Armory - Discussion Thread

[Red Emerald]

Uses just under 2GB of memory here, initial load <20seconds. This is however on a dedicated server with 128GB of memory

I cant really complain about that.

You got me beat for sure.  My macbook air loads it in anywhere from 60 - 90 seconds depending on how much other stuff I am doing.  It still locks up at 100% CPU for a few seconds when new blocks are found in both Mac and in a linux VM on mac.  Windows and native linux don't seem to have the problem

[etotheipi]

Uses just under 2GB of memory here, initial load <20seconds. This is however on a dedicated server with 128GB of memory

I cant really complain about that.

You got me beat for sure.  My macbook air loads it in anywhere from 60 - 90 seconds depending on how much other stuff I am doing.  It still locks up at 100% CPU for a few seconds when new blocks are found in both Mac and in a linux VM on mac.  Windows and native linux don't seem to have the problem

FYI:  the next release of Armory will be 0.80-BETA, and will have no more RAM requirements at all.  The initial startup will still be scanning the blockchain, but the program will only store references to file data, and retrieve it on demand.  Technically, that's what MMAP is supposed to do, but the mmap-equivalent in Windows is pretty terrible.  I would complain that I am being forced to change the architecture based on Windows alone, but I suspect Linux 32-bit might stop working once blockchain is 4 GB, anyway...

And the semi-regular freezes in 0.76 will be fixed as well.  I'm 98% confident that it's due to table sorting, even when you didn't explicitly sort any tables.  Performance like this has never been an issue, and it doesn't need to be.  I just got have to a little work to get the "correct" solution in there.

Hoping to have all this for 0.80-beta, but it might be a while before I get it done, so don't hold your breath

[Red Emerald]

Any chance I can order a shirt for BTC?  I know you had some trouble with the first batch of shirts, but if thats all sorted out, I would like one.

[etotheipi]

Any chance I can order a shirt for BTC?  I know you had some trouble with the first batch of shirts, but if thats all sorted out, I would like one.

Absolutely.  There's a list of donation levels and rewards on the Armory Donation Page.  I'll happily take into account previous donations if you think it's a little steep (in your case, I know you donated...twice?... already?)  Unfortunately, the shirts ended up being kind of expensive -- future advice:  pick a logo that doesn't require full-color to be rendered properly, that probably doubled the cost of the shirts despite being tiny little thing on the breast.   :-/

[Red Emerald]

Any chance I can order a shirt for BTC?  I know you had some trouble with the first batch of shirts, but if thats all sorted out, I would like one.

Absolutely.  There's a list of donation levels and rewards on the Armory Donation Page.  I'll happily take into account previous donations if you think it's a little steep (in your case, I know you donated...twice?... already?)  Unfortunately, the shirts ended up being kind of expensive -- future advice:  pick a logo that doesn't require full-color to be rendered properly, that probably doubled the cost of the shirts despite being tiny little thing on the breast.   :-/

I donated when you did the drive and have sent a few coin whenever i deposit to cold storage (having the donate button built in like you do was a great idea BTW).  Another 5 BTC puts me above donating 10 total, does that sound good for a shirt?

EDIT: Went ahead and sent 5 http://blockchain.info/tx-index/6618236/10dbf7edb207a23afe654b46f0ca506022752bd99ee361d5be85256e6263ecef

[etotheipi]

Absolutely!  Email me your shipping info and I'll send it out.

[jl2012]

I have some wallets in an offline machine. It worked perfectly before. Today, however, I find that it keeps returning "Illegal instruction" and dies after I key in correct passphrase for any wallet, no matter I am trying to make a paper backup or to sign an offline tx. I was using 0.7.5 and have updated to 0.7.6 but the problem is still here. What can I do? Thanks!

By the way, I still have all paper backup

Absolutely!  Email me your shipping info and I'll send it out.

[etotheipi]

I have some wallets in an offline machine. It worked perfectly before. Today, however, I find that it keeps returning "Illegal instruction" and dies after I key in correct passphrase for any wallet, no matter I am trying to make a paper backup or to sign an offline tx. I was using 0.7.5 and have updated to 0.7.6 but the problem is still here. What can I do? Thanks!

By the way, I still have all paper backup

Absolutely!  Email me your shipping info and I'll send it out.

I don't suppose you used an exceptionally long wallet description/label, did you?  I found a terrible bug in the wallet-IO code that causes something similar, which was fixed in 0.76.  But if you were in 0.75 when you changed the label, it would permanently corrupt the wallet!  Also, how many addresses do you think you used in the wallet?

Regardless, I recommend that you go to the Armory home dir (/home/user/.armory or C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Armory) and backup all the wallet files into another directory or to a USB drive.  Then delete the original and restore from paper backup (you can't restore a wallet if you have an existing one with the same wallet-ID, so you must delete the old one first).  "Import Wallet" --> "Restore from Paper Backup".

