" subdirectory which also contains berkeleydb logs.

That's of course if you've checked disk space with df, done an fsck, etc.

Also, you should be using the latest client, v0.8.5, if you got that "uses qt version" from the about qt, its probably an old version.

[Donnie Love]

You can also try to fix the problem by telling Bitcoin-QT to re-download the blockchain.

How do I do that?

Also, I've tried downloading a newer version, but it doesn't seem to work (or I don't know how to make it work).

[lepirate]

You can also try to fix the problem by telling Bitcoin-QT to re-download the blockchain.

How do I do that?

Also, I've tried downloading a newer version, but it doesn't seem to work (or I don't know how to make it work).

You can just delete the blockchain from wherever it's located on ubuntu machines!
You should also backup your wallet as deepceleron said (and try his advices), cannot be stressed enough!

Btw, have you seen this thread? Might help! https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89639.0


And this might be off-topic, but you know that 11.10 is unsupported, right?

[Donnie Love]

I will definitely try all these options.

I did attempt to back up the wallet under File>Backup Wallet. All I got was a text file full of gibberish.

I don't know where the blockchain is located in Ubuntu. Not a clue.

I didn't know that 11.10 ever was supported. It sucks and I hate it, but it's the best I can get in my price range.

I also cannot find the peers.dat or .lock files.

I'm just an operator, and I don't know anything about what's under the hood. Most of these suggestions, while very much appreciated, are way over my head. :0/

[Donnie Love]

I also cannot find the peers.dat or .lock files.

I did find them and deleted them. The problem persists.

[lepirate]

I did attempt to back up the wallet under File>Backup Wallet. All I got was a text file full of gibberish.

It should be a .dat file named to whatever you want like "BTC-wallet.dat" or something. If it wasn't then something is wrong.
If that is you could just copy the wallet.dat file to another directory.

I don't know where the blockchain is located in Ubuntu. Not a clue.

It's located in the same directory as the peers.dat file. The blkxxxx.dat (replace xxxx with the files names, like blkindex.dat, blk0001.dat) files contains the blockchain. Move them and then it will redownload the blockchain.

I didn't know that 11.10 ever was supported. It sucks and I hate it, but it's the best I can get in my price range.

It became unsupported in May this year. I however liked that distro! But you should really upgrade to at least 12.04 LTS!


Did you try everything in the thread I linked? The last thing posted especially:

I moved my db to a new drive and did a symbolic link and at first it worked then I stopped the bitcoind then started it again and it failed with...

Code:

ubuntu@cs3:~/.bitcoin$ bitcoin server starting


************************
EXCEPTION: 11DbException
Db::open: Invalid argument
bitcoin in AppInit()

terminate called after throwing an instance of 'DbException'
  what():  Db::open: Invalid argument

Not sure whats going on.

I hit this exact same error running on an instance of Ubuntu 12.04. I then checked the debug.log file created in the .bitcoin/ directory and found:

Code:

LoadBlockIndex(): hashBestChain=00000000000001b38e93  height=197280
Verifying last 2500 blocks at level 1
ERROR: CheckBlock() : block timestamp too far in the future
LoadBlockIndex() : *** found bad block at 197280, hash=00000000000001b38e93f02be1f00ae3f39c4ab32dfb989154d38cfce2b29a4a
ERROR: CheckBlock() : block timestamp too far in the future
LoadBlockIndex() : *** found bad block at 197279, hash=0000000000000088246a0a90732f7fca77d0b0087c1997a91311e70a54b33da8
ERROR: CheckBlock() : block timestamp too far in the future

This further led me to discover that my server time was far off the correct time (by several hours!). So I then explicitly set the time via "date -s".

Example: sudo date -s "Tue Sep  4 22:37:51"

Rerunning the bitcoin server after doing that worked great (fixed the problem!).

Try that if you haven't already!

[Donnie Love]

All right, got it backed up and deleting the "blk..." files seemed to get it going. It should only take a week or two to download the whole quarter of a million blocks again. Hopefully, it will work.

Thanks.

[Undefeatable]

All right, got it backed up and deleting the "blk..." files seemed to get it going. It should only take a week or two to download the whole quarter of a million blocks again. Hopefully, it will work.

Thanks.

You reinstalled the Bitcoin-qt program?

[Donnie Love]

You reinstalled the Bitcoin-qt program?

No. I did not uninstall it. Should I have?

[tremptek]

Hey Donnie Love,

I'm experiencing the same exact problem with my Bitcoin-qt wallet here, but on a Mac


I've located the ~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin directory and have come across the folders "blocks," "chainstate," & "database" along with my db.log, debug.log, peers.dat, & wallet.dat

Which of these do i need to change somehow to get it up and running again? DOn't mean to add any clutter, just looking for a simplification of the problem o_0

[lepirate]

Hey Donnie Love,

I'm experiencing the same exact problem with my Bitcoin-qt wallet here, but on a Mac


I've located the ~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin directory and have come across the folders "blocks," "chainstate," & "database" along with my db.log, debug.log, peers.dat, & wallet.dat

Which of these do i need to change somehow to get it up and running again? DOn't mean to add any clutter, just looking for a simplification of the problem o_0

You can try to delete/move all blkxxx.dat files in the folder "blocks", then it should redownload!

[tremptek]

Hey Donnie Love,

I'm experiencing the same exact problem with my Bitcoin-qt wallet here, but on a Mac


I've located the ~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin directory and have come across the folders "blocks," "chainstate," & "database" along with my db.log, debug.log, peers.dat, & wallet.dat

Which of these do i need to change somehow to get it up and running again? DOn't mean to add any clutter, just looking for a simplification of the problem o_0

You can try to delete/move all blkxxx.dat files in the folder "blocks", then it should redownload!

Worked! re syncing as we speak

thank you!