MultiBit

[jim618]

Thanks a lot. Also read that in the faq or somewhere.
Also resetted the blockchain. Nothing came in.
From my old Wallet ID everything arrived. Old and new payments.
From the other newer wallet ids nothing came in.

Perhaps post a screen shot of the receiving addresses and state which tx in particular you are looking at ?

[zugvogel21]

Yes they are confirmed. I will post a pic and tix ids in 10.30 minutes. Thanks for your help!

[zugvogel21]

Here are the 3 Tx>

031bea2bd85c5b1e1c6c1021abc53705b2a7f2fa449c7f4ae6c3aa46394d35b5
da3a98c8b97381c050160bdbeaed02b1a5bd0a2049abbaf36be11e0b478697b6

in the last one i have 2 payments.

My wallet ids>

1EvWzwVFqe49hnrG64STKkRpbAxRrkYi2M
18YzXPB6xu8eXiWXsG3NBxeKfMqDv3sUHd

My working Wallet Id which is in the same wallet folder the first id>

1JedNPEBAKeGPVeBhUeDWr7Skv7WN6XiZg

Hop you can help me. Screenshot from wallet i have a problem.

[prof7bit]

Here are the 3 Tx>

031bea2bd85c5b1e1c6c1021abc53705b2a7f2fa449c7f4ae6c3aa46394d35b5
da3a98c8b97381c050160bdbeaed02b1a5bd0a2049abbaf36be11e0b478697b6

in the last one i have 2 payments.

My wallet ids>

1EvWzwVFqe49hnrG64STKkRpbAxRrkYi2M
18YzXPB6xu8eXiWXsG3NBxeKfMqDv3sUHd

My working Wallet Id which is in the same wallet folder the first id>

1JedNPEBAKeGPVeBhUeDWr7Skv7WN6XiZg

Hop you can help me. Screenshot from wallet i have a problem.

Please check the clock on your computer, check date and time. If its accidentally wrong then:

• quit Multibit
• set the clock correctly, make sure that year, month, day, hour, everything are correctly set to today plus/minus a few minutes.
• restart MultiBit and watch it synching on its own, do NOT click "reset block chain", this would mess it up, just let it sync on its own.

If its still not correct then here is the procedure how to force-sync everything

• quit Multibit
• set the clock to some time in February 2009. do not choose any date before 2009-02 or it won't work, you can choose a later date if none of your keys is that old but not earlier, so if you are around only since 2012 then choose some date in 2012 before you started using this wallet.
• Start Multibit
• Reset block chain
• Wait until it says "Synchronizing", all tx will disappear but there will be no progress, this is expected, syncing will hang
• Quit Multibit
• set the clock to today, set it to the exact date and time of today
• Start Multibit
• Do NOT reset the block chain now, instead just watch it sync on its own.

After this your wallet should be synced correctly and show all tx

-----

@jim618: last week when looking at the code it seemed to me (if I remember correctly and if my interpretation was correct, I only had a cursory look at it) that when the user clicks "reset block chain" it will to the following:

find the date of oldest transaction in the tx list, if found then use that, ignore creationTimeSeconds. If no tx is found then use earliest creationTimeSeconds (oldest key). If its zero (undefined) then [not sure, probably do the wrong thing]. Problem is: In MultiBit the creation time of the keys is always zero! As soon as the wallet has no tx anymore it does not know from when to sync! And even worse: if it has some tx but is for whatever reason missing the oldest tx then it will never be able to correctly sync! It doesn't actually matter why it has missed a transaction, reset is supposed to fix this condition without knowing the reason but it can't!

With the above way of hitting "reset blockchain" while the clock was wrong a few times I managed to bring my old wallet (tx since 2011) into a state where it had only the last two tx from a few months ago and flat out refused to sync any earlier date, it considered these as the oldest tx in my wallet and synched only from this date onwards! I had to apply the above crude procedure to force-sync it from 2011 again. I think this is the bug that breaks reliable wallet syncing! Either because all keys are stored with creation date = undefined or because the algorithm to determine sync date is fundamentally flawed. Please bring back the calendar control to be able to override the wrong decisions of this heuristic and manually choose a date in the past to force-sync.

