Topic: Electrum - Bitcoin client for the common users (friendly and instant) - page 25. (Read 110105 times)

Ah sorry if you use FlatFly's build you should indeed use the shift trick. Just hold shift while you double click the .exe file. A pop up should open up with a command prompt.

@bitcats

Thanks for the offer but i think its a bit too risky for me to use a software i dont know what it contains. I mean i dont know you enough and dont know others that tested it. Nothing against you but i dont know you.

Did someone review the code and knows its clean?

@Tachikoma

I tried what you suggested.

L:\Tools\Hardware\Geld\Electrum>electrum1.5.6-flatfly.exe set gui lite (qt)

When i do this then it claims: To access the custom virtual console with full command-line support, start Electrum while holding down the SHIFT key.

Pressing Shift while starting doesnt change anything.

The difference is now that, when starting the portable-link the process starts and closes instantly. Then i tried to rename the new sysfiles directory and reestablish the old one. I started the set gui link and same message. After starting portable link the process remains but stays hidden like before.

The same goes for qt.

I then renamed all the 1.5.6 directories and started the portable but it hangs at unpacking modules to the "Electrum_SysFiles" directory.
So i tried to delete the new sysfiles-dir and start the exe again without -w. Now it unpacks correct and asks to create a wallet. I cancelled.

Unfortunately... when i now start the portable version i still get no electrum client. I think it should be set back to the defaults now because of the new sysfiles, but it doesnt.

Is it because the new version 1.5.7 is out and has to be used?

Deterministic in this context means that Electrum can always restore your wallet and thus your coins as long as you remember the key-phrase.   


You have select to run the text version, however the text version needs a terminal. It might run if you start electrum using a command line prompt.

To fix the problem open a terminal and run electrum with the following flags: electrum set gui qt. (or change qt to lite if you prefer that)

You could use the portable version. I recommend not to play around with all those options. The client is a bit "overloaded" and still in development. If you only use the main options, there should be no issue.
Download: http://ge.tt/3CppLwT/v/0

What do you mean with deterministic?

I have a new problem. I tried to check out the different view-options. Lite and classic worked fine. But then i chose the third option. And now electrum doesnt start anymore. I only have the .exe in process-list. When im over explorerwindow with the mouse it shows the loading mouse. But nothing happens.

Then i tried to load the newer version but yesterday the website was down. Today its back again but 1.5.7 is only available as setup-file (not possible to open it with winrar), not as flatfly-version. But i wonder if it would work anyway because i already tried to rename the directory of roamint/.../electrum_sysfiles/.../1.5.6. After restarting the directory was created again. Unfortunately without showing electrum again. So i dont know whats wrong again.

So at the moment i cant open electrum again. Its sitting in process list and using occassionally cpu but its not showing up.

What can i do?

I'm really liking this client, and especially the deterministic wallet. IMO the original client should have been like this from the start.

Well done guys!

I used the link you pasted here and i thought wallet_name is only the name of the directory you have your wallet stored in.


Sure there might be keylogger somewhere. But i think people that use it this way without thinking about the risk at non secure pcs are people that doesnt care about their own pcs security anyway. I know a person that had 20 viruses and trojans on its pc. He even didnt care after that found and made his online banking there. People are stupid either way.
I dont know if the probability is higher to use a pc especially targetting walletpasswords than a pc that is infested anyway through trojans/viruses/keyloggers because people dont care.

Its not especially that wallets should be portable, i think software should be portable. Instead they are mostly burned into a pc system without the chance to move it, without chance to completely delete it and so on. Electrum isnt that hard but you even have to know where files are stored to do something. I think that is making things worse than needed. Only a question of philosophy i guess.

This was a problem in the past with older versions (1.0, possibly even 1.4) and newer servers. They could get stuck on syncronizing and so on. All better now that we're in 1.5.x land.

Here is the latest electrum portable client for windows. I made it using slush's original build (thanks for that ).
I'm not a programmer and I couldn't test it in extenso, so feel free to report any bugs here.
Download: http://ge.tt/3CppLwT/v/0

yes, that's how the -w parameter is supposed to work. please read the manual next time.

This is not corruption. This is because you upgraded to a version with SPV.
With SPV, the dates of transactions will be displayed only once transactions are verified. this might take a few minutes (time to download the blockchain headers).

there is a new file called blockchain_headers. this file does not store any information that is specific to your wallet.
I added a -P option in the 1.5.7 version, that makes it portable. with this option, the client will always write that file in the same directory as the wallet.


Because portable wallets can (and will, it is only a matter of time) be used by some people on third party computers.
The administrator of the computer where you use your "portable wallet" might install a keylogger, get your password and decrypt your wallet.
And please don't tell me that you are not stupid enough to do that. Some people will. I don't care if it's you or someone else.

It worked now with -w -param when especially naming the dat-file. Only dates of transactions seems corrupted. No labels are there but im not sure if i had put labels in.
So how portable is this now? Are there data stored in registry or some other files out of my own directory?

What i dont understand is why you say a portable version has a higher risk. I would say a nonportable version is the higher risk. A hacker only has to go into the directory he knows all the walletfiles are lying and bang... there is the money. If its encrypted its another thing. But a portable wallet can be encrypted too. So i dont see how it could be safe to store your wallet at a place windows wants it at. Its like putting your money under the mattress because all people are doing it so and its the safest place. Its the safest for thieves, because they dont need to search long time.

