Armory - Discussion Thread

[etotheipi]

Hi,

Today I tried to send a payment but am getting the error "SelectCoins returned a list of size zero. This is problematic and probably not your fault.".
I've tried restarting Armory and the Satoshi client several times but the error persists.

FYI, I found the bug causing this.  It was pretty obvious once the debugger got there.  It only triggers when you try to create a transaction using inputs that are smaller than the transaction fee (and a few other conditions). 

I just fixed it, and also put in dooglus' fix for the blockchain loading (which I now understand to be re-opening the file after scanning... I misread it the first time).  I have a little bit of testing to do, then will re-release it as 0.82.2.  Since the changes are really trivial and amount to only a couple lines of code (since the last testing release), I'll only request testing for a day, and then make an "official" release tomorrow barring anything stupid.

Given that I've been out of town and thinking about other things, is there anything I've forgotten?  There's still some periodic crashes after running for a while.  But beyond that, I'm not aware of anything critical I need to address in the near future (besides another SelectCoins bug that is even more rare).  Please let me know if I missed your concern!

[apetersson]

i have the following problem with armory:

i have a wallet with 3 keys and a small amount (0.078872) of bitcoins. i want to send them, i chose an amount 0.078372 which should empty the wallet minus fees. this fails, armory tells me this exceeds my balance (which in itself is not true) then the tx fee is increased to 0.001.

i adjust the amount to 0.077872 then i get the "confirm transaction" but the button "continue" does not actually send anything or even close the window "send bitcoins"

also sending other smaller amounts out of this wallet fails.

[LuaKT]

http://bitcoinarmory.com/ seems to be down.

I'm still getting the error of "SelectCoins returned a list of size zero. This is problematic and probably not your fault." but only if I set the transaction fee to 0.00 and let Armory tell me that a transaction fee is required and correct it for me. If I set the transaction fee to 0.0005 before trying to send the error doesn't happen.

Thanks.

[etotheipi]

i have the following problem with armory:

i have a wallet with 3 keys and a small amount (0.078872) of bitcoins. i want to send them, i chose an amount 0.078372 which should empty the wallet minus fees. this fails, armory tells me this exceeds my balance (which in itself is not true) then the tx fee is increased to 0.001.

i adjust the amount to 0.077872 then i get the "confirm transaction" but the button "continue" does not actually send anything or even close the window "send bitcoins"

also sending other smaller amounts out of this wallet fails.

This looks like it might be related to the bug that I referenced in my previous post.  Though, the error I would expect to see would be "The value you have specified is valid, but the required transaction fee exceeds your remaining balance..." (because you specified bal-0.0005 and fee of 0.0005, but Armory needed to increase the fee to 0.001 and could not do so.

What version are you using?  Have you upgraded to 0.82.1?  If so, can you send me the log file?  Usually when a button does nothing, it's because an error was triggered and the function that was called just exits silently without finishing the job.  This will show up in the log file.  You can manually copy the log file from your ARMORY_HOME_DIR or you can use the main window "Export Log File".  Feel free to sanitize it before posting or emailing it to me.  

If not, then wait until tonight:  I will release 0.82.2 which has a bug fix that might resolve this.  If it doesn't, at least there will be a log file.

http://bitcoinarmory.com/ seems to be down.

I'm still getting the error of "SelectCoins returned a list of size zero. This is problematic and probably not your fault." but only if I set the transaction fee to 0.00 and let Armory tell me that a transaction fee is required and correct it for me. If I set the transaction fee to 0.0005 before trying to send the error doesn't happen.

Thanks.

I haven't actually released the bug fix for that yet.  I got distracted last night, and will do it tonight instead. It will be 0.82.2.  All the SelectCoins errors should go away (hopefully, apetersson's issue, too!).


EDIT: Website should be back up.  There was a payment processing error that is resolved now.  Whoops.

[etotheipi]

Please help sanity-check 0.82.2 before release!

Armory 0.82.2 - Windows-64bit *.msi installer
Armory 0.82.2 - Windows-32bit *.msi installer
Armory 0.82.2 - Linux64 Debian/Ubuntu Package
Armory 0.82.2 - Linux32 Debian/Ubuntu Package


This should fix most of the SelectCoins problems (thanks to jl2012 who sent me a watching-only wallet that exhibited the buggy behavior -- using that, I found and fixed the bug in about 30 minutes!).  Dooglus' fix is implemented, though I can't really test it since I can't replicate it myself. I also added a small fix to transaction export-to-csv to better handle/display sent-to-self transactions.