[zugvogel21]

Thx for your answer. Tried that. Its now synced again but i have still the same balance.
The 3 transactions of the other 2 wallet ids still not appear.
But it is synced to date. Also received yesterday some payments to my first id.
The other two dont work.
All payment ids which are shown at tab request under the point your receiving addresses are active and i can send to, right ?
It is possible to have in one wallet more that one receiving address, right ?
Thanks again

[prof7bit]

Thx for your answer. Tried that. Its now synced again but i have still the same balance.
The 3 transactions of the other 2 wallet ids still not appear.
But it is synced to date. Also received yesterday some payments to my first id.
The other two dont work.
All payment ids which are shown at tab request under the point your receiving addresses are active and i can send to, right ?
It is possible to have in one wallet more that one receiving address, right ?
Thanks again

Yes, you are supposed to be able to receive to all receiving addresses on the request tab. Every wallet can have multiple receiving addresses. You keep using the term "payment id", this terminology does not exist in Bitcoin, I suppose you mean "bitcoin address" or "receiving address"? Lets get the terminology straight:

• on the left side panel you see wallets. A Wallet is a collection of receiving addresses. You can manage more than one wallet in Multibit, you can switch between them, each one is represented by a *.wallet file, each wallet can have as many receiving addresses as you want.
• on the main panel in the "request" tab at the bottom you see the list "your receiving addresses", these are the bitcoin addresses contained in the active wallet (the wallet that is currently selected in the left side panel if you have more than one wallet or the only wallet if there is only onel), a payment to any of these addresses should show up in the transaction list of that wallet and add to that wallet's balance
• if you switch to a different wallet on the left side then you will see how receiving addresses, transaction history and balances are switched also to show the information for the currently selected wallet

If you have more than one wallet (on the left side) then it is possible that only one of them is suffering from this out-of-sync condition. Close all other wallets (file->close), open only the "broken" one (file -> open), apply the above mentioned full force sync method to the broken wallets individually.

[zugvogel21]

Yes i have left one wallet and right 3 receiving addresses.
One is working fine. The other two one i send coins with the 2 tx i posted before.
They are also in the blockchain confirmed.
But i have got no coins to my wallet.

[prof7bit]

Yes i have left one wallet and right 3 receiving addresses.
One is working fine. The other two one i send coins with the 2 tx i posted before.
They are also in the blockchain confirmed.
But i have got no coins to my wallet.

Now lets try something else (please first make sure you find the exact location of the .wallet file in explorer, remember where it is, maybe even make a copy of that file to a safe location so you won't accidentally delete it)


The following requires you to trust me not to be a malware producer intending to steal your coins, It is ok if you don't want to do that, you don't have to! Go to this website https://github.com/prof7bit/wallet-key-tool/releases and download wallet-key-tool. Start it.

* Click the load button, find your .wallet file open it, enter password to decrypt.
* It should show you a list of your 3 addresses and their keys.
* right-click each of them and choose "fetch balance and creation date from blockchain.info", verify that the numbers are correct.
* Click the save button, choose "Multibit wallet" as file type and a convenient folder and file name where you can easily find it, it will not allow you to overwrite your existing wallet, it will save a new wallet file.
* open Multibit
* close the existing wallet file (file -> close).
* click "file->open"
* open the newly created .wallet file from above
* watch it sync (do not reset, it will sync on its own) and balances should be ok.

[zugvogel21]

Ok i will test that tomorrow. I am not leaving home. Thanks for your help again.
Perhaps Jim can also tell me that this way is save or if he has another idea.

[MyPotPlantDied]

Hey guys is there some sort of issue with exporting the private keys from a Multibit client? I thought I read that somewhere when the Maidsafe IPO was going on.

[prof7bit]

Hey guys is there some sort of issue with exporting the private keys from a Multibit client? I thought I read that somewhere when the Maidsafe IPO was going on.

No. Export works perfectly. there was an issue with import of blockchain.info aes.json files because the blockchain.info file format and its old import code (which has been removed) is screwed up but it could only lead to loss if you deleted old backups or generally didn't care about making backups or at least verify that everything is ok and you have new backups before deleting old backups. Backup (export) itself is working perfectly.

[MyPotPlantDied]

Hey guys is there some sort of issue with exporting the private keys from a Multibit client? I thought I read that somewhere when the Maidsafe IPO was going on.

No. Export works perfectly. there was an issue with import of blockchain.info aes.json files because the blockchain.info file format and its old import code (which has been removed) is screwed up but it could only lead to loss if you deleted old backups or generally didn't care about making backups or at least verify that everything is ok and you have new backups before deleting old backups. Backup (export) itself is working perfectly.

Good to know! Thanks for the info!

