0 confirmations after over a month, WTF?

[proudhon]

Near the end of June I sent about 7 coins to a friend.  Days later he told me that the bitcoins never arrived.  Because I was busy I didn't check on things for a few more days, but when I finally opened my wallet again I was surprised to see that the transaction still said "0/unconfirmed" for that transaction, even though I had an updated blockchain.

Again, I got busy and didn't have time to sort it out.  I assumed that my friend had given me a bad address.  As it turns out, he didn't.  The transaction as it appears in my wallet says that 7 BTCs were taken from my balance and turned over to his address which appears correctly in the transaction history of my wallet.  I kept putting off really looking into it.

Today, I attempted to send 5 BTCs to somebody else.  Now the same thing appears to have happened.  The transaction says "0/unconfirmed".  The address is correct.  But, blockexplorer does not show any incoming activity to the address I attempted to send coins to.  The coins, however, have been deducted from my balance.

The two transaction I speak of are the last two transactions I've attempted to make from this wallet.  I'm running OS X Lion, though the first transaction would have been when I was still running OS X Snow Leopard.  I'm currently running v0.3.24.  I have the latest block history.  I run bitcoin from an OS encrypted user account.  Additionally, I encrypt the wallet.dat using truecrypt and I only decrypt it when I need to send coins or check the balance.  Otherwise it's encrypted and backed up in several places.  My computer is malware and virus free.

What the fuck is going on?  Why are coins being deducted from my balance, not arriving at their destination, and not recieving any confirmations?  I'm concerned for the rest of the coins in that wallet.  I don't know what to do because I'm afraid that if I try to send them to a new wallet the same stupid shit will happen.

[Oldminer]

You mean you havent sold them all already 

[the founder]

Are you sending with miner fees?  I'm seeing more and more fees are required (beyond what the client is asking for) to get transfers though in any reasonable timeframe.

[proudhon]

You mean you havent sold them all already 

Maybe I will if I could get the damn things out of my wallet without them vaporizing.

[proudhon]

Are you sending with miner fees?  I'm seeing more and more fees are required (beyond what the client is asking for) to get transfers though in any reasonable timeframe.

No, I haven't sent with any fees.  So, what, since I didn't add any fees it's going to take months to get the transactions through?  Without paying the fee might they never get processed?

[the founder]

Are you sending with miner fees?  I'm seeing more and more fees are required (beyond what the client is asking for) to get transfers though in any reasonable timeframe.

No, I haven't sent with any fees.  So, what, since I didn't add any fees it's going to take months to get the transactions through?  Without paying the fee might they never get processed?

It most likely will get processed... but yea I could picture it taking a long time....

I've see it take as long as 6 days if you send something without fees....

[proudhon]

Are you sending with miner fees?  I'm seeing more and more fees are required (beyond what the client is asking for) to get transfers though in any reasonable timeframe.

No, I haven't sent with any fees.  So, what, since I didn't add any fees it's going to take months to get the transactions through?  Without paying the fee might they never get processed?

It most likely will get processed... but yea I could picture it taking a long time....

I've see it take as long as 6 days if you send something without fees....

Over 2 months, though?  That can't be right.

[proudhon]

Is there some kind of debug output I can generate to see what the client did with these transactions?  Were they even announced to the network?  Is there some way to retroactively add transaction fees to past transactions that didn't have them?  If not, maybe there should be, cuz this is fucked up.

[hugolp]

Is there some kind of debug output I can generate to see what the client did with these transactions?  Were they even announced to the network?  Is there some way to retroactively add transaction fees to past transactions that didn't have them?  If not, maybe there should be, cuz this is fucked up.

You can see the unconfirmed transactions here: http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/

I doubt the 2 month old is there though, but it does not hurt checking. The new one should be there.

[Astrohacker]

You can make new transactions with the same coins. i.e., double spend them, but just send them to the same addresses you were going to send them to. It might help to include a bigger fee. If the new transactions are accepted, the old ones will be irrelevant.

