Armory - Discussion Thread

[etotheipi]

I have no idea why I didn't do this before, but I just realized I don't have to wait for official releases to sign my commits.  I can sign intermediate commits with my personal, online GPG key.  I'll still sign full releases with my offline key.

So I just made the first signed commit.  It's the managesatoshi branch, which is currently being used for testing.  Though I just realized maybe I should merge it into the testing branch..>?

Anyways, you can see the signature by importing the public key 0xFB596985 and then doing "git log --show-signature" inside the directory. 

It looks like all my Class2 SSL certificates are free (now that I've paid for the service), so I guess I could do the same on Windows -- keep a lower-security signing key online to use for testing releases...

[kerogre256]

Thank you for explanation, look like developer will not get donation any time soon, I know 0.01 bitcoin is not a lot but I dont have much more at the moment to send.

You could send a donation of 0.0095 bitcoin with a 0.0005 bitcoin fee.

Hehehe good point, sometime you get in 'tunnel vision mode' and dont see simplest solution :-)

[etotheipi]

So, is this safer than the regular latest bitcoin client?

I'm not sure what you mean by "safer"?  The regular Bitcoin client is the gold standard for network security and blockchain validation.  Armory uses Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind in the background so that Armory gets the same benefits.  But it has completely independent wallets, blockchain scanning, and of course, offline wallets (with a pretty interface).

I would argue that it is absolutely better for just about everything -- you get the deterministic, only-backup-once-ever wallets, with a print option, you get multiple wallets, and you have an easy transition to using offline wallets.  I'd like to think that its design takes the best parts of Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind and adds everything it's lacking. 

I haven't touched bitcoind for about 12 months, except to install it so that I can run Armory.  And soon I'll have that hidden, so the user won't even see that.  But they do still have to download the blockchain.  As far as I'm concerned, that's the price of security.

[etotheipi]

On short notice, I got a call from a radio station in Ottawa, Canada yesterday who wanted to interview me about Bitcoin.   Only 7 minutes:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1139081/BitcoinShare/ae.alan.reiner.13.04.04.mp3

I gotta work on some of my talking points, but I don't think it was too bad.  I just think I made it sound too hard.  "Find an exchange or find someone who has some and will sell or trade for it".  "Anyone with a computer or phone can use it."  Meh, with some more experience I'll get it all ironed out

[wachtwoord]

On short notice, I got a call from a radio station in Ottawa, Canada yesterday who wanted to interview me about Bitcoin.   Only 7 minutes:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1139081/BitcoinShare/ae.alan.reiner.13.04.04.mp3

I gotta work on some of my talking points, but I don't think it was too bad.  I just think I made it sound too hard.  "Find an exchange or find someone who has some and will sell or trade for it".  "Anyone with a computer or phone can use it."  Meh, with some more experience I'll get it all ironed out

This deserves to be in press so I added a topic there. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=168099.msg1750012#msg1750012)

Did you set up a company for developing Armory?

[etotheipi]

On short notice, I got a call from a radio station in Ottawa, Canada yesterday who wanted to interview me about Bitcoin.   Only 7 minutes:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1139081/BitcoinShare/ae.alan.reiner.13.04.04.mp3

I gotta work on some of my talking points, but I don't think it was too bad.  I just think I made it sound too hard.  "Find an exchange or find someone who has some and will sell or trade for it".  "Anyone with a computer or phone can use it."  Meh, with some more experience I'll get it all ironed out

This deserves to be in press so I added a topic there. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=168099.msg1750012#msg1750012)

Did you set up a company for developing Armory?

I've never mentioned an Armory-based company, I think they were just trying to beef up my "resume" so they had an excuse to call me an expert.  Probably don't need an excuse, but it sounds better

[wachtwoord]

On short notice, I got a call from a radio station in Ottawa, Canada yesterday who wanted to interview me about Bitcoin.   Only 7 minutes:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1139081/BitcoinShare/ae.alan.reiner.13.04.04.mp3

I gotta work on some of my talking points, but I don't think it was too bad.  I just think I made it sound too hard.  "Find an exchange or find someone who has some and will sell or trade for it".  "Anyone with a computer or phone can use it."  Meh, with some more experience I'll get it all ironed out

This deserves to be in press so I added a topic there. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=168099.msg1750012#msg1750012)

Did you set up a company for developing Armory?