[zugvogel21]

Yes i have left one wallet and right 3 receiving addresses.
One is working fine. The other two one i send coins with the 2 tx i posted before.
They are also in the blockchain confirmed.
But i have got no coins to my wallet.

Now lets try something else (please first make sure you find the exact location of the .wallet file in explorer, remember where it is, maybe even make a copy of that file to a safe location so you won't accidentally delete it)


The following requires you to trust me not to be a malware producer intending to steal your coins, It is ok if you don't want to do that, you don't have to! Go to this website https://github.com/prof7bit/wallet-key-tool/releases and download wallet-key-tool. Start it.

* Click the load button, find your .wallet file open it, enter password to decrypt.
* It should show you a list of your 3 addresses and their keys.
* right-click each of them and choose "fetch balance and creation date from blockchain.info", verify that the numbers are correct.
* Click the save button, choose "Multibit wallet" as file type and a convenient folder and file name where you can easily find it, it will not allow you to overwrite your existing wallet, it will save a new wallet file.
* open Multibit
* close the existing wallet file (file -> close).
* click "file->open"
* open the newly created .wallet file from above
* watch it sync (do not reset, it will sync on its own) and balances should be ok.

Worked! Thx a lot! Have a nice day..

[f3tus]

Is there any particular reason why I should backup both the .wallet file and the private key, and not just the private key?

If something happens to my disk and lose the .wallet file, can't I just re-access it by importing the private key into an empty wallet?

[prof7bit]

Is there any particular reason why I should backup both the .wallet file and the private key, and not just the private key?

If something happens to my disk and lose the .wallet file, can't I just re-access it by importing the private key into an empty wallet?

you can backup either one. Each one of them alone contains all keys, so only one of them is needed to restore access to your coins.

The .wallet you can just open (file -> open), the .key needs to be imported into a newly generated wallet. The .key file can also be used to merge two wallets into one because it can be imported into an existing wallet.

The key file (when you decrypt it manually) is a plain text file, so theoretically you could import it elsewhere even if you don't have an installation of Multibit. It has the same file format as the file you would get from bitcoin-core when executing the dumpwallet command and can be imported by all programs that support this file format (Schildbach, Bitcoin-core, Multibit, probably a few more).

You should also keep a copy of the .info file, its not strictly needed but it adds some convenience, it contains the labels you gave to the addresses, its easier to interpret your old tx history if your addresses keep their names. But this is optional.


I personally backup my .wallet along with its .info file instead of the .key because I will always have a Multibit installation around (or my own wallet-key-tool converter program which can read/write them all)

[f3tus]

Ah, I see.

What does this mean, though: https://multibit.org/help_backupWalletUsingPrivateKeys.html

and, as long as you do not manually create new receiving addresses, you can use the private key file as a backup for the wallet.

What happens if I create new receiving addresses sometime after I exported my private key?

[f3tus]

What does this mean, though: https://multibit.org/help_backupWalletUsingPrivateKeys.html

and, as long as you do not manually create new receiving addresses, you can use the private key file as a backup for the wallet.

What happens if I create new receiving addresses sometime after I exported my private key?

Bump?

[prof7bit]

What does this mean, though: https://multibit.org/help_backupWalletUsingPrivateKeys.html

and, as long as you do not manually create new receiving addresses, you can use the private key file as a backup for the wallet.

What happens if I create new receiving addresses sometime after I exported my private key?

Bump?

You need to make a new backup when you created new addresses.

The way I did it myself is I created a few dozen addresses in advance and labeled them all "reserve", then made my backups. Now if I quickly need a new receiving address I just pick one of my reserve addresses and rename it and use it. When I'm running low on reserve addresses I create another bunch of them and make new backups. This way I am not forced to do it too often, I don't need to do it when I'm in a hurry (and then forget to do it), I can make new backups at the times when it is most convenient for me.

Bitcoin-core maintains a pool of 100 reserve addresses hidden from the user and creates new ones all the time, this has the disadvantage that you can never be quite sure when its time to make a new backup unless you painstakingly count all events that took addresses from the pool since you made the last backup. In Multibit on the other hand with the above technique you know **exactly** when to backup because it will never generate new addresses on its own automatically, it only happens when you explicitly request new addresses and you have 100% control over it.

[f3tus]

So if I don't make a new backup, the old one will fail to import and I lose my coins?

[R2D221]

So if I don't make a new backup, the old one will fail to import and I lose my coins?

The old one will import correctly, but will not contain the new private keys (obviously). Only then will you lose your coins, but only if you are not careful.