Armory only sees newest transactions on reboot, "Node offline"

[knahrvorn]

I am running Armory 0.96.1 (but the problem was also there with 0.96) and Bitcoin Core 0.14.1 on Ubuntu 16.04.

When I start Armory, everything seems normal. The transactions tab shows newest transactions, and the Dashboard tab says "Armory is online". The node count in the righthand lower corner of the window shows correct block height at Armory startup, but the text next to it says "Node offline".

bitcoind is indeed running in the background, and it is shut down as expected if I close the Armory window. "bitcoin-cli getinfo" shows the correct blockheight at any given time, although Armory's blockheight is stuck at whatever it was when loading Armory.

If I close down Armory and restart it, it updates to whatever the new blockheight might be and it shows any new transactions in those new blocks, but still "Node offline" in the status line, and transactions happening while Armory is running go unnoticed.

I have tried removing the tick in the "Let Armory run Bitcoin Core/bitcoind in the background", then running Bitcoin Core manually before starting Armory, but the same thing happens.

I have tried "Rebuild and Rescan databases" in Armory, without luck.

Latest I renamed my ~/.armory directory to let Armory start entirely from scratch, but still the same. Here is the (new) armorylog.txt:

https://paste.ubuntu.com/25196347/

[Mr.Vice]

I have a very similar issue like you, although on Win10. You can lookup my topic "RPC connection issue...". I think it has to to with the RPC (Remote Procedure Calls), where armorydb tires to connect to bitcoind, but fails to do so. There have been changes with the port selection from static to dynamic and for some reason that doesn't seem to work with some OS.

Could you post your armorydb log (dbLog.txt) instead of armorylog.txt. You should find it in your home directory. In windows this is C:/Users/../AppData/Armory or %APPDATA/Armory%. In Ubuntu it should be "/home/[user]/.armory/". Because armorydb log is the seperate part of the software that handles the actual database and connection to bitcoind.

I have tired in Windows to add a new firewall rule for the Bitcoin JSON-RPC Server at TCP:8332. But I can't tell you how unix handles ports.

[knahrvorn]

I have a very similar issue like you, although on Win10. You can lookup my topic "RPC connection issue...". I think it has to to with the RPC (Remote Procedure Calls), where armorydb tires to connect to bitcoind, but fails to do so. There have been changes with the port selection from static to dynamic and for some reason that doesn't seem to work with some OS.

Could you post your armorydb log (dbLog.txt) instead of armorylog.txt. You should find it in your home directory. In windows this is C:/Users/../AppData/Armory or %APPDATA/Armory%. In Ubuntu it should be "/home/[user]/.armory/". Because armorydb log is the seperate part of the software that handles the actual database and connection to bitcoind.

Here's my dbLog.txt:
https://paste.ubuntu.com/25196626/

I have tired in Windows to add a new firewall rule for the Bitcoin JSON-RPC Server at TCP:8332. But I can't tell you how unix handles ports.

Did that work for you?

[Mr.Vice]

Our logs aren't identical but pretty similar. Because as I can see you can only establish a connection once for a short time when you've done a rebuild&rescan and that is pretty much the same issue as I had. Because when you restart Armory it just picks-up the blk****-files from your Bitcoin home directory (that part isn't unusual), but when ArmoryDB has finished the new block hash entries and scanned them you run into a state where no newly synced block from bitcoind is pushed over to ArmoryDB. Also there is no line in the log that says "-INFO  - 12:35:17.297: (..\BitcoinP2P.cpp:947) Connected to Bitcoin node", except in the beginning after rebuild&rescan.

I had this issue also pretty much all the time since the newer builds. Goatpig said he has changed the port selecting to dynamic, due to the desire of some users. And it is indeed safer than just using static ports, but for some reason it is not fully recongnized by the OS, which port to open. Normally all local ports are opened automatically when you run a specific program for the first time (at least in windows).

I'm not so into the command line args from linux, but I figuered it out when I called the "netstat -o" command in win cmd. That shows all opened ports when Armory is running. Maybe you could lookup how that arg is called in linux and post it as well when you're running Armory again. This should show us if the RPC port TCP:8332 is actually used and established by your system.

Until now I can not fully confirm that this will solve all problems. But at least ArmoryDB can now establish a connection again. My Blockchain insn't fully synced and thus I can not confirm if ArmoryDB picks up new blocks. So I'll have to wait until my Blockchain has synced.

[knahrvorn]

There's a 'netstat' command in Ubuntu, too, which if run by itself shows two long lists of connections. One is called "Active Internet connections (w/o servers)", the other is called "Active UNIX domain sockets (w/o servers)".

With a running Bitcoin Core and Amory, it doesn't mention port 8332, though ('netstat | grep 8332' returns nothing).

[knahrvorn]

So, is there a way I can override this dynamic port selection to the standard port in order to see if that is indeed the problem?

[Xenord]

I'm on Win10 and had the same problem... "Armory is online!" and "Node offline".

In settings, my "Bitcoin Install Dir" was set to "<blah>\bitcoin-0.14.2". I changed it to "<blah>\bitcoin-0.14.2\bin" and "Node offline" has changed to "Connected".

Maybe it's just Windows semantics, but Armory didn't actually want the "Install" directory, it wanted the path to the binary.