Ok this might be a dumb question, but when copying the "blocks" and "chainstate" folders to a machine that has never had bitcoin installed, should I manually create the ~/.bitcoin folder on the target, then install the bitcoin-qt client, run it, and allow it to create the rest of the files it needs? I recall when you first launch bitcoin-qt it knows it hasn't been run before and asks if it should create a structure for you. I just want to make sure nothing gets overwritten after launch.
I'm not saying that this is the only way, but I always just install bitcoin-qt, run it once, shut it down, and then copy the "blocks" and "chainstate" folders. When it askes to merge folders I say yes, then let it replace any duplicate files. I'm not sure what would happen if you did it your way.
**EDIT** is there any reason why I shouldn't just tar the entire ~/.bitcoin folder and plop it onto another computer? I was thinking that way I would have a complete copy of everything (blockchain and wallet) and not have to worry.
Thanks!
The only issue I see there is the duplicate wallet. If you use a wallet in two places with bitcoin-qt it will eventually "split". When you generate a new recieving address or send a transaction bitcion-qt uses a new address. So if you create a recieving address on one instance, and then send coins to it, then only that instance of the wallet will have access to those coins. This is partially remedied by the use of a "keypool", which is a bunch of pregenerated address stored in the wallet (default size is 100). However, the wallets will still "split" after the 100 address in the keypool have been used.
