Thanks for the information. It's getting clearer! I'm about to buy a 2nd hand Eee pc to use as an offline armory wallet manager. It will have windows 7 running when I get it, i'm not sure whether install disks are included--ie. not sure if I'll be able to arrange a 'clean windows install' on there.
If not (and i guess it's not ideal to be using a used windows install for the offline machine) would the links on the get-armory page allow me to install Ubuntu cleanly on there instead, or do i need to look further afield for the packages/information that will allow me to do that? (I've never installed linux on a machine before).
From the
http://bitcoinarmory.com/get-armory/ page
The link below is for setting up an offline system without ever touching the internet. The zip-file contains the exact same 32-bit package as above, but also includes all dependencies needed for an Ubuntu 10.04-32bit system to run Armory in offline mode. It can be unpacked and installed on the first boot of a fresh OS install!
Thanks again for any help!
If you can figure out how to boot off the Ubuntu CD, then everything else should be a cinch. You select all the default options for the Ubuntu installation except choosing a username, password, and computer name. It will probably take 20 min to install Ubuntu and then ask you to reboot. Once it's done, put the Armory offline bundle onto a USB key and copy it to your home directory or desktop on the offline computer. You can unzip it by right clicking and selecting "Extract Here...", or something like that. Once it's extracted, double click "Install_All.sh" and "Run in Terminal" when it asks. You'll have to type your password.
That should be it! You'll find Armory in the Applications menu under "Internet". You can drag it from the menu to the top panel to make it easier to get to. For extra credit, I'm sure someone here can explain how to auto-start it on boot...
But! There is one major downside to an EeePC: they usually don't have CD/DVD drives. If yours doesn't I recommend you download the Ubuntu install disk (*.iso) from a
Windows machine, and use
unetbootin to install the ISO onto the USB key. You can't just copy it, because it needs to be bootable. I have not had good luck making bootable USB drives from Linux, which is why I recommend Windows+unetbootin.
If the system won't boot from the USB key, you'll need to go to the BIOS and make USB bootable. You might as well force-disable the Wifi and Bluetooth while you're there. The Wifi/Bluetooth options don't always exist, but the option for booting from USB key
must exist if the system doesn't have a CD/DVD drive (otherwise there'd be no way to boot anything!).
Let me know if you have any problems. Now that I mention it, I should probably add this info to the webpage.