MultiBit

[foo]

The new bitcoin.org is live, and MultiBit is now the #1 recommendation for new users. Congratulations, Jim!

[1714204550]

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[jim618]

Thanks foo !

[Jouke]

Thanks foo !

Somewhere in the documentation I read something about #multibit on IRC. I have been lurking there and a lot of people stopped by and asked if I were a dev and if I could help.

[jim618]

Hi Jouke,

Cheers for the shout-out about #multibit
How to support people as there are more and more users of MultiBit we have been discussing.
I'll write up some posts about it.

[phelix]

trying to install v0.5.8 spendpolicy  win8 64bit

error (translated):

Registry Key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\bitcoin could not be opened.
OS failure number 5
OS failure text: access denied

It worked nonetheless.

Also uninstall of 0.5.7 did not work. ("looking for uninstall.jar")

[phelix]

v0.5.8 spendpolicy  win8 64bit

It was not displaying a transaction with ~8 confirmations in a newly created and password secured wallet .

Tried resetting the wallet with "date of first transaction" - still not showing. Resetting with the date one year earlier helped.

[shkiser]

I just transferred almost 3 bitcoins to my multibit client and its not even showing up. Its usually almost instant. I rechecked several times I def didnt mistype the wallet address.. Whats the deal.? Never had an issue before been using this for 5 months..

[jim618]

@Phelix. The beta code also needs updating to include a fix for this. I'll be working on this this week.

@shkiser. Replied in other thread.

[allocater]

I found a bug:

I have 3 addresses:

A = 0.1
B = 0.02111658
C = 0.48

I put these keys in various wallets:

W_1 = A+B = is displayed as 0.61111658 (wrong)
W_2 = A+B+C = is displayed as 1.09111658 (wrong)
W_3 = B+C = is displayed as 0.50111658 (correct)
W_4 = A = is displayed as 0.1 (correct)

C is a change-return-address from B. So maybe if you include B alone, it also counts C to it automatically? And if you add B+C together it counts C double. Then there are still discrepancies. Maybe because I ran synchronization multiple times from different "replay date"s? The transactions for W_1 and W_2 don't even add up to the sum that is displayed in the wallet. It's pretty chaotic.

[jim618]

Can I ask what you are trying to do exactly ?

You have to be pretty careful when importing private keys between wallets to get everything just right. Also transactions can be spending from various inputs to various output addresses which you may have in various wallets.

TBH I don't recommend having the same private key in multiple wallets for exactly this reason. Obviously sometimes you need to move private keys around but normally it is far easier to move bitcoin with a regular transaction.

[allocater]

Well, basically I wanted to move from bitcoin-qt client to multibit-client. So I exported the privkeys from bitcoin-qt (B+C). Multibit came with it's own start-address (A). Upon importing B, I had W_1 (A+B) but it displayed transactions and the end-sum wrong. I assumed, because C was still missing, so I created W_2, this time importing B+C, so I got A+B+C. Now it was even more screwed up and displayed double my correct balance. W_3 and W_4 were just created to test further and try to find the error.

I can reset the blockchain and run a replay once from the beginning to see, if it clears things up. Or just delete W_1 and W_2 and go with W_3 and W_4 now.

[jim618]

Hi Allocater,

I understand now.
It could be that you initially did not go far enough back in time when you replayed the block chain to get all the relevant transactions. If you don't have all of them it makes it difficult as it looks like you are spending outputs you don't have.

If you find the date of the very first transaction you made and reset the blockchain from the day BEFORE that you should have what is on the blockchain.

You need to make sure that you have all the change addresses in your wallet too. You can check that by doing a right click on the transactions in the 'Transactions' tab and looking at the raw transactions. You want to make sure all the BTC is being sent to an address in your wallet.

[fsb4000]

I'm sorry.I have not read the previous pages of this topic.....
There is a question: Do you plan to create portable version of the client?

[jim618]

Hi fsb4000,

It's pretty easy to set up MultiBit to run portably, say on a USB drive.
There's a how-to here:
https://multibit.org/help_runFromUSBDrive.html

It could be more slick but you can do it now if you want to.