Also, what OS are you in?  If it's Linux, you might be able to extract an error message for me (just open a terminal and start Armory with "python /usr/share/armory/ArmoryQt.py" instead of through the menu).

This is very concerning!  I hope we can get it figured out.

[jl2012]

first of all, i'm using ubuntu 11, and I'm already starting armory as suggested. Everything seems normal except a few GTK-Warning about pixmap at the beginning

no, my label is very short so that's irrelevant

I tried to delete one of my wallets (which contains no BTC at all). When I try to restore by paper backup, the "Illegal instruction" death happens again. When I tried to type one wrong character in the root key field, it first shows Checksum error, then illegal instruction death. When I tried to put all "a"s in the root key and chain code, it just shows "Checksum fix failed" and won't die.

As long as I still have the correct paper backup, I suppose my BTC is 100% safe, right?

Thanks!

[etotheipi]

first of all, i'm using ubuntu 11, and I'm already starting armory as suggested. Everything seems normal except a few GTK-Warning about pixmap at the beginning

no, my label is very short so that's irrelevant

I tried to delete one of my wallets (which contains no BTC at all). When I try to restore by paper backup, the "Illegal instruction" death happens again. When I tried to type one wrong character in the root key field, it first shows Checksum error, then illegal instruction death. When I tried to put all "a"s in the root key and chain code, it just shows "Checksum fix failed" and won't die.

As long as I still have the correct paper backup, I suppose my BTC is 100% safe, right?

Thanks!

Yes.  So far, no one has lost any money with my program (at least no one has reported it), and I've never had a hint of a problem with paper backups.  So, the odds are good your money is still safe

I see now that you are having the problem on multiple wallets, which leads me to believe something went awry with your system, an encryption library, and/or the Armory installation itself.  But you said you reinstalled with the newer version, so it's probably not the Armory installation.  And all the encryption/signing stuff is compiled in, so I don't think that would be it...

Can you make a new, encrypted wallet, and see if it works as expected?  Unencrypted wallet, too.  I am done for tonight, but I'll continue this conversation tomorrow. I'm anxious to figure out what's going on...

[jl2012]

I tried to create new wallets. It simply dies with "Illegal instruction" no matter it is encrypted or not. It dies even I click "receive bitcoin". However, it could show the existing addresses without dying.

I also tried to run as root. Since I did not use it with root before, there is no wallet. However, it still has the same problems

So I believe there is nothing wrong with my wallets. Do you have any idea where the message "Illegal instruction" comes from? Is it somewhere in Armory source code, or from a 3rd party package?

In the worst case I have to reinstall the OS but I want to try to fix it first

first of all, i'm using ubuntu 11, and I'm already starting armory as suggested. Everything seems normal except a few GTK-Warning about pixmap at the beginning

no, my label is very short so that's irrelevant

I tried to delete one of my wallets (which contains no BTC at all). When I try to restore by paper backup, the "Illegal instruction" death happens again. When I tried to type one wrong character in the root key field, it first shows Checksum error, then illegal instruction death. When I tried to put all "a"s in the root key and chain code, it just shows "Checksum fix failed" and won't die.

As long as I still have the correct paper backup, I suppose my BTC is 100% safe, right?

Thanks!

Yes.  So far, no one has lost any money with my program (at least no one has reported it), and I've never had a hint of a problem with paper backups.  So, the odds are good your money is still safe

I see now that you are having the problem on multiple wallets, which leads me to believe something went awry with your system, an encryption library, and/or the Armory installation itself.  But you said you reinstalled with the newer version, so it's probably not the Armory installation.  And all the encryption/signing stuff is compiled in, so I don't think that would be it...

Can you make a new, encrypted wallet, and see if it works as expected?  Unencrypted wallet, too.  I am done for tonight, but I'll continue this conversation tomorrow. I'm anxious to figure out what's going on...

[etotheipi]

I tried to create new wallets. It simply dies with "Illegal instruction" no matter it is encrypted or not. It dies even I click "receive bitcoin". However, it could show the existing addresses without dying.

I also tried to run as root. Since I did not use it with root before, there is no wallet. However, it still has the same problems

So I believe there is nothing wrong with my wallets. Do you have any idea where the message "Illegal instruction" comes from? Is it somewhere in Armory source code, or from a 3rd party package?

In the worst case I have to reinstall the OS but I want to try to fix it first

I have actually never seen that error, and it's definitely not part of Armory code.  "Invalid Instruction" sounds like an assembly/low-level-language error.  Perhaps it comes from the crypto++ library... ? 