If you previously had any problems sending coins, please try the new version!  I expect all of those problems to go away! 

I will give this a day or two and then it will be an official release.  The debugging code has been in testing for long enough (and uncovered enough bugs) that I finally feel comfortable releasing it (and all future bug reports will get much easier!).

[dooglus]

Dooglus' fix is implemented, though I can't really test it since I can't replicate it myself.

I think if you have the code wait for you to hit return after opening the blockchain files but before scanning them, and then wait for a block or two to be received while it's waiting, you'll see the bug happen.

I've not had a chance to test your fix yet, but if you used my change then I'm guessing it will work for me.  I've still had no crashes since making the change myself.

[OneEyed]

Please help sanity-check 0.82.2 before release!

Armory 0.82.2 - Windows-64bit *.msi installer
Armory 0.82.2 - Windows-32bit *.msi installer
Armory 0.82.2 - Linux64 Debian/Ubuntu Package
Armory 0.82.2 - Linux32 Debian/Ubuntu Package

What branch is it built from?

The ArchLinux package builds from git, but needs to know which branch to start with (preferably a stable one, so that the build instructions don't need to be changed at every release).

Will that be put into master?

[LuaKT]

Working fine now with the new version

Thanks!

[dooglus]

What branch is it built from?

It looks to me like the recent changes are only on the 'logger' branch.

[wachtwoord]

Please help sanity-check 0.82.2 before release!

Armory 0.82.2 - Windows-64bit *.msi installer
Armory 0.82.2 - Windows-32bit *.msi installer
Armory 0.82.2 - Linux64 Debian/Ubuntu Package
Armory 0.82.2 - Linux32 Debian/Ubuntu Package


This should fix most of the SelectCoins problems (thanks to jl2012 who sent me a watching-only wallet that exhibited the buggy behavior -- using that, I found and fixed the bug in about 30 minutes!).  Dooglus' fix is implemented, though I can't really test it since I can't replicate it myself. I also added a small fix to transaction export-to-csv to better handle/display sent-to-self transactions.

If you previously had any problems sending coins, please try the new version!  I expect all of those problems to go away! 

I will give this a day or two and then it will be an official release.  The debugging code has been in testing for long enough (and uncovered enough bugs) that I finally feel comfortable releasing it (and all future bug reports will get much easier!).

Just to report: I tried it and still have the same problem.

[etotheipi]

What branch is it built from?

It looks to me like the recent changes are only on the 'logger' branch.

Yeah, I'll merge it to master when I'm ready for a real release. 

Just to report: I tried it and still have the same problem.

Are you still referring the networking issue?  Or a different issue?  I'll try to do some more investigative work on the networking issue (or at least expand the logging for grabbing network messages).  I wouldn't have expected this release to fix it, unless you're referring to something else.

[wachtwoord]

Oh sorry since we had a PM exchange I figured you'd remember

How do I send coins?

I am trying to send coins, enter an address to send to, an amount to send, a comment and a fee (0.0). Then I press send and it gives an overview of the transactions, subsequently I enter my pass phrase and then it doesn't send and returns to the send window. When I press send again the overview screen comes up again and after continue I am back at the send coins screen.

What am I doing wrong here?

I bet this is another error-in-the-error-logging-code issue.  I think it may have been fixed in the latest 0.82.1 version I posted.  Were you using it? (posted about 4 days ago).  It's been a while, but I seem to remember seeing a similar error and then fixing it.  If you are using 0.82+, can you try to send the transaction, then when it fails, go to the main menu and File-->Export Log File.  Only the last 50 or so lines will be necessary to see what happened.  If you think it might be sensitive, just extract the error message and PM/email it to me.   

But again, I think this may be fixed already in the previous post.  This is why I kept 0.82+ in testing so long, because I touched every part of the code to put in logging and inevitably broke stuff.... 

And subsequently we had  a PM discussion and you said you'd look into it after the holiday. It had something to do with the client thinking it lost contact with the Satoshi client while it actually didn't and the Satoshi client is also is actually sending data to the Armory client and it is accepting this data to. However it still is in a disconnected state and therefore blocking actions that need an active connection.

