can someone explain

[bracek]

this is part of someones post :

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To have a secure "savings account" wallet, I would suggest installing Bitcoin inside a VirtualBox VM. That way any viruses on the host computer can't access the wallet. You only need to boot up the VM when you want to spend coins, you can receive them while Bitcoin isn't running, and check the balance on blockexplorer.com.
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can someone explain this,
I want to know more about it.

What happens if HDD crashes and I have to install VM on other HDD ?
Would my saved wallet.dat be valid there  in that new install of virtual machine?

Same question with truecript,
If i encrypt something on one computer using truecript,
that computer hdd crashes,
I install truecript on a new computer,
all i have is wallet.dat encrypted with truecript instance on first computer,
will my password be enough, will the encrypted wallet.dat file be readable by other truecrypt installation ?

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[jhansen858]

if you

a) install the bitcoin client on the new computer
b) restore the wallet.dat to the new computer after installing it

your coins should be there..I keep reading something about exceeding your keyspace but i don't know how you do that or what happens when you do.

The wallet.dat holds your private keys.  With out them you don't have the key to access your money.  Your key would be restored when you restore wallet.dat

[EpicNoob]

n/a

[giszmo]

wallet.dat is valid on any computers and virtual machines, under same OS

geee! can somebody confirm the wallet is OS sensitive? I mean I never intended to run anything else than linux but I do intend to give away 1BTC as a present in its own wallet and as those non-geek potential receivers all still run windows that would be a downer when that wallet would not work.

On the other side it would be a good reason to directly give a bootable USB-stick with everything in place.

[CentroniX]

wallet.dat is valid on any computers and virtual machines, under same OS

geee! can somebody confirm the wallet is OS sensitive? I mean I never intended to run anything else than linux but I do intend to give away 1BTC as a present in its own wallet and as those non-geek potential receivers all still run windows that would be a downer when that wallet would not work.

On the other side it would be a good reason to directly give a bootable USB-stick with everything in place.

It's not OS sensitive, at least between Windows and OSX. I routinely move my wallet between the two with no problems. You just need to download the block chain again once you restore the wallet on a new machine, which may take an hour or so, depending on your connection speed.

If I move my wallet from OSX to Windows, I simply run "bitcoin.exe -rescan" and all my transactions start appearing as the chain is loaded.

[bcearl]

That does not make sense at all, any Program on the host machine can manipulate the VMs as they like.


There is some protection the other way around, a virus in the VM cannot access the host. But the statement above is total rubbish.

[BookLover]

If I move my wallet from OSX to Windows, I simply run "bitcoin.exe -rescan" and all my transactions start appearing as the chain is loaded.

Could you explain how to run -rescan?

[lonestranger]

Holy crap! This wallet thing is the achilles heel of bitcoin!

[CentroniX]

If I move my wallet from OSX to Windows, I simply run "bitcoin.exe -rescan" and all my transactions start appearing as the chain is loaded.

Could you explain how to run -rescan?

Open a command prompt, and change the active directory to where bitcoin is installed, which varies by OS. For example, on Windows 7:

Code:

cd c:\Program Files (x86)\Bitcoin

then execute bitcoin with the rescan command line switch:

Code:

bitcoin.exe -rescan

At this point the bit client will open just like you clicked the icon, except it will start downloading the block chain and your transactions will start to appear and be confirmed.

[cypherdoc]

wallet.dat is valid on any computers and virtual machines, under same OS

geee! can somebody confirm the wallet is OS sensitive? I mean I never intended to run anything else than linux but I do intend to give away 1BTC as a present in its own wallet and as those non-geek potential receivers all still run windows that would be a downer when that wallet would not work.

On the other side it would be a good reason to directly give a bootable USB-stick with everything in place.

It's not OS sensitive, at least between Windows and OSX. I routinely move my wallet between the two with no problems. You just need to download the block chain again once you restore the wallet on a new machine, which may take an hour or so, depending on your connection speed.

If I move my wallet from OSX to Windows, I simply run "bitcoin.exe -rescan" and all my transactions start appearing as the chain is loaded.

u don't need to do even that.  i keep updated clients (block chains) on both my mac and windows machines with empty wallets.  when i want to access my balances i  just replace the existing empty wallet with your old wallet (with the btc) in the data directory and you're up and running.

[CentroniX]

In most cases you are correct. However twice I've had it just sit there and do nothing after restoring a different wallet to a machine that had been using a different wallet from what I just restored. Rescanning fixed the issue in both cases. They didn't write the code and implement the command switch for nothing!