Protocol changes scheduled for Feb 20

[theymos]

At midnight on February 20 (UTC), versions of Bitcoin later than 0.2.9 will automatically change the protocol:

Code:

// Version 0.2 obsoletes 20 Feb 2012
if (GetTime() > 1329696000)
{
    vSend.SetVersion(209);
    vRecv.SetVersion(209);
}

(net.h)

It looks like the effect of this change is that all messages will now have checksums, including verack and version. Alternate clients that use the Bitcoin protocol will need to apply this change on Feb 20.

Bitcoin versions 0.1.x and 0.2.[0-9] (now 2+ years old) will stop functioning as a result of this change.

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[theymos]

5 days until the protocol change.

Looks like an alert will be issued before the change in case anything goes wrong.

[jim618]

For MultiBit, the update for the Feb20 change went into the version:

Version: 0.3.0Beta2
Date:     23 Jan 2012

(You can see the version number in the "Help | About MultiBit" screen).

If you are running an earlier version, please update it from the http://multibit.org website.

[btc_artist]

Now would be a good time for the devs of alternative clients to make sure their clients are compatible, if they haven't already.

[etotheipi]

At least it's an easy upgrade.  It amounts to changing half a line of code in Armory.  I'll be pushing the update tomorrow or the next day and post on the Armory thread.

I would guess that timezones don't matter.  Worst case, some users fail to connect to peers for a couple hours, but even that's a stretch (any peers in the same time will be sync'd with you)

[theymos]

Worst case, some users fail to connect to peers for a couple hours, but even that's a stretch (any peers in the same time will be sync'd with you)

It's UTC, so nodes with the correct time will all make the change at the same instant.

[nibor]

Version 315 is the oldest listening node on the network:
http://bitcoinstatus.rowit.co.uk/
(See 1/3rd of way down a table).

So should not be any big issue/chain split!

Might be interesting if a few people with old clients fire them up and see what happens?

[theymos]

Version 315 is the oldest listening node on the network:
http://bitcoinstatus.rowit.co.uk/
(See 1/3rd of way down a table).

Ha! That one might be me; I still run a 0.3.15 node. This node is old enough that it might go into safe mode when it receives the alert. (Versions older than 0.3.19 can have safe mode activated by alerts.)

[MysteryMiner]

The version charts are very interesting. Most popular version is "stable" version 502 but the majority is still on 323 and 324. Probably they are people who joined the Bitcoin in first half of 2011 and still are running the software. There are few running 401.

Safe mode means no blocks can be received and no transactions made? Lazy to look again at wiki.

[theymos]

An alert has been sent. Nearly every Bitcoin client is now printing "See bitcoin.org/feb20 if you have trouble connecting after 20 February" somewhere.

Safe mode means no blocks can be received and no transactions made? Lazy to look again at wiki.

Just JSON-RPC is disabled.

[Valalvax]

An alert has been sent. Nearly every Bitcoin client is now printing "See bitcoin.org/feb20 if you have trouble connecting after 20 February" somewhere.

Safe mode means no blocks can be received and no transactions made? Lazy to look again at wiki.

Just JSON-RPC is disabled.

! It's the truth! Mine has printed a message.... from the FUTURE

I assume downloading the latest version as of today will solve it?

Oh nevermind, reading, I can do it!

[theymos]

I assume downloading the latest version as of today will solve it?

No action is required right now. The alert is in case something bad happens on Feb 20.

[Atheros]

When I last ran my statistics collecting program on 14 February, it caught these older nodes:
0.3.11 - One client
0.3.02 - Two clients
0.3.00 - One client

http://bitcoinstats.org/versions.html

[etotheipi]

An alert has been sent. Nearly every Bitcoin client is now printing "See bitcoin.org/feb20 if you have trouble connecting after 20 February" somewhere.

Where is this being displayed?  I have had the client open in Ubuntu 10.04 for days (Satoshi version 0.5.0), and I see no alert anywhere.   I always wondered how the alerts work...

[theymos]

Where is this being displayed?  I have had the client open in Ubuntu 10.04 for days (Satoshi version 0.5.0), and I see no alert anywhere.   I always wondered how the alerts work...

The GUIs of some early versions of bitcoin-qt don't display alerts. You'll still see it in JSON-RPC getinfo, though.

[etotheipi]

Where is this being displayed?  I have had the client open in Ubuntu 10.04 for days (Satoshi version 0.5.0), and I see no alert anywhere.   I always wondered how the alerts work...

The GUIs of some early versions of bitcoin-qt don't display alerts. You'll still see it in JSON-RPC getinfo, though.

I upgraded to 0.5.2 and I see the alert now.  It's tough to miss.

[finway]

Good to know.

[muyuu]

The version charts are very interesting. Most popular version is "stable" version 502 but the majority is still on 323 and 324. Probably they are people who joined the Bitcoin in first half of 2011 and still are running the software. There are few running 401.

Safe mode means no blocks can be received and no transactions made? Lazy to look again at wiki.

I'd bet most of these are not active users.

[muyuu]

The version charts are very interesting. Most popular version is "stable" version 502 but the majority is still on 323 and 324. Probably they are people who joined the Bitcoin in first half of 2011 and still are running the software. There are few running 401.

Safe mode means no blocks can be received and no transactions made? Lazy to look again at wiki.

I'd bet most of these are not active users.

3.23 beta here and very active...   over 2000 transactions on just this laptop....

Cool, that proves it's not 100%. Still, I'd bet most of these are not active, defining most as 50%+.

[MysteryMiner]

Speaking about version, I will use 0.4.1 as long as it works. Hundreds of transactions with it and still working fine. The Qt version is turned out to be crap.