Armory 0.96.5 - Ubuntu 18.04.5 - Bitcoincore 0.21.0 - bitcoind necessary?

[harlequininja]

Hi guys,

I have installed Bitcoincore 0.21.0 via the ubuntu software manager. I have run Bitcoincore and downloaded the whole Blockchain using the bitcoin GUI. Installed Armory 0.96.5 and entered the bitcoin home Dir manually. I'm not sure if the bitcoind was installed. Is it necessary or does armory work also just by accessing the bitcoin home Dir?
If not, what would be the easiest way to install bitcoind afterwards without deleting the Bitcoincore database?

Cheers!

[NotATether]

Armory uses bitcoind RPC calls, I haven't heard of it merely reading the block files (because how would it get incoming transactions or broadcast them?)

As long as bitcoind can be found on the PATH, if you have configured bitcoind to also use that same home dir then Armory should have no problem starting Core and using it.

[nc50lc]

Armory should be able to detect bitcoind if it's in the default installation directory.

Why ask? Are you having issues with Armory?
Hover your mouse pointer over the lower-right side of Armory where the number of blocks is written.
If it says "Disconnected from Bitcoin Node, cannot update history" or if "Node offline" is simply written there, it means you don't have bitcoind.

[HCP]

I have installed Bitcoincore 0.21.0 via the ubuntu software manager. I have run Bitcoincore and downloaded the whole Blockchain using the bitcoin GUI. Installed Armory 0.96.5 and entered the bitcoin home Dir manually. I'm not sure if the bitcoind was installed. Is it necessary or does armory work also just by accessing the bitcoin home Dir?

As stated, Armory reads the block data directly from the "blocks" directory in the "bitcoin home dir". However, it also requires bitcoind/Bitcoin Core to be running so that it can communicate with it via RPC to get notified of new blocks and also send transactions etc.

However, it doesn't necessarily have to be bitciond... if you have Bitcoin Core, open and running and synced, this will also work as "Bitcoin Core" is essentially bitcoind+GUI.

I generally run Bitcoin Core GUI (if it isn't already running), wait for it to finish syncing, then I start Armory... I have no issues using it like this. In any case, if you have Armory set to "let Armory run bitcoind/Bitcoin Core in the background" in the Armory settings, if it doesn't detect bitcoind or Bitcoin Core already running when it starts, it will automagically spawn bitcoind in the background.

If it can't find the bitcoind executable, you'll see errors/messages saying as much in your Armory logs.

[harlequininja]

You are awesome guys!

I spent some time figuring out, that installing bitcoincore with SNAP form CANONICAL causes the problem since snap disperses the files and binaries all over the place 

I generally run Bitcoin Core GUI (if it isn't already running), wait for it to finish syncing, then I start Armory... I have no issues using it like this.

Tried your approach and it did work HCP.

I also found the snap/bin/bitcoin-core.daemon - did execute it in the terminal....worked fine. But I guess Armory doesn't recognize it as bitcoind since SNAP seems to have renamed it. Otherwise it probably wouldn't be necessary to start bitcoin core via GUI. 

[goatpig]

On Linux, Armory tries to spawn bitcoind (as in just this command, with that specific name). If typing "bitcoind" in your terminal does not spawn Core, then you can either make sure it does, or run Core manually.

As stated, Armory reads the block data directly from the "blocks" directory in the "bitcoin home dir". However, it also requires bitcoind/Bitcoin Core to be running so that it can communicate with it via RPC to get notified of new blocks and also send transactions etc.

New block & mempool notifications are grabbed over the Bitcoin P2P protocol. Same with tx broadcasting. Armory spoofs itself as a node to your local Core instance to this avail. RPC is not mandatory and is used to monitor the progress of the blockchain download (when Core is catching up on history) and as a fallback broadcast vector. This is because while RPC needs to be setup (it's an authenticated connection), whereas your node's P2P layer allows anyone in and is always on.

ArmoryDB does not need to talk to your Core node to read the blockchain data on disk. This is a viable way to build your original database if your system has very little RAM. It cannot see new transactions & blocks without talking to your node however, so you'd never get updates to the chain that way, even if the new block data is written to your disk by Core.

[HCP]

New block & mempool notifications are grabbed over the Bitcoin P2P protocol. Same with tx broadcasting. Armory spoofs itself as a node to your local Core instance to this avail.

That would probably explain the 127.0.0.1 connections that I have seen popping up in the client list on Bitcoin Core from time to time then.

[harlequininja]

On Linux, Armory tries to spawn bitcoind (as in just this command, with that specific name). If typing "bitcoind" in your terminal does not spawn Core, then you can either make sure it does, or run Core manually.

Did rename bitcoin-core.daemon to bitcoind. Notification about block height and connection in bottom right corner changed form purple to green. Works just fine. Thank you!