[etotheipi]

Oh sorry since we had a PM exchange I figured you'd remember

I bet this is another error-in-the-error-logging-code issue.  I think it may have been fixed in the latest 0.82.1 version I posted.  Were you using it? (posted about 4 days ago).  It's been a while, but I seem to remember seeing a similar error and then fixing it.  If you are using 0.82+, can you try to send the transaction, then when it fails, go to the main menu and File-->Export Log File.  Only the last 50 or so lines will be necessary to see what happened.  If you think it might be sensitive, just extract the error message and PM/email it to me.   

But again, I think this may be fixed already in the previous post.  This is why I kept 0.82+ in testing so long, because I touched every part of the code to put in logging and inevitably broke stuff.... 

And subsequently we had  a PM discussion and you said you'd look into it after the holiday. It had something to do with the client thinking it lost contact with the Satoshi client while it actually didn't and the Satoshi client is also is actually sending data to the Armory client and it is accepting this data to. However it still is in a disconnected state and therefore blocking actions that need an active connection.

Okay, now I remember.  I end up in a lot of PM/email conversations about random bugs and couldn't remember for sure which and how many bugs you reported  

So, Armory on your system thinks it never completed the handshake with the Satoshi client and refuses to send transactions.  I don't know any other way to diagnose this other than adding a ton of log-file output and having you run it (I'll just add a separate logger and CLI flag to turn it on).  I'll try to get to that tonight. 

[wachtwoord]

Okay, thanks, just let me know and I'll run it. What exactly are you logging? (should I use a test wallet, can you see my password, do you have access to private keys etc.)

[etotheipi]

Okay, thanks, just let me know and I'll run it. What exactly are you logging? (should I use a test wallet, can you see my password, do you have access to private keys etc.)

I have a warning about it if you go to "File->Export Log File".  I am very careful never to log private keys or passwords.  My goal is ultimately to catch error messages with the appropriate context around them (what function calls were made leading up to it).  But such context may include address/tx information.

So, there are privacy implications.  I copy full transactions (signed or unsigned) into the log file, so that I can later identify if a transaction was malformed, or selected inputs in an invalid way, etc.  This means I would see some addresses that you own.  The point of the warning is to let you know about these privacy implications and give you a chance to sanitize the file yourself before you send it to me.  In many cases, I don't actually need the tx information, unless it's a tx-related bug, etc.  In most cases, I only need the error message itself.  But I can't have 100 different log levels to accommodate every possible situation.  That is a balance I needed to strike when setting up the logging system...


P.S. - If you're really curious about what gets logged, you can search armoryengine.py, ArmoryQt.py and qtdialogs.py for the any of the following strings:  LOGDEBUG, LOGINFO, LOGWARN, LOGERROR, LOGCRIT or LOGPPRINT.  The log file is exclusively constructed from calls to those functions.

[etotheipi]

Request for comments:

Any problems experienced by anyone with 0.82.2?  (besides wachtwood's networking issue)

Just want to know if I should have any reservations uploading the installers as-is to github and doing an official release.

[dooglus]

Request for comments:

Any problems experienced by anyone with 0.82.2?  (besides wachtwood's networking issue)

Just want to know if I should have any reservations uploading the installers as-is to github and doing an official release.

I've been using the 'logger' branch from the git repository, rather than a 0.82.2 download, and it works for me running my modified SatoshiDice analysis script.

I don't run Armory itself though.

[etotheipi]

I don't run Armory itself though.

Just out of curiosity:  why not? 

[dooglus]

I don't run Armory itself though.

Just out of curiosity:  why not? 

As I understand it, I either run the satoshi client, or I run the satoshi client plus armory.

The former seems the simpler option to me.  It's not like armory is an alternative, it's an add-on.  Am I right?

[etotheipi]

I don't run Armory itself though.

Just out of curiosity:  why not?  

As I understand it, I either run the satoshi client, or I run the satoshi client plus armory.

The former seems the simpler option to me.  It's not like armory is an alternative, it's an add-on.  Am I right?

It depends on your definition of "alternative."  I have the Satoshi client installed & running, but I haven't touched it in 6 months.  Armory replaces all user-facing functionality 100% (just not the networking).  So, it is essentially an alternative.  It just requires an extra program to be running in the background.

I don't want to be pushy, I wast just genuinely surprised that you've been using armoryengine so long but never actually used Armory itself.  To say that it is "simpler" without it is like saying life is "simpler" without a lock on my front door because I don't have to get out my keys when I come home  

If you have Satoshi client running anyway, you should try it.  The deterministic wallets + paper backups alone are worth it (IMO).