Armory fails to start after update to 96.4 on Debian

[chriscrutch]

Last version worked fine.  Updated to 96.4, now Armory fails to start.  I get a warning:

Armory failed to spawn the DB!
Continuing operations in offline mode instead.
Refer to the dbLog.txt for more information.

Then the GUI closes.  dbLog.txt is a 2.6MB file that looks binary when opened in a text editor and contains all zeros.  Portion of armorylog.txt dealing with the last attempt at opening can be found at https://pastebin.com/xbPCSnYi

Please let me know if there's anything else I can provide to help solve this.  Thank you all.

--chriscrutch

[1714002336]

1714002336

[1714002336]

1714002336

[1714002336]

1714002336

[droark]

Was Armory working before you installed 0.96.4?

[chriscrutch]

Was Armory working before you installed 0.96.4?

Yes, 96.3 worked just fine.

[HCP]

The issue seems to be with ArmoryDB... can you post a link to the pastebin for your dblog.txt? That might give a clearer picture of why ArmoryDB is failing to spawn.

[chriscrutch]

The issue seems to be with ArmoryDB... can you post a link to the pastebin for your dblog.txt? That might give a clearer picture of why ArmoryDB is failing to spawn.

Well, like I said, dblog.txt looks binary when opened in a text editor, but here's the last 100 or so lines (since the full file is too big for pastebin):  https://pastebin.com/ymaNAQfi

Before that there's 160,000 lines of all zeros.

--chriscrutch

[HCP]

Apologies... I read the OP completely wrong... missed you comment about dbLog.txt... that is VERY wrong!

What happens if you run ArmoryDB manually from the commandline?

Code:

ArmoryDB --db-type="DB_FULL" --cookie --satoshi-datadir="/home/chris-debian/.bitcoin/blocks" --datadir="/home/chris-debian/.armory/" --dbdir="/home/chris-debian/.armory/databases"

What sort of output is that producing?

[chriscrutch]

Starting from the command line with that instruction gives the following:

logging in /home/chris-debian/.armory/dbLog.txt
Illegal instruction

and an immediate exit.  The GUI splash screen doesn't even appear.

--chriscrutch

[PhoenixFire]

Going to wager that your cpu is reasonably old.
Pretty sure you need armory_0.96.4_amd64_gcc4.7_noasm.deb from https://github.com/goatpig/BitcoinArmory/releases/tag/v0.96.4
Also labeled Armory 0.96.4 Ubuntu/Debian 64-bit with GCC 4.7 on the main site's download page.

[droark]

Yeah, I'm guessing it's an older CPU too. What do you have? I'm not sure what the minimum cutoff is for the "optimized" (my term) Armory build. I'm guessing the the SSE2 or SSE3 instruction set offhand but that's a wild guess.

Regarding why 0.96.4 might fail, I know that on the Mac side, some C++11 code forced macOS 10.7 to be dropped, much like how 0.97 will cause 10.8 to be dropped. It's possible there's something older CPUs don't like. Again, I'm guessing offhand. I know a lot about build minutiae but I'm not that far along just yet.

[chriscrutch]

lscpu:

Architecture:        x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):      32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:          Little Endian
CPU(s):              4
On-line CPU(s) list: 0-3
Thread(s) per core:  2
Core(s) per socket:  2
Socket(s):           1
NUMA node(s):        1
Vendor ID:           AuthenticAMD
CPU family:          21
Model:               48
Model name:          AMD A10 PRO-7800B R7, 12 Compute Cores 4C+8G
Stepping:            1
CPU MHz:             2500.000
CPU max MHz:         3500.0000
CPU min MHz:         1400.0000
BogoMIPS:            6986.81
Virtualization:      AMD-V
L1d cache:           16K
L1i cache:           96K
L2 cache:            2048K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):   0-3
Flags:               fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc cpuid extd_apicid aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq monitor ssse3 fma cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt aes xsave avx f16c lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs xop skinit wdt lwp fma4 tce nodeid_msr tbm topoext perfctr_core perfctr_nb bpext ptsc cpb hw_pstate vmmcall fsgsbase bmi1 xsaveopt arat npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save tsc_scale vmcb_clean flushbyasid decodeassists pausefilter pfthreshold overflow_recov

Also, I'm using gcc 7.3, can I still run the Armory version for 4.7?

--chriscrutch

[droark]

lscpu:

Hmmm. Looks recent enough. I'm not exactly sure what's going on. To be honest, my suspicion is that the Crypto++ library is crap and isn't compiling properly for all architectures. (Seriously, things seem to have improved starting with the 6.0 release but the 5.x series we have has hack upon hack upon hack.) We're stuck with it for the time being and won't get the replacement (libsecp256k1 + a bit of code from Core, most likely) in for 0.97 but I'm going to push to get it in for 0.98. I'm reasonably certain that'll make all these issues go away.

Also, I'm using gcc 7.3, can I still run the Armory version for 4.7?

AFAIK, yes. Worst case scenario, you can compile you own version.

[chriscrutch]

Got the version for gcc 4.7.  Runs with no issue.  Thanks all!

[chriscrutch]

Spoke too soon about the gcc 4.7 version.... it ran once and was in offline mode (although without any warning this time).  After that it wouldn't open again.  No error, nothing.  Opened up Bitcoin Core and it said the block index was corrupted.  So I'm downloading the entire chain again.  I'll report back later.

--chriscrutch

[droark]

Strange. AFAIK, Armory opens the blockchain files in read-only mode. The blockchain shouldn't be corrupted because of Armory. Are you certain Core was working fine until running Armory?

[chriscrutch]

No, I can't say that I'm sure.  I haven't opened Armory or Core in a few months.  I'd been using another (light, not full) client recently.  After core rebuilds the index and such, I'll try Armory again.

--chriscrutch

[droark]

Okay. Just FYI, you shouldn't rebuild the DB until Core is fully synced and operational, otherwise you may have to go through the rebuild process yet again.

[chriscrutch]

Well Idk what was going on.  I let Core fully sync and re-index, then fired up Armory.  It started in online mode, but said it had only synced to a block somewhere in the 480,000 range.  So I chose "Rebuild and Rescan Databases" on the help menu and restarted it again.  After a while it finally synced and is now running in online mode, fully caught up with the blockchain. 

All's well that ends well, I suppose.  Thanks all!

--chriscrutch