Armory - Discussion Thread

[Ente]

Update: (25 June, 2013)

Things have been hectic.  Very hectic.  I am quite aware about the usability issues, and I have been making some progress on the "persistent blockchain" update for Armory, but not at nearly the pace I had hoped.  Other critical priorities have cropped up.  I will explain more about these priorities in a week or two.  I just wanted to assure those of you who still follow this thread that development does continue, despite things looking rather stagnant lately...

On the persistent blockchain front: I have found myself in the awkward position of deciding to just make an identical version of Armory that uses LevelDB, or to actually upgrade huge parts of the codebase as long as I'm tearing it all up and putting it back together, anyway.  It seems that the best solution is the latter -- I've always been a fan of short-term sacrifice for long-term gain.  Even though it's slowing down the resolution of the RAM issues, a lot of what I am doing now will benefit multiple other things I have on my TODO list, including the new wallet stuff that will come shortly after persistent blockchain upgrades.  

What I'm talking about is things like properly handling and indexing multi-sig scripts, P2SH scripts, and compressed public keys.  Additionally, I'm trying to make the whole thing easily extensible to both partial/lite/pruned operation (storing only data necessary for computing balance and creating transactions) and also super-node operation (maintaining a full address-lookup index for immediate balance/UTXO queries for any address).  These are all things that I need to do eventually, anyway.  For instance, I had claimed that the new wallet format was nearing completion before getting sidetracked by this stuff, but I was still going to have to upgrade a bunch of blockchain utilities and re-test it to be compatible with the new wallet functionality.  I might as well kill 7 birds with one stone.

It looks like I've found a coherent way to fit all this together.  And it means that many of these changes can be implemented and tested in one rigorous round of testing, instead of rewriting and re-testing multiple times.  More importantly, after the first persistent blockchain update, it will be much tougher to modify the blockchain utilities, because users will have persistent databases that will need to be rebuilt to accommodate changes.  And that may be quite painful.  If you were wondering why it was beneficial for me to do full scans on every load and not save any blockchain data between loads.... that is why (simple!).

That's all I have for now.  I'm excited that when I'm finally done with this, Armory will be miles ahead of where it was before.  So many problems will go away.  Until then... you'll all have to suffer while I take my time doing it right

I applaud your decision!
Thank you for doing the right thing, sacrifying short-term development for long-term goals.

In fact you are the dev here I trust the most, be it technically, vision, endurance or incorruptable.
Not implying I see issues with other devs, but you I trust the most.

It will be a big day once Armory is self-contained, without any external component (like bitcoind). It's in the far future still, but it will be a milestone for the Bitcoin ecosystem as a whole.

Oh, are you a paid full-time Armory dev yet? If not, we have to change this! :-)

Ente

[superresistant]

So we wait for the next proper working version of Armory ?

[Kluge]

I applaud your decision!
Thank you for doing the right thing, sacrifying short-term development for long-term goals.

In fact you are the dev here I trust the most, be it technically, vision, endurance or incorruptable.
Not implying I see issues with other devs, but you I trust the most.

It will be a big day once Armory is self-contained, without any external component (like bitcoind). It's in the far future still, but it will be a milestone for the Bitcoin ecosystem as a whole.

Oh, are you a paid full-time Armory dev yet? If not, we have to change this! :-)

Ente

AFAIK, Alan *IS* Armory. 

Only client I can bear to use, even if the RAM requirements (- and it seems almost guaranteed to crash if certain parts wind up on virtual RAM) and need of maintaining the blockchain make it nearly unusable in my situation. I go to great lengths to be able to use Armory, because even while it currently has critical flaws, it's the most flexible and powerful client I've ever used. Alan's a freakin' rockstar in handling support issues, too. It's actually unnerving how interested he is in ensuring users have good experiences.

I really can't imagine a better way to donate money for the fundamental growth of Bitcoin and the ventures it spawns than to send it to Alan.

[13Charlie]

I applaud your decision!
Thank you for doing the right thing, sacrifying short-term development for long-term goals.

In fact you are the dev here I trust the most, be it technically, vision, endurance or incorruptable.
Not implying I see issues with other devs, but you I trust the most.

It will be a big day once Armory is self-contained, without any external component (like bitcoind). It's in the far future still, but it will be a milestone for the Bitcoin ecosystem as a whole.

Oh, are you a paid full-time Armory dev yet? If not, we have to change this! :-)

Ente

AFAIK, Alan *IS* Armory.  

