Armory - Discussion Thread

[chrisrico]

Hmm... Alan. I recall recently you said that a binary release for the Raspberry Pi might be in the future?

That plus this could equal a cool, cheap little Armory cold storage box...

[dsattler]

I know there are some people following this thread who speak German.   I got a guy who has a lot of money stuck in Armory, and his written English is very poor.   I do not understand his situation.  Anyone knowledgeable about Armory willing to help him, or at least help translate?  I'll split any donations received with you (which may be 0 BTC, but sometimes people like this tip generously).

Let me know if you can help.  Even if you just speak german but don't know much about Armory, you can just act as a middle-man translator for our emails. 

I am a native german and using armory quite a while now. Please don't hesitate to contact me, maybe I can help you with this.

[SimonBelmond]

I know there are some people following this thread who speak German.   I got a guy who has a lot of money stuck in Armory, and his written English is very poor.   I do not understand his situation.  Anyone knowledgeable about Armory willing to help him, or at least help translate?  I'll split any donations received with you (which may be 0 BTC, but sometimes people like this tip generously).

Let me know if you can help.  Even if you just speak german but don't know much about Armory, you can just act as a middle-man translator for our emails. 

I am a native german and using armory quite a while now. Please don't hesitate to contact me, maybe I can help you with this.

I am also happy to help transalte any strings into German. I love Armory and I have recently introduced it to many others who are not very confident in English but wanted to invest in Bitcoin. How will that work. Do we get a list of strings and just send you back the list of German strings?

[etotheipi]

I know there are some people following this thread who speak German.   I got a guy who has a lot of money stuck in Armory, and his written English is very poor.   I do not understand his situation.  Anyone knowledgeable about Armory willing to help him, or at least help translate?  I'll split any donations received with you (which may be 0 BTC, but sometimes people like this tip generously).

Let me know if you can help.  Even if you just speak german but don't know much about Armory, you can just act as a middle-man translator for our emails. 

I am a native german and using armory quite a while now. Please don't hesitate to contact me, maybe I can help you with this.

I am also happy to help transalte any strings into German. I love Armory and I have recently introduced it to many others who are not very confident in English but wanted to invest in Bitcoin. How will that work. Do we get a list of strings and just send you back the list of German strings?

Goatpig is currently working on proper unicode support, which is the first step to internationalization.  After we can handle arbitrary locales and character encodings, I'm going to prepare the app for localization ... basically just wrapping all the user-facing text with a translate function and making sure that everything can handle unicode characters (I wasn't really familiar with unicode or internationalization in general when I started Armory, so I didn't design it from the start with proper support). 

Once that's done, then we can start soliciting help creating translation files.  We won't be able to actually execute it until the new wallet files are done, which will natively support unicode (the current wallet file assumes all strings are single-byte characters... using any other encoding is going to cause widespread wallet-corruption issues, and I'm not excited about modifying the current wallets...).  But I think the new wallets will be done around the time that we actually get all the translation files in place for a few different apps.

[kerogre256]

Armory is very unstable, (Windows 7 64 bit 4GB) anything except 89.99.14-beta crashing every time I want to send bitcoin, and what is purpose of transaction scanning and why it take so long??? I  like offline wallet but how much unstable it is  scary.

[etotheipi]

Kerogore,

Is Armory crashing every time you type in your password?  We have a known wallet corruption problem, but it's easy to fix if you have a backup.  If not we, can also perform a recovery of the wallet file, which is usually successful.

See the following page for more info ("Armory crashes every time I type in my password"):

https://bitcoinarmory.com/download/troubleshooting/

[oakpacific]

What's the difference between creating entire transactions offline/online? The chain code could be input manually into the offline computer, along with a number determining the indexes of the deterministic addresses to be created, the online Armory will simply check if the transaction is valid and no private key will ever get onto the online computer.

[etotheipi]

What's the difference between creating entire transactions offline/online? The chain code could be input manually into the offline computer, along with a number determining the indexes of the deterministic addresses to be created, the online Armory will simply check if the transaction is valid and no private key will ever get onto the online computer.

I'm not sure I understand your question.  The online computer already never touches the private key data.  It is created on the offline computer and stays on the offline computer.  Only the root public key is transferred to the online computer.  Even all the data moving back and forth between the two systems is totally security-insensitive -- no private key data ever touches the USB key, only signed transactions that will end up in the blockchain anyway. 