I've never mentioned an Armory-based company, I think they were just trying to beef up my "resume" so they had an excuse to call me an expert.  Probably don't need an excuse, but it sounds better

Haha, nice interview anyway, good job

Did I miss it or did you completely step over the fact what your 'role'/'contribution' is wrt Bitcoin? (aka, the real proof you are an expert). Did you leave out Armory on purpose? 

[etotheipi]

Haha, nice interview anyway, good job

Did I miss it or did you completely step over the fact what your 'role'/'contribution' is wrt Bitcoin? (aka, the real proof you are an expert). Did you leave out Armory on purpose?  

They literally called me and said "Hey we're from this radio station and want to interview you?  How bout in 10 minutes?"  I didn't realize it was only going to be a five-minute interview, so I didn't have time to talk about myself.   I would have if he asked anything about security, but the topic never came up.  

Personally, I'm fine with the way it went.  I'd rather try to spread good information about Bitcoin and get people interested in Bitcoin in general, than promote some application for that "Bitcoin thing" that they don't understand.  "It's the most secure way to use this thing that you don't care about!  Go try it out!"  

[wachtwoord]

Haha, nice interview anyway, good job

Did I miss it or did you completely step over the fact what your 'role'/'contribution' is wrt Bitcoin? (aka, the real proof you are an expert). Did you leave out Armory on purpose?  

They literally called me and said "Hey we're from this radio station and want to interview you?  How bout in 10 minutes?"  I didn't realize it was only going to be a five-minute interview, so I didn't have time to talk about myself.   I would have if he asked anything about security, but the topic never came up.  

Personally, I'm fine with the way it went.  I'd rather try to spread good information about Bitcoin and get people interested in Bitcoin in general, than promote some application for that "Bitcoin thing" that they don't understand.  "It's the most secure way to use this thing that you don't care about!  Go try it out!"  

Wow nice preparation on their part 

I'm more impressed now that it's an ad-hoc interview. Much easier to do such things when given time to prepare. I also wholeheartedly agree talking about Bitcoin to people not knowing about Bitcoin is smarter, I just expected a segue to what you do followed by a one/two sentence explanation. May be just call it a security software package for managing your Bitcoins?

[gweedo]

On short notice, I got a call from a radio station in Ottawa, Canada yesterday who wanted to interview me about Bitcoin.   Only 7 minutes:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1139081/BitcoinShare/ae.alan.reiner.13.04.04.mp3

I gotta work on some of my talking points, but I don't think it was too bad.  I just think I made it sound too hard.  "Find an exchange or find someone who has some and will sell or trade for it".  "Anyone with a computer or phone can use it."  Meh, with some more experience I'll get it all ironed out

Nice, for the 7 mins it was a good interview.

[13Charlie]

Well done Alan

[Ente]

Sorry, didn'r follow up on the last few pages.
I just noticed:
I have an encrypted wallet. I want to add a comment to an address or transaction, I doubleclick it and type away. The comment isn't saved, though. I am not asked to enter my passphrase neither. And I don't see a manual way to unlock the wallet (without creating a tx).
Armory 0.87-beta

Ente

Found it, more-or-less coincidently.
I can -of course- edit and create comments, even in encrypted wallets. No password needed.
Here, it failed (silently) when adding those weird german umlaute, like ä ö and ü ;-)

Cheers!

Ente

[kslaughter]

Great software, however I just upgraded to version .87 beta on ubuntu 12.04 and bitcoin-qt .8.1 and now when Armory start and
scan the block chain it runs for awhile and then crashes.  I usually fix things myself, but I need to send some bitcoins for payment.
So could you give me a idea of what may be wrong.

Does it crash after it finishes scanning?  Or during?  There's been some issues with upgrading to Bitcoin-Qt 0.8 plus ... it has new blockchain files.  Armory 0.87+ should handle it, but sometimes it doesn't play nice.  Most often when I hear of Armory crashing during scanning, it's because the blk files became corrupt.  Which is unfortunate, since it requires redownloading everything...

Can you send me a log file?  You can export it while it's scanning.  Email or PM. 