And i never was a friend of having a program where you have part of the files installed in the directory you wanted it at, some files somewhere where windows wants it and some data in registry. A clean remove isnt easy sometimes then (mostly you can be sure it leaves some traces somewhere), transferring your program to another place is hard and so on. It should be possible to start every program from every place you want. Be it an usb-stick or whatever. The wallet itself would be protected through encryption and hopefully the owner is wise enough to know what backups are.

In my opinion a software should check the directory its in and it should remain in this directory. Saving and storing its files there. Letting windows handle this or storing in registry only makes things harder. So i dont get why a portable version has to be created first and manually, timeconsuming tested. It should work out of the box this way.

Regarding the servers not connecting... i had this too some weeks ago with portable version. I tried all servers but they didnt connect. So that i didnt get the newest blocks and couldnt see my balance. Probably because of some update.

ok, point taken.

Wallet corruption happened to me just 2 weeks ago... maybe I shouldn't exit electrum by closing the window (that might send a SIGHUP on my setup)? Or maybe there's a problem with multiple instances running concurrently? I'm not sure and I never dug into and wouldn't know how to because I only discover the corruption at the next start at which point I want to send some money somewhere and just restore from seed.

Also: I'm usually using HEAD from git. It's probably not fair to do that and then complain about problems. I should use release versions.

I apologize.

This happen one time back in early times of Electrum (year ago?), when concept of deterministic wallets was completely new. Now it looks that Electrum wallet format is pretty good and the only ongoing change will be support for BIP32 wallets, when Bitcoin-qt will have support for it as well. I hope Electrum will then support both algorithms, so users won't be forced to migrate their wallets again.

This happen to me on Android version, but I don't expect full stability of this version, Electrum for Android is mostly for geeks. Can you elaborate more when this happen to you? I'm using Electrum intensively, I had many weird bugs (all of them are fixed at this time), but I never lost my wallet and I never had to use my paper backup yet.


Yes, this was true few months ago. But I must say that server side has been incredibly improved recently and servers are much more reliable now. For example, I had been screwed few times when BitcoinSpinner server was down, but I always found at least one working server for Electrum every time. I see this as a nice benefit of open development of Electrum.


Yes, the development was a bit turbulent, but I see the most of them are major improvements done by Thomas.


Currently I see problems in two areas:
a) lacking support for Windows users (most of "common users" work on Windows)
b) almost missing testing for every release

For this reason I made my own Windows builds (electrum.bitcoin.cz/download) which are open source, so can be improved in iterations by interested people (like there's still missing Electrum icon etc). And I'm also going to write down testing scenarios for future releases, so things like unability to send transaction in some scenarios (which happen in 1.5.4?) won't happen again.


molecular, I understand your points, but things got improved recently and your moaning was mostly valid two or three months ago :-)[/list]

(Removed irreleveant stuff for my answer)


I'm sorry, but that's not true (at least not with the Linux clients) and might be indicative of another network problem (on your end?). Most Electrum are pretty stable...

Also, please understand that "portable wallets" were never officially supported in Electrum.
Flatfly's version is not the official version, so it is not as if I was removing support that existed in the past.

Please note that "portable wallets" expose users to a big risk of theft. This is why I never really wanted to support this function.
However, there seems to be a strong demand for it, and we cannot prevent users from doing what they want, so I guess it is better to include proper support for it.
I have been talking with slush about it, and we plan to support it soon.

your wallet is not lost, even if your client cannot connect.
there are at least 3 ways you can recover your bitcoins:

1. use the -w parameter:  if that does not work with flatfly's version, it will work with slush's build.

2. recover your wallet from seed:  
start your old client, go to the seed dialog, and write down your seed.
then, start the new version of Electrum, and instead of creating a new wallet, select 'restore from seed'.

3. if you don't want to use Electrum at all, you can export your keys to another client:
you can do it offline, with the command:

can you please count how many users reportedly lost money because of Electrum?
sorry, but this too had to be said.

maybe you should change the thread title. Having to tell people to use a build of some other guy is not "friendly for the common users". Hell, most "common users" don't even know how to start electrum other that double-clicking.

• I have had to dig up old version of electrum to get to my money back and chang the seed 2 times because the seed format had changed.
• I have had a corrupted wallet and had to restore from seed at least 4 times, losing all my transaction labels every time.
• Often times I cannot connect to any of the servers.

I'm still using electrum because: fuck the transaction labels, I just don't use the feature any more at all because I'm pretty sure my electrum.dat will get fucked again and I'm pretty sure I can salvage my keys from the seed with help of developers if needed.

You have to admit you guys made users go through pretty rough patches in the past. I hope it'll stabilize at some point.

Thread title should read: "electrum - wallet for people with strong nerves"

I still love electrum, btw, many thanks for making it, guys, but this had to be said.

The path should point to the dat file itself, not just the containing folder. So, if the dat file is called electrum.dat:

I tried a shortcut with following target:


I tried without double quotes too. A process is shown for a second then it dies.