Slight glitch in the bitcoin client?

[Desolator]

There's so little to this that hopefully there's another explaination but I'm seeing one.  I had 0.30239966 bitcoins and I tried to send 0.3 to someone.  It warned me that because it was over a size limit, it was going to charge 0.005 so I accepted and now I have 0.00 as a wallet balance but the transaction went through.  That means it only paid .00239966 as a fee.  That's not 0.005 so that's not supposed to happen right?

[payb.tc]

you can find out if you look up the transaction on http://blockexplorer.com

search for the TO address and then click the transaction ID. it should show you the fee paid.

[Valhalla1]

There's so little to this that hopefully there's another explaination but I'm seeing one.  I had 0.30239966 bitcoins and I tried to send 0.3 to someone.  It warned me that because it was over a size limit, it was going to charge 0.005 so I accepted and now I have 0.00 as a wallet balance but the transaction went through.  That means it only paid .00239966 as a fee.  That's not 0.005 so that's not supposed to happen right?

I have had this happen to me also, the fee was much higher than the normal 0.005 and it took the remainder of my bitcoins as the fee

[Desolator]

Dunno what block number or transaction ID it was since apparently the client doesn't let me know that info but according to the client itself:

Debit: -0.30
Transaction fee: -0.00239966
Net amount: -0.30239966

And the transaction was supposed to be 0.005 so in the long term if we're supposed to be making more money on transaction fees than block formation, they should probably patch that little problem.

[ArtForz]

Is this your tx: http://blockexplorer.com/t/7AYvrSCyRK ?
What version of the client were you running? 0.3.24?

[Desolator]

Yeah, that looks like the transaction.  I'm running the 0.3.24 beta.  Is that different than the 24 non-beta that I think I heard was released?  Either way, if this was fixed in the software or not, someone could just write an alternate coin client that uses the same glitch to not send a full transaction fee so it appears to be a problem with the entire system.

[xali]

Dunno what block number or transaction ID it was since apparently the client doesn't let me know that info

How did you get so deep into bitcoins with out even knowing how to use block explorer? you take the address that you used and put it in block explorer and look through the transactions for the one that matches up with the date amount address etc

[ArtForz]

Okay, 0.3.24-beta, yeah, that should be 0.3.24.
I'm asking because iirc some older version right after min fee changed from 0.01 to 0.0005 (0.3.23 ?) had a bug where it would throw away any output < 0.01 as fee. that was fixed in git afterwards but then the fix got accidentally reverted and I'm not exactly sure when/if it was un-reverted again. Hell, now I'm not even sure if it's fixed in 0.3.24...
And this tx looks exactly like it'd trigger that bug.
Someone who's been following recent client changes more closely should be able to shed more light on this.

Edit: just checked git, yes. that bug is in 0.3.24.
fix is already in master, so hopefully this one will be fixed for good in 0.3.25-rc1.

[Desolator]

Dunno what block number or transaction ID it was since apparently the client doesn't let me know that info

How did you get so deep into bitcoins with out even knowing how to use block explorer? you take the address that you used and put it in block explorer and look through the transactions for the one that matches up with the date amount address etc

Because all the wiki articles are pretty awful, block explorer has basically no instructions, the client doesn't log enough info about transactions, and my bitcoin address changes every time I receive (or is it send?) a payment which makes it impossible to look at the history based on my address.  I did know the target address though but didn't know it was individualized to me, which actually seems mandatory now that I think about it

But besides that, if the client software is enforcing that policy and not the network, that's a huuuuuuuuge security flaw.  Someone's going to write a rogue client any day now that pays a 0% commission all the time and let them go through.

[ArtForz]

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
Normal clients won't relay transactions that don't have enough fees, and normal miners won't include them in blocks.
Of course they'll happily relay and accept transactions that have too much fee.
So, to get a transaction without a fee that would require it into a block you have to:
a) have enough hashpower to mine your own block.
or
b) directly connect to a miner/pool that accepts transactions with "not enough" fee.
... I don't exactly see where the "HUGE SECURITY FLAW!!1!one" is supposed to be...

[Desolator]

I thought that a transaction gets thrown out there and any pool or individual can attempt to put it into a block.  They'll automatically grab the highest fee ones first to maximize profits but if they run out of ones that have a fee at all, they crunch the free ones, possibly from smallest size to largest byte-wise.

So you can attach a fee of 0 to anything but then you'll get it treated like a 2nd class transaction that takes a lot longer to get processed.  BUT if it comes down to a client that has a mandatory fee and one that doesn't allow transaction fees to be added and 95% of people use the no-fee one, all the servers are forced to pick up crappy unpaid transactions.  And right now and in the short term future, there's like 100 transactions average in a block and like 30,000-ish miners so I don't think 0 fee transactions have a lot of trouble going through.