Also, you might try the newest version of Armory, but you have to build from source -- it's quite simple though:

1.  $ sudo apt-get install git-core build-essential pyqt4-dev-tools swig libqtcore4 libqt4-dev python-qt4 python-dev python-twisted python-psutil
2.  $ git clone git://github.com/etotheipi/BitcoinArmory.git
3.  $ cd BitcoinArmory
3a. $ git checkout managesatoshi  #(extra step to access 0.87.9)
4.  $ make
5.  $ python ArmoryQt.py

Not only might it fix your problem (or make it worse!), but the log file contains a LOT more useful information for me.  So if that fails, let me know (you'll have to either let it run bitcoind for you, or open the settings and select that you want to run it yourself).

It is just scanning, then it crashes, so I guess it is while it is scanning. 

Ok, I have build it from source already, I will try the new version 0.87.9
and yes it is easy to build, thanks for the good instructions.

I will let you know if that fixes the problem, or I will send you the log file.

Thanks Again.

[oakpacific]

Haha, nice interview anyway, good job

Did I miss it or did you completely step over the fact what your 'role'/'contribution' is wrt Bitcoin? (aka, the real proof you are an expert). Did you leave out Armory on purpose?  

They literally called me and said "Hey we're from this radio station and want to interview you?  How bout in 10 minutes?"  I didn't realize it was only going to be a five-minute interview, so I didn't have time to talk about myself.   I would have if he asked anything about security, but the topic never came up.  

Personally, I'm fine with the way it went.  I'd rather try to spread good information about Bitcoin and get people interested in Bitcoin in general, than promote some application for that "Bitcoin thing" that they don't understand.  "It's the most secure way to use this thing that you don't care about!  Go try it out!"  

How did they find you?

I haven't listen to the audio yet, but it would be too bad if you didn't get the chance to tell them that given enough attention, bitcoin is much more scure/less hackable than gold/fiats are.

[Deth]

PLEASE help me figure this out!  I have just released the latest, 0.87.92, installation instructions below.  Note that more than just auto-management has been added.  I also made the little "(?)" icons clickable, and reduced the number of windows you have to click through to use offline wallets.  

Linux:
-- Pull and switch branches: "git checkout managesatoshi"
-- Must install python-psutil package.  This is a new dependency to help with managing the background process.  It will be added to the next offline bundle.
-- Recompile

Ok, I compiled it with signature checking. I don`t know what did you sign exactly (commit itself or its id, I don`t know how this realized in git, but probably in the right way I hope), but gpg says it is ok The first start says that I shouldn`t start bitcoind, so I click "Change Settings" and here what was in terminal:

Code:

(ERROR) Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/opt/BitcoinArmory/ArmoryQt.py", line 716, in openSettings
    dlgSettings = DlgSettings(self, self)
  File "/opt/BitcoinArmory/qtdialogs.py", line 9913, in __init__
    'specified format.' % exampleStr )
  File "/opt/BitcoinArmory/qtdefines.py", line 203, in __init__
    self.setText(txt, **kwargs)
  File "/opt/BitcoinArmory/qtdefines.py", line 206, in setText
    text = str(text)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 228-229: ordinal not in range(128)

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/opt/BitcoinArmory/ArmoryQt.py", line 716, in openSettings
    dlgSettings = DlgSettings(self, self)
  File "/opt/BitcoinArmory/qtdialogs.py", line 9913, in __init__
    'specified format.' % exampleStr )
  File "/opt/BitcoinArmory/qtdefines.py", line 203, in __init__
    self.setText(txt, **kwargs)
  File "/opt/BitcoinArmory/qtdefines.py", line 206, in setText
    text = str(text)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 228-229: ordinal not in range(128) 

Also this happen when I go to File-Settings. Since then I can`t point bitcoind to Tor, I hope in Settings I can append commands to bitcoind when it works.

On exit I get this

Code:

error: couldn't connect to server

If it is caused by lack of Internet then it`s ok

P.S. On Arch Linux, python2-psutils is needed.

[etotheipi]

PLEASE help me figure this out!  I have just released the latest, 0.87.92, installation instructions below.  Note that more than just auto-management has been added.  I also made the little "(?)" icons clickable, and reduced the number of windows you have to click through to use offline wallets.  

