A Puzzle, bitcoins lost ?

[mintymark]

On Thursday 9th August at 14:28 (BST, so thats 13.28 GMT) I emptied one of
my wallets with the intention of sending to my main client.
I tried to send the entire wallet but it said a transaction fee of 0.006 BTC
was needed, (if I recall) so I subtracted this and sent 35.85448725 BTC.
Apparently successfully.

But here's the thing. The transaction never arrived!

And in the sending client, its still showing as status '?'
even though the client is fully up to date with downloading
the blockchain. Other transactions (credits) have come in in the
sending client more recently with no problems.

If I query Blockexplorer on the address it waits a long time and then says
ERROR: unknown (Most likely my bitcoind stopped working or this page is too large/complex.)

The receiving client does show the address as one of its own
addresses, but no transactions from here .

Does anyone know what happened? Should I worry? How can I find out ?

[Snapman]

In the past, situations such as this could possibly be cleared up using a -rescan launch param, though according to recent posts by others, the newest version of the bitcoin client no longer need a -rescan.

Edit: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin - Was browsing this page and ran into this..

 -checkblocks       Rescan the whole blockchain (can take very much time)

[Raoul Duke]

Try to search the address on blockchain.info instead of blockexplorer.com

[mintymark]

I tried a rescan and that produced no results. I looked with blockexplorer and the address and the transaction are there but marked as Unconfirmed.

So what next ?

[mintymark]

And now, only now, its come through with 1 confirmation, 24 hours latter?

What was happening here ?

Is it coincidence that I posted this and then it got confirmed within minutes!!!

[Raoul Duke]

Good it got sorted.  It was probably a coincidence.

[RodeoX]

I know that the "age" of the coins is a factor. If these coins were just traded or mined it takes longer, I think. Perhaps someone with a larger brain could verify this or debunk it.

[wabber]

I know that the "age" of the coins is a factor. If these coins were just traded or mined it takes longer, I think. Perhaps someone with a larger brain could verify this or debunk it.

The size is also important, so if his bitcoins consisted of many small inputs the fee was too low.

[mintymark]

I am still puzzled. It took more than 24 hours. If I was paying for something with paypal on line I would NOT be happy. How could it take so long?

Yes, it was many small coins.  I had been testing a shopping cart and had done many small payments - I'd estimate at least 80 but maybe many more. I also checked the block involved. So far as I could see the current block at the time lasted a half hour but the previous one only 2 minutes. I thought that was odd. But then it wasnt in either!

So lets say the fee was too low. Lets say I designed a client where I could put the fee too low  - or always zero - is this what happens? Does the transaction alwaysd eventually get processed or does it sometimes just get left out?

[zvs]

I am still puzzled. It took more than 24 hours. If I was paying for something with paypal on line I would NOT be happy. How could it take so long?

Yes, it was many small coins.  I had been testing a shopping cart and had done many small payments - I'd estimate at least 80 but maybe many more. I also checked the block involved. So far as I could see the current block at the time lasted a half hour but the previous one only 2 minutes. I thought that was odd. But then it wasnt in either!

So lets say the fee was too low. Lets say I designed a client where I could put the fee too low  - or always zero - is this what happens? Does the transaction alwaysd eventually get processed or does it sometimes just get left out?

i did a 20kb or so transaction w/ zero fee about 24hrs ago that hasn't processed yet.  it eventually will,  but possibly only due to my own mining   (re: it's in my p2pool coinbase... along with like 2000 other transactions, blockchain reports 1100 unconfirmed)