There are three core dependencies for Armory in Linux:  python2.X, python-qt4 and python-twisted.  I suppose there could be issues in one of those.  But, of course, installing those results in a tree of 60 other dependencies... so there could be an issue with any one of them.

Have you tried removing all your wallets and starting a completely fresh, wallet-less Armory, and then creating new wallets?  I'm wondering if one of your existing wallets is causing an issue on load that doesn't show up until later (a poisoned wallet).   

Please email or PM me to continue this discussion.  One of us can feed the info back into the thread if we figure it out....

[malaimult]

etotheipi i love armory client but the 32 version must be done to work online. i think many users will use it as an active wallet. also i don't know for some reasons my armory 32 client won't install on a virtual os. i got an error saying the software wasn't installed correctly and to reinstall the application

[etotheipi]

etotheipi i love armory client but the 32 version must be done to work online. i think many users will use it as an active wallet. also i don't know for some reasons my armory 32 client won't install on a virtual os. i got an error saying the software wasn't installed correctly and to reinstall the application

The next update will work on all systems, with any amount of RAM.  I'm completely re-doing the blockchain utilities, without memory-mapping, because of how unreliable it is on Windows, and likely to stop working on Linux 32-bit by the end of the year.  That will be the end of arbitrary system requirements (besides having to have Satoshi client running), and also enable me to start doing a fast-startup version.

I compile and test Armory it on a WinXP-32bit VM.  And I just tested it on a Win7-32bit VM.  It installs fine for me in both.  I'm curious what could be causing it to fail on your system... does your system have a non-standard setup? 

[malaimult]

i had it on my pc and worked the first time but now it won't work at all. i will clean the pc and will try again. but let us know when the new improved version will be released will be a pleasure using it

[etotheipi]

i had it on my pc and worked the first time but now it won't work at all. i will clean the pc and will try again. but let us know when the new improved version will be released will be a pleasure using it

Absolutely!  Honestly, I'm anxious to get it together, but the changes are big and scary, and I acquired a minor addiction to Diablo III which has temporarily affected productivity.  Luckily, I'm getting bored of D3 and will be back on track again soon!

I expect the new version will be testable in a couple weeks, and a full beta release by the end of June.

[malaimult]

thank you for your hard work. hope we can see the best btc client ever

[etotheipi]

Armory Version 0.77-alpha!  (Testing Release)
I need testers and I need feedback!  Please help test 0.77!


Armory 0.77-alpha is a major-bugfix release.  There was a series of bugs in 0.76 causing serious performance issues if you have a lot of transaction activity with your wallets.  In some cases, Armory was almost unusable.  It was inefficient operations done on every new transaction on the network -- now the processing is efficient, and only performed on new blocks and transactions involving one of your wallets.  

Also, there was a problem with one of the install scripts on actual Debian systems (not just Debian-like systems such as Ubuntu).  I think it's fixed, but I haven't had a chance to try it yet.

Download the testing release (likely to be the full release...)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1139081/ArmoryTestingReleases/armory_0.77_Win64.msi
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1139081/ArmoryTestingReleases/armory_0.77_Win32.msi (offline only!)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1139081/ArmoryTestingReleases/armory_0.77-python2.7-1_amd64.deb  (Ubuntu 11.04+, 64-bit)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1139081/ArmoryTestingReleases/armory_0.77-python2.6-1_amd64.deb  (Ubuntu 9.04-10.10, 64-bit)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1139081/ArmoryTestingReleases/armory_0.77-python2.7-1_i386.deb  (Ubuntu 11.04+, 32-bit)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1139081/ArmoryTestingReleases/armory_0.77-python2.6-1_i386.deb  (Ubuntu 9.04-10.10, 32-bit)

Next version will be 0.80-BETA!

IMPORTANT:
Performance on Windows is degrading rapidly.  Blockchain size is accelerating (mostly due to SatoshiDice) and wreaking havoc on Windows systems because the windows-mmap-equivalent is crap .  I am half done with a once-and-final, will-work-on-any-system upgrade to the blockchain utilities.  Once I finish this, it should be able to run on WinXP-32bit with 512 MB of RAM!  Until then, Windows users will have to suffer through long load times on 64-bit-only.  

[Red Emerald]

I got my shirt! Thanks!

[Raoul Duke]

etotheipi, can you please explain to me how is the address sweeping done?
Does it only sweep funds that are found on the address at the time of sweeping or is it possible to auto-sweep funds any time new funds arrive, a la MtGox?
If it doesn't auto-sweep, it would be a cool feature. I'm kinda tired of using the vanilla client wallet and would like to add all my addresses to an Armory wallet and have it auto-sweep the funds once they arrive.
Stop using my first wallet isn't something I can stop doing because of automatic payments I get to lots of addresses in there and having an Armory wallet that auto-swept those payments would be a peace of mind