Freaking linux Crash NIGHTMARE!!!!

[ploum]

It doesn't store the coins. They exist on the network. BUT, to spend them, you need the "keys". They are stored in your wallet. Lose the keys and those coins will never move again to another account.

Which means that you don't have to backup at every transaction but only when you create a new address? For example, imagine that FSF created an account only to receive donations on their website. They generated an address and pasted it on their website.

Then, they backuped their wallet.dat.

2 years of donations later, they loose everything in a disk crash. Will the 2 years old backup be enough to recover every transaction?

If yes, then it gives some room for efficient backup strategies (like generating enough addresses in advance before a backup). If no, what am I missing?

Also, why is Grondilu not seeing anything at all? It's very unlikely that he generated *every* address he ever used after backuping. At least the first 100 addresses should be there.

[grondilu]

Still downloading the block chain.  Balance is still zero after block 105,000.

The wallet I restored is from may, the 4th.   Funny thing is that when I type "bitcoind listreceivedbyaccount" I see the details of my balance per account.

[bitlotto]

It doesn't store the coins. They exist on the network. BUT, to spend them, you need the "keys". They are stored in your wallet. Lose the keys and those coins will never move again to another account.

Which means that you don't have to backup at every transaction but only when you create a new address? For example, imagine that FSF created an account only to receive donations on their website. They generated an address and pasted it on their website.

Then, they backuped their wallet.dat.

2 years of donations later, they loose everything in a disk crash. Will the 2 years old backup be enough to recover every transaction?

If yes, then it gives some room for efficient backup strategies (like generating enough addresses in advance before a backup). If no, what am I missing?

Also, why is Grondilu not seeing anything at all? It's very unlikely that he generated *every* address he ever used after backuping. At least the first 100 addresses should be there.

That is correct, kind of. The backup will work no matter how many people *send* to you to those addresses. That is true if all you do is receive coins. Now, if the FSF was sending money during this time they would be using up more and more addresses and would have to do another backup sometime. Say they sent 100 BTC to someone. It's possible the software will sent more than 100 but return the extra back to you at another address. So to the user they sent 100. But in the network a "New" address contains those coins. If that new address isn't backed up in a wallet that has that group of 100 then you don't have that portion backed up. If that makes sense.

[ploum]

So you mean that there's also "hidden addresses".

That's kind of annoying for backup purpose.

[caveden]

It's the change feature. When you send money, bitcoin will use all inputs of the transaction entirely, and the amount exceeding what you intended to send will be sent back to a new address of yours.

I don't really see what's the point of this feature, but that's how the default client behaves.

Anyway, with the 100 addresses pool, you shouldn't need to back up every time, only when you use the entire pool.

@grondilu, Something's wrong, your backup should contain at least the transactions done before it... do you see your old receiving addresses in your address book? You could confirm them with the block explorer...

[bitlotto]

So you mean that there's also "hidden addresses".

That's kind of annoying for backup purpose.

Yes. And how many of those "hidden" ones you have are tricky to know.

[grondilu]

hum...  bitcoind isn't responding now (block is 109,000 or something), but it seems to be building an index as I can see the file blkindex.dat growing.

Hopefully I see some change once it's done.

[grondilu]

Ok, most of my bitcoins have been recover.  I had to wait for the index to be built at block 120,000 or something.


Guys, the lesson I've learnt is: do not underestimate the importance of backups!

[benjamindees]

Out of curiosity, what did your crash have to do with Linux?

[JohnDoe]

Ok, most of my bitcoins have been recover.  I had to wait for the index to be built at block 120,000 or something.


Guys, the lesson I've learnt is: do not underestimate the importance of backups!

Why didn't you recover all of them? Was it a wallet that had already used up the 100 addresses and you were just creating new ones on the go?

I believe you can create wallets with more keypairs than the default 100 by the way. Make a new one with 10 or 100 thousand and never worry about it again.

[Garrett Burgwardt]

Ok, most of my bitcoins have been recover.  I had to wait for the index to be built at block 120,000 or something.


Guys, the lesson I've learnt is: do not underestimate the importance of backups!

Why didn't you recover all of them? Was it a wallet that had already used up the 100 addresses and you were just creating new ones on the go?

I believe you can create wallets with more keypairs than the default 100 by the way. Make a new one with 10 or 100 thousand and never worry about it again.

Potentially an error in recovering the wallet damaged some keys.

[gigabytecoin]

Ok, most of my bitcoins have been recover.  I had to wait for the index to be built at block 120,000 or something.


Guys, the lesson I've learnt is: do not underestimate the importance of backups!

Lol, I am surprised that you did!

[grondilu]

Ok, most of my bitcoins have been recover.  I had to wait for the index to be built at block 120,000 or something.


Guys, the lesson I've learnt is: do not underestimate the importance of backups!

Lol, I am surprised that you did!

Problem is that I was too lazy to think about a really good backup plan.

I did backup for very important stuffs, but I've lost most of my sweet config scripts on my linux box.   It's a pain in the ass now that I have to reconfigure everything 

I will definitely try to make much proper backups in future.

[mewantsbitcoins]

Buy an external drive and set a cron job. You'll never have to worry about it again