When people talk about "paper wallets", I believe they're talking about something similar to what you are describing:  the private keys are not held on the offline computer, but instead re-typed every time the offline computer is booted.

Also, when Armory upgrades to BIP 32, it will be possible to compute private key X directly.  But the current deterministic algorithm in Armory uses a real chain:  i.e. private key X depends on private key X-1.  Therefore, if you need address 132, you have to compute the first 131.  Instead, I don't even pass indices between the systems.  Armory just precomputes the first 100-1000 addresses and identifies what it is capable of signing in the supplied transaction. 

[oakpacific]

What's the difference between creating entire transactions offline/online? The chain code could be input manually into the offline computer, along with a number determining the indexes of the deterministic addresses to be created, the online Armory will simply check if the transaction is valid and no private key will ever get onto the online computer.

I'm not sure I understand your question.  The online computer already never touches the private key data.  It is created on the offline computer and stays on the offline computer.  Only the root public key is transferred to the online computer.  Even all the data moving back and forth between the two systems is totally security-insensitive -- no private key data ever touches the USB key, only signed transactions that will end up in the blockchain anyway.  

When people talk about "paper wallets", I believe they're talking about something similar to what you are describing:  the private keys are not held on the offline computer, but instead re-typed every time the offline computer is booted.

Also, when Armory upgrades to BIP 32, it will be possible to compute private key X directly.  But the current deterministic algorithm in Armory uses a real chain:  i.e. private key X depends on private key X-1.  Therefore, if you need address 132, you have to compute the first 131.  Instead, I don't even pass indices between the systems.  Armory just precomputes the first 100-1000 addresses and identifies what it is capable of signing in the supplied transaction.  

Sorry, I was talking about the scenario when a malware taking over the online computer and trying to sneak itself into a USB disk to steal the private keys on the offline computer.

Anyway what would be the obstacles for creating entire transactions offline? Along with a write-switch protected USB drive it would be possible to make sure the offline computer is never infected, as the online Armory would only validate and broadcast the transactions supplied to it.

[coraz]

Sorry, I was talking about the scenario when a malware taking over the online computer and trying to sneak itself into a USB disk to steal the private keys on the offline computer.

Anyway what would be the obstacles for creating entire transactions offline? Along with a write-switch protected USB drive it would be possible to make sure the offline computer is never infected, as the online Armory would only validate and broadcast the transactions supplied to it.

When creating a transaction you need to know which unspent outputs to use, so knowledge of the blockchain is necessary.

Well, if you are extremely paranoid, you can avoid using USB sticks: simply print the unsigned-tx file and manually type it into the offline PC. Do the same with the signed-tx file to transfer it to the online PC for broadcasting.

[justusranvier]

Do the same with the signed-tx file to transfer it to the online PC for broadcasting.

That's overkill. To move offline->online burn the transaction to a mini-CDR and discard the disc after broadcasting.

[oakpacific]

Sorry, I was talking about the scenario when a malware taking over the online computer and trying to sneak itself into a USB disk to steal the private keys on the offline computer.

Anyway what would be the obstacles for creating entire transactions offline? Along with a write-switch protected USB drive it would be possible to make sure the offline computer is never infected, as the online Armory would only validate and broadcast the transactions supplied to it.

When creating a transaction you need to know which unspent outputs to use, so knowledge of the blockchain is necessary.

Well, if you are extremely paranoid, you can avoid using USB sticks: simply print the unsigned-tx file and manually type it into the offline PC. Do the same with the signed-tx file to transfer it to the online PC for broadcasting.

When I move my transaction back to the online machine, Armory can check if all the outputs are unspent, if I did something wrong then we are back to square one.

Also I don't think UTXOs alone are really much information, they should well fit into a sheet of paper using the same format of codes used for paper wallet backup, but etotheipi mentioned somewhere that a transaction could be as large as 1 MB and off the limit of even static QR code, so I am also curious what could make it so big, lots of dust outputs?

[coraz]

When I move my transaction back to the online machine, Armory can check if all the outputs are unspent, if I did something wrong then we are back to square one.

No, it won't work that way. To create a transaction you need to know which outputs to use and the offline machine doesn't know about any outputs at all.

E.g. let's say you have a new address and today (Dec 1, 2013) you received 1 BTC to this address. In order to spend this 1 BTC you will need to refer to the 32-byte hash of that Dec 1, 2013 transaction. Knowing only the address is not enough.