Linux:
-- Pull and switch branches: "git checkout managesatoshi"
-- Must install python-psutil package.  This is a new dependency to help with managing the background process.  It will be added to the next offline bundle.
-- Recompile

Ok, I compiled it with signature checking. I don`t know what did you sign exactly (commit itself or its id, I don`t know how this realized in git, but probably in the right way I hope), but gpg says it is ok The first start says that I shouldn`t start bitcoind, so I click "Change Settings" and here what was in terminal:

Code:

(ERROR) Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/opt/BitcoinArmory/ArmoryQt.py", line 716, in openSettings
    dlgSettings = DlgSettings(self, self)
  File "/opt/BitcoinArmory/qtdialogs.py", line 9913, in __init__
    'specified format.' % exampleStr )
  File "/opt/BitcoinArmory/qtdefines.py", line 203, in __init__
    self.setText(txt, **kwargs)
  File "/opt/BitcoinArmory/qtdefines.py", line 206, in setText
    text = str(text)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 228-229: ordinal not in range(128)

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/opt/BitcoinArmory/ArmoryQt.py", line 716, in openSettings
    dlgSettings = DlgSettings(self, self)
  File "/opt/BitcoinArmory/qtdialogs.py", line 9913, in __init__
    'specified format.' % exampleStr )
  File "/opt/BitcoinArmory/qtdefines.py", line 203, in __init__
    self.setText(txt, **kwargs)
  File "/opt/BitcoinArmory/qtdefines.py", line 206, in setText
    text = str(text)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 228-229: ordinal not in range(128) 

Also this happen when I go to File-Settings. Since then I can`t point bitcoind to Tor, I hope in Settings I can append commands to bitcoind when it works.

On exit I get this

Code:

error: couldn't connect to server

If it is caused by lack of Internet then it`s ok

P.S. On Arch Linux, python2-psutils is needed.

Ahh yeah, back to the unicode issues.  I just don't have support for unicode yet, so I guess non-English/ASCII-native systems will have trouble.  That is something I was going to fix when I upgrade the wallets.

As for adding command line arguments to bitcoind/bitcoin-qt... I hadn't planned on it.  I figured, if you are using non-standard command line arguments (that aren't configurable in your bitcoin.conf, then you'll probably just turn off auto-bitcoind management anyway.

[oakpacific]

This may have been asked before, but is there nothing can be done to mitigate the one hour freeze of my laptop whenever I start Armory?

[etotheipi]

This may have been asked before, but is there nothing can be done to mitigate the one hour freeze of my laptop whenever I start Armory?

Does it freeze?  I should run but be in offline mode.  If your laptop is lower on the RAM spectrum, then I suppose it can take a while...

I'm starting on the RAM reduction stuff this week.  I have no idea how long it's going to take, but I expect a week or two.  Then you shouldn't have these problems anymore.

[oakpacific]

This may have been asked before, but is there nothing can be done to mitigate the one hour freeze of my laptop whenever I start Armory?

Does it freeze?  I should run but be in offline mode.  If your laptop is lower on the RAM spectrum, then I suppose it can take a while...

I'm starting on the RAM reduction stuff this week.  I have no idea how long it's going to take, but I expect a week or two.  Then you shouldn't have these problems anymore.

Nah, it's online, freezes in the reading blockchain part. My laptop has got 5G of RAM, not sure how much is freely available at the time I started it though.

[etotheipi]

This may have been asked before, but is there nothing can be done to mitigate the one hour freeze of my laptop whenever I start Armory?

Does it freeze?  I should run but be in offline mode.  If your laptop is lower on the RAM spectrum, then I suppose it can take a while...

I'm starting on the RAM reduction stuff this week.  I have no idea how long it's going to take, but I expect a week or two.  Then you shouldn't have these problems anymore.

Nah, it's online, freezes in the reading blockchain part. My laptop has got 5G of RAM, not sure how much is freely available at the time I started it though.

I assume you're running 0.87.2?  Before 0.8-something, I didn't have multi-threaded blockchain operations, which meant that it froze for everyone when it started up.  But that was a while ago, I assume you have the latest...