bitcoind on a Mac (Snow Leopard)

[pixelglow]

I'm trying to run bitcoind, the headless server version of the bitcoin client, on my Snow Leopard Mac (10.6).

Couple of issues:

1. In the standard install of 0.3.23, I can't see any bitcoind, only the Bitcoin.app client.
2. I tried running bitcoin -server using the executable embedded within Bitcoin.app, but it still opened up the application.
3. I tried compiling from source i.e. make -f makefile.osx bitcoind on the src directory, but it died after spitting out tons of errors. It looks like there's some dependencies on third-party libs in there. Could we have a list of libs to download in order to build bitcoind?
4. Or perhaps someone can point me to an official, prebuilt bitcoind binary. I really don't want to go down the MacPorts etc. route.

Cheers,
G.

[Rob P.]

Open Terminal:

echo "rpcuser=user" >> ~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/bitcoin.conf
echo "rpcpassword=password" >> ~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/bitcoin.conf

If you've already done the above, then you just need to:

cd /Applications/bitcoin-0.3.23/Bitcoin.app/Contents/MacOS
./bitcoin -server

This will still fire up the client in your Dock.  However, it will now also accept JSON-RPC commands.

[pixelglow]

OK, running bitcoin -server seems to work well as a JSON RPC server, although it's disconcerting to see the GUI up as well.

What happens if I want to run bitcoin in a UI-less context? E.g. as a daemon during system startup or through SSH to the box? Essentially I need to run bitcoind in a Mac server box (as opposed to say a Linux server box).

I tried running bitcoin -daemon but that seems pretty broken at the moment. After a couple of seconds it dies with:

The process has forked and you cannot use this CoreFoundation functionality safely. You MUST exec().
Break on __THE_PROCESS_HAS_FORKED_AND_YOU_CANNOT_USE_THIS_COREFOUNDATION_FUNCTIONALITY__ _YOU_MUST_EXEC__() to debug.

Is there actually a distinct bitcoind and what's the difference between that and Bitcoin.app?

Mac OS X daemons are generally run through launchd scripts and do not fork on their own. If you can point me to some source code and a Mac build environment, I can hack on it until it works and contribute the changes back.

Cheers
G.

[Rob P.]

What happens if I want to run bitcoin in a UI-less context? E.g. as a daemon during system startup or through SSH to the box? Essentially I need to run bitcoind in a Mac server box (as opposed to say a Linux server box).

There's only one bitcoin app, it takes a -server argument to accept the RPC calls from another client.  There is no separate daemon.

Is there actually a distinct bitcoind and what's the difference between that and Bitcoin.app?

There is not.  ".app" is just a folder container for applications on the Macintosh, it's not actually an app.  You can see this by right-clicking on any Macintosh ".app" and select "Show Package Contents".

Mac OS X daemons are generally run through launchd scripts and do not fork on their own. If you can point me to some source code and a

There isn't a separate daemon.  The source is all public domain, and is included in your download in the "src" folder.  Including an OSX make file.  If you want an IDE, check out XCode available on the App Store.

[pixelglow]

For closure:

You can build a bitcoind (headless bitcoin) on a Mac. The build instructions are not with the usual binary distribution but you can grab them off the github repository for bitcoin. The minimal dependencies are: boost (from boost.org) and Berkeley DB (from the freshmeat.net project), you (apparently) can use libssl and libcrypto from the system.

bitcoind appears to run undaemonized, so it should be suitable for a launchd script. But I haven't tested this configuration yet.

Cheers,
G.

[Kinnardian]

There is no bitcoin folder in my Application Support folder!