[Ente]

I know there are some people following this thread who speak German.   I got a guy who has a lot of money stuck in Armory, and his written English is very poor.   I do not understand his situation.  Anyone knowledgeable about Armory willing to help him, or at least help translate?  I'll split any donations received with you (which may be 0 BTC, but sometimes people like this tip generously).

Let me know if you can help.  Even if you just speak german but don't know much about Armory, you can just act as a middle-man translator for our emails. 

I hope this is resolved by now? If not, native German speaker here, using Armory for a good while (on linux).

Ente

[jingos]

Was on 0.88 and I upgraded Debian from Squeeze to Wheezy and it broke Armory's icons and splash screen. Installing 0.90 fixed the icons but the splash is screen is still just a black square.

[kerogre256]

Kerogore,

Is Armory crashing every time you type in your password?  We have a known wallet corruption problem, but it's easy to fix if you have a backup.  If not we, can also perform a recovery of the wallet file, which is usually successful.

See the following page for more info ("Armory crashes every time I type in my password"):

https://bitcoinarmory.com/download/troubleshooting/

I installed 90.-beta version and encrypted wallet, after that was not able send any bitcoin armory client crash, I unencrypted wallet and try it again, 90.-beta crash again, i re-installed version 89.14-beta was able send bitcoin, I encrypted wallet again and after thad armory crash (89.14-beta) when I try send bitcoin, I unencrypted wallet and now was able send it again, I dont know what to do now. Can wallet by corrupted to the point then i will not able recovery private key or print copy of offline wallet ?

[goatpig]

Kerogore,

Is Armory crashing every time you type in your password?  We have a known wallet corruption problem, but it's easy to fix if you have a backup.  If not we, can also perform a recovery of the wallet file, which is usually successful.

See the following page for more info ("Armory crashes every time I type in my password"):

https://bitcoinarmory.com/download/troubleshooting/

I installed 90.-beta version and encrypted wallet, after that was not able send any bitcoin armory client crash, I unencrypted wallet and try it again, 90.-beta crash again, i re-installed version 89.14-beta was able send bitcoin, I encrypted wallet again and after thad armory crash (89.14-beta) when I try send bitcoin, I unencrypted wallet and now was able send it again, I dont know what to do now. Can wallet by corrupted to the point then i will not able recovery private key or print copy of offline wallet ?

Was Armory crashing (as in closes on its own) or hanging (stopped responding but didn't close itself)? If you can access your wallet I strongly suggest you create a paper backup for now. You can then write down your experience (with as much details as possible) to contact@bitcoinarmory.com

[kerogre256]

Kerogore,

Is Armory crashing every time you type in your password?  We have a known wallet corruption problem, but it's easy to fix if you have a backup.  If not we, can also perform a recovery of the wallet file, which is usually successful.

See the following page for more info ("Armory crashes every time I type in my password"):

https://bitcoinarmory.com/download/troubleshooting/

I installed 90.-beta version and encrypted wallet, after that was not able send any bitcoin armory client crash, I unencrypted wallet and try it again, 90.-beta crash again, i re-installed version 89.14-beta was able send bitcoin, I encrypted wallet again and after thad armory crash (89.14-beta) when I try send bitcoin, I unencrypted wallet and now was able send it again, I dont know what to do now. Can wallet by corrupted to the point then i will not able recovery private key or print copy of offline wallet ?

Was Armory crashing (as in closes on its own) or hanging (stopped responding but didn't close itself)? If you can access your wallet I strongly suggest you create a paper backup for now. You can then write down your experience (with as much details as possible) to contact@bitcoinarmory.com

It "stopped responding but didn't close itself" windows notification(Application is not responding Close/Wait I did close) I notice also transaction scanig behave strange, sometime it start scan transaction show 1% scaned jump to 99% back to 1% and again 99% and then 100% and its take only 1-2 minutes oposit to assume "normal" scanig abaut 10min.

[goatpig]

It's possible you ran into a n² computation issue rather than actual corruption. If it happens next time, give it 30 minutes and see if it completes.

As for the scanning, how many wallets do you use at the same time and do you use imported private keys? These could be the cause of the multiple transaction scans.

[kerogre256]

It's possible you ran into a n² computation issue rather than actual corruption. If it happens next time, give it 30 minutes and see if it completes.

As for the scanning, how many wallets do you use at the same time and do you use imported private keys? These could be the cause of the multiple transaction scans.

 I have only 2 wallets, keys were not imported.