[proudhon]

Is there some kind of debug output I can generate to see what the client did with these transactions?  Were they even announced to the network?  Is there some way to retroactively add transaction fees to past transactions that didn't have them?  If not, maybe there should be, cuz this is fucked up.

You can see the unconfirmed transactions here: http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/

I doubt the 2 month old is there though, but it does not hurt checking. The new one should be there.

I tried searching the page for the address to which I attempted to send the coins this morning and didn't see anything.

[proudhon]

You can make new transactions with the same coins. i.e., double spend them, but just send them to the same addresses you were going to send them to. It might help to include a bigger fee. If the new transactions are accepted, the old ones will be irrelevant.

How do you make new transactions with the same coins?  Also, I know the recommended transaction fee is 0.01, but is that enough to get a transaction in a new block within, say, a day?

[Astrohacker]

You can make new transactions with the same coins. i.e., double spend them, but just send them to the same addresses you were going to send them to. It might help to include a bigger fee. If the new transactions are accepted, the old ones will be irrelevant.

How do you make new transactions with the same coins?  Also, I know the recommended transaction fee is 0.01, but is that enough to get a transaction in a new block within, say, a day?

Well I don't think the present client supports that, but in principle you just construct a new transaction. Make sure to use up all the coins in those addresses, so if anyone tries to plug the first transaction into a block, it won't be valid. Someone made a client that lets you pick which addresses you send from, you could try that one. You could try removing all the blocks in your block chain since before you sent the coins, that way the client doesn't think it's double spending.

Another thing is to just wait with your client on, because it will rebroadcast the transactions after a random amount of time less than 30 minutes.

[bitplane]

Won't starting the client with --rescan fix this?

[Xephan]

Won't starting the client with --rescan fix this?

No, that's when you know the transaction's been processed, you can find it in blockexplorer but your wallet isn't showing it

In his case, his wallet knows the transaction but nobody's willing (or succeeded yet) to process it into a block.

[bitplane]

Ah, okay...

Idea: copy the wallet and export the private keys using bitcoin-tools, compile the latest experimental client from git and import the keys into a new wallet (the ones that received coins).. the record of the transaction being broadcast to the network will not exist in the new wallet, so you can double-spend them to a different address in your new wallet.

Edit: It's possible to transfer keys between your old wallet and a blank one by using pyWallet.

[proudhon]

Yeah, I tried -rescan first thing and it didn't work.

[defxor]

still said "0/unconfirmed" for that transaction, even though I had an updated blockchain.

The address is correct.  But, blockexplorer does not show any incoming activity to the address I attempted to send coins to.  The coins, however, have been deducted from my balance.

running OS X Snow Leopard.  I'm currently running v0.3.24

I'm seeing the same thing with the latest send on one of my computers (tx not announced). On my other (same OS, same version etc) I don't have any problems at all.

On the problematic client Bitcoin is constantly writing 1MB/s data to the disk (edit: And not to any file I can see growing in size!). Thinking it was due to a corrupted blockchain I cleaned it up and copied the blockchain from my other client - but it didn't make a difference.

Slightly weird. I'm leaning towards an OS X specific bug in .24 that doesn't manifest itself on all configurations. The only difference between my two clients is that one is portmapped (>100 connections) and the other isn't (8).

[willphase]

you could delete your blockchain, then restart the client with -rescan and it'll re download the block chain and those 0/unconfirmed should vanish.  It'll take a while to download the chain though.

Will

[kwukduck]

I had the same problem in the past, only way i was able to solve it was to make a copy of the wallet.dat, remove everything, blockchain, database. Put back an old backup of the wallet (one that doesn't contain these transactions yet) and let it redownload the full blockchain.
Today -rescan might just do the trick, but since the transaction is stored in the current wallet.dat i think it still shows the coins missing.