Only client I can bear to use, even if the RAM requirements (- and it seems almost guaranteed to crash if certain parts wind up on virtual RAM) and need of maintaining the blockchain make it nearly unusable in my situation. I go to great lengths to be able to use Armory, because even while it currently has critical flaws, it's the most flexible and powerful client I've ever used. Alan's a freakin' rockstar in handling support issues, too. It's actually unnerving how interested he is in ensuring users have good experiences.

I really can't imagine a better way to donate money for the fundamental growth of Bitcoin and the ventures it spawns than to send it to Alan.

+1,000

Armory is the ONLY way to keep MY Bitcoin (and yours for that matter) safe . . . PERIOD
Thanks Alan, take your time

[cypherdoc]

+1 to all of the above comments.

Alan has good reason to be sidetracked right now but in the end it will benefit us all.

patience.

[Exocyst]

Armory 0.88.1-beta is working great for me on Ubuntu 13.04 and MacOS 10.8

I am looking forward with great anticipation to future performance improvements.

Thank you for great software.

[vokain]

Armory 0.88.1-beta is working great for me on Ubuntu 13.04 and MacOS 10.8

I am looking forward with great anticipation to future performance improvements.

Thank you for great software.

Finally! thank you so much (from the OSX side)!!

[picobit]

So we wait for the next proper working version of Armory ?

The current one works fine - if you have 8 GB of RAM.  So if you are impatient, that is an option ...

 

[Kluge]

So we wait for the next proper working version of Armory ?

The current one works fine - if you have 8 GB of RAM.  So if you are impatient, that is an option ...

 

8GB RAM on a minimalist Linux distro, maybe. I have 8GB on Win7 and Armory still crashes every few hours when Doze starts stuffing Armory resources onto hard drive. Not sure if there's software to help force RAM priorities on certain applications -- that'd be super.

It'd probably work on modern Doze if all other applications were shut off. Skype, a couple pages on Chrome, some productivity software, AND Armory was just too much for my machine, though.  It reminds me of living in a run-down warehouse for a while with all available outlets on one circuit, and sometimes I'd dare to run a PC, coffee maker, AND toaster oven on the same circuit. Never tripped immediately, but maybe half the time, ~20-40 minutes in (if I forgot to stop the coffee maker from continuing to warm the pot), there'd be a pop and I'd roll my eyes and walk over to reset the breaker... again.

[Rampion]

So we wait for the next proper working version of Armory ?

The current one works fine - if you have 8 GB of RAM.  So if you are impatient, that is an option ...

 

I have to admit that I upgraded my laptop with a) 4GB more of RAM, to reach a total of 8GB and b) a faster, 7,200rpm hard disk, only to be able to run Armory without any problem.

And I'm very happy I did it. Armory is indeed the best client out there, a must-have for anyone serious with Bitcoin, and thus the upgrade was really worth it

[superresistant]

So we wait for the next proper working version of Armory ?

The current one works fine - if you have 8 GB of RAM.  So if you are impatient, that is an option ...

 

Yes it is an option but I think I'll just wait few weeks and see.

[bezzeb]

THANK YOU!

I have been receiving substantial donations recently, but donors frequently don't identify themselves, so I have no one to thank!  In recent past I have gotten quite a a few 0.2-1.0 donations, and been taking my fiancée out to nice dinners with it .  I have been meaning to broadcast a thank-you post, then this donation from yesterday reminded me to do it!


People in this community are quite generous, and I'm thrilled to see people are impressed enough with Armory to make such substantial donations!  It means a lot to me.

So thank you!
-Alan


P.S - If you want to identify yourself to me--publicly or privately--I'll be happy to send you a T-shirt and Armory-branded USB key.  This goes for anyone donating the equiv of $50 or more.  I have only a few T-shirts left from the original crowdfunding a year ago, all black, L or XL (and maybe an XXL).  >= $20 gets a USB key (I'd do it for less, but these branded USB keys are surprisingly expensive when you don't order 10,000 of them!).

I'm not looking for thanks but I did flip you a .2 tip like many others.    I just signed in here to offer further encouragement to you and to let you know that we appreciate Armory and are cheering you on as you struggle with the ram issue.  I've always had a beefy laptop (8gb ram on 32bit pae Mint / other OS's are in VM's where they belong), so Armory's been working pretty well for me.  But Armory does like it's RAM...  (heh)

Thanks for keeping up the effort though!  I'm confident you'll crack this and get Armory purring like a lean mean machine one day soon.

[JLM]

Quick questions.
Could you use it with an old bitcoin qt or need to install from zero?
Wath you do each time QT is upgrade?

Thanks!!!