[2112]

It's pretty easy to set up MultiBit to run portably, say on a USB drive.
There's a how-to here:
https://multibit.org/help_runFromUSBDrive.html
It could be more slick but you can do it now if you want to.

Jim, is there any chance that you'll follow up on the promise of the portable JRE?

You can also have a "Java Runtime Environment" stored on the USB too so that it is guaranteed to run. (More details to follow).

I'm particularly interested if it is possible to produce a FAT32 USB drive with all the runtimes, or at least the two for 32-bit Windows and 32-bit Linux. I know that Java is a nice lady, but she has recently been seen in public with some not-that-nice men, and people are afraid to let her stay overnight on their computer. 

Thanks.

[jim618]

Hi 2112,

Yes it on the list of planned stuff to get through but not immediately.
I needed to get the checkpointing stuff in first as that will/has dropped the installer down to 12 MB. I think a JRE will add about 30 MB (don't know exactly yet).

I believe in Java 7 it's doable to add a JRE in and use that. I had a quick look at feasibility before.
There is a fair bit to do in the near with the encrypted wallets etc so I expect I'll get onto it a bit after.

RE: Linux.
Just recently a Bart Martens contacted me saying he was planning to work on a Debian package for MultiBit which would be great. The current Linux packaging works but is a bit clunky and non standard so this will be very useful. Thanks Bart !

[fsb4000]

Hi fsb4000,

It's pretty easy to set up MultiBit to run portably, say on a USB drive.
There's a how-to here:
https://multibit.org/help_runFromUSBDrive.html

It could be more slick but you can do it now if you want to.

thank you very much

[2112]

Yes it on the list of planned stuff to get through but not immediately.
I needed to get the checkpointing stuff in first as that will/has dropped the installer down to 12 MB. I think a JRE will add about 30 MB (don't know exactly yet).

I believe in Java 7 it's doable to add a JRE in and use that. I had a quick look at feasibility before.
There is a fair bit to do in the near with the encrypted wallets etc so I expect I'll get onto it a bit after.

Thank you very much. Please take your time, my request is the lowest priority. Former coworker of mine produced such a generic Java private zip files for several old runtimes 1.3, 1.4 & 1.5 and it covered 4 platforms that we use: Solaris, Windows, Linux and MacOS. Unfortunately he didn't leave any instructions and I couldn't reproduce his feat for 1.6 and 1.7. Java had recently gotten really bad reputation for lack of security and currently the majority of the guest computers I would use simply don't have it installed and I don't want to ask for administrative privileges do an install and then uninstall.

Please let me know if the instructions for private Java configurations are available somewhere that you know. I maybe able to figure it out on my own, without handholding.

Thanks again.
 

[splat44]

How different is this from regular btc client?

What if I have other btc address from other places such as blockchain?

I know that blockchain allows us to make backup on USB drive for import/export, can I use the backup file on multibit and still keeping blockchain address intact?

Does actual blockchain address being added in multibit client?

I understand that instawallet.org has problem and until problem is being fixed, how multibit deal with instawallet address within mulltibit?

If this program generate a bitcoin address same as regular client, I'm not sure the advantage of this and will be great knowing in more detail before installing it!

[jim618]

Hi Splat44,

The various Bitcoin clients all use the same definitions for the Bitcoin addresses that send to each other. It is a bit like different email software using the same sorts of email addresses and being compatible.

The MultiBit help might give you a bit more background;
https://multibit.org/help_contents.html

In terms of the underlying code it is completely different - it is written in Java instead of C++.

Generally I recommend having separate addresses in different clients. There is the capability to import the blockchain.info backups into MultiBit but this is mainly in case blockchain.info gets DDOSed and people need to access their funds. It's simpler to create new addresses in MultiBit and just send the bitcoin from one client to another.

As I type I think Instawallet is advising people not to send any bitcoin to Instawallet addresses. Whilst their service is unavailable this is good advice I think.

You can always install MultiBit and send yourself a few millis from another client. Try it out and see if you like it. You can run the Satoshi client and MultiBit on the same machine at the same time.