[bezzeb]

Quick questions.
Could you use it with an old bitcoin qt or need to install from zero?
Wath you do each time QT is upgrade?

Thanks!!!

I'm sure Etotheipi can answer best but my experience is good:

Disclaimer: I'm on linux so no idea what win/mac fanboiz experience.  But for me i have a somewhat  fresh Linux Mint laptop.  Installed bitcoin-qt and bitciond from a PPA repo.  Then I downloaded Armory using the git clone instructions on the armory site which compiles a python program.  (get in the repos Etotheipi!  

End result:  I use Bitcoin-QT and Armory from the same database (which Bitcoin-qt/bitciond maintains).  You can't run them at the same time of course as armory fires up bitcoind in the background when it starts and probably needs exclusive access.  But they seem to happily share the same blockchain database.  Armory is smart enough to let you know when you forgot to turn off BitcoinQT and vice-versa.

I kind of like the arrangement for various reasons I won't bore folks with.  (grin)

[winnetou]

[Urgent]

I ran into a problem:

I created an offline transaction, signed it and broadcasted it. At the time of the broadcasting I had some internet connection problems and now the transaction shows up in my armory client with 0 confirmations but when I go to blockchain.info e.g. it doesn't show up. (At the time I  broadcasted it bitcoin-qt did not load all blocks but in the missing blocks there were not any with my wallet related transaction information).

After that I closed armory, restarted bitcoin-qt , loaded all blocks and startet armory again. In the hop it will try to broadcast my transaction again but so far nothing has changed.

I hope my funds are not lost in limba because it is a quite large amount for me.

What can I do now to get this transaction out?

Can this be an option?
 - Re import my watchonly wallet to get the transaction sorted out and simply make a new one?

Thank you very much!!!

[etotheipi]

[Urgent]

I ran into a problem:

I created an offline transaction, signed it and broadcasted it. At the time of the broadcasting I had some internet connection problems and now the transaction shows up in my armory client with 0 confirmations but when I go to blockchain.info e.g. it doesn't show up. (At the time I  broadcasted it bitcoin-qt did not load all blocks but in the missing blocks there were not any with my wallet related transaction information).

After that I closed armory, restarted bitcoin-qt , loaded all blocks and startet armory again. In the hop it will try to broadcast my transaction again but so far nothing has changed.

I hope my funds are not lost in limba because it is a quite large amount for me.

What can I do now to get this transaction out?

Can this be an option?
 - Re import my watchonly wallet to get the transaction sorted out and simply make a new one?

Thank you very much!!!

Relax  The coins are not lost.  There is no way to lose to coins unless you sent them to the wrong address.  Worst case, they just get a little stuck

Close Armory and delete your mempool.bin file.  In windows:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Armory\mempool.bin

or Linux

/home/<username>/.armory/mempool.bin.

Then restart both Armory and Bitcoin-Qt.  That should be it.

[chrisrico]

so have armory been fixed yet? still hasn't downloaded it, there's still warning message at the armory site

It still works perfectly (albeit with a ~5 minute startup time) if you have a large amount of RAM (anything over 8GB should be fine).

For anything much less than that, it still is basically unusable. Alan is working on changing this, but it's a major overhaul.

[etotheipi]

Just a quick comment about progress:  No, it's not done yet.  But I am finally getting some time to do it.  And I'm doing it... slowly.

Now that Armory (and Bitcoin) is getting more serious, I decided I needed to adopt a more-serious testing framework for my code.  I mean, I have tests... thousands of lines of tests.  But they're not automated, and perhaps not as exhaustive as they should be.  Now seemed like a good time to do the upgrade, because I'm really tearing things up and putting them back together.   Again, it's one of those short-term-sacrifice-for-long-term-gain things.   Also, I'm writing a lot of new code that needs to be tested, and I wanted to start doing it "The Right Way."

So I recently started playing with GoogleTest.  In usual Google fashion, what they have made is super impressive.  They have produced a versatile, cross-platform, well-documented tool that is remarkably powerful yet stupid simple to use (once you get past the compiling issues).  In a day I've been able to translate a bunch of my tests into a GoogleTest setup.  And it's pretty.  It even times things for you.



That is all.  Back to my coding cave...

[dc81]

@etotheipi

were you ever able to get it to compile on a raspberry pi? and if so, do you have the binaries? i'm looking into having one of my pi's being my offline wallet.

[bitcoinpreneur]

Having problems sending anything without crash, from recent posts I'm guessing it is just a memory issue. 4GB Ram x86 laptop.

What is the easiest way to move out of Armory without sending coins using it?