encrypted wallet backup to SDdisk | Bitcointalksearch.org

deepceleron

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Well, if it refreshes your memory, the original IBM 5150 PC originally had three OS choices, of course the sales of the non-MS-DOS OSs were something like less than 500 units.

August 12, 1981 press sheet:

Quote

System Software

BASIC Interpreter -- Based on the popular Microsoft Basic and offered in three versions -- cassette, diskette and advanced.

The cassette level is included in the read-only memory of every system and provides input/output instructions needed to enter and retrieve data. It also supports use of the keyboard, display, light pen and printer and provides a full complement of editing and mathematical functions.

The diskette and advanced levels are optional. The diskette extension supports the use of diskettes, while adding date, time of day and communications capabilities to the system. The advanced extension enhances the display graphics to include features such as point, circle and get/put display, while increasing light pen and joy stick support for design work and home entertainment.

Disk Operating System (DOS) -- DOS supports one or more diskette drives, allowing the user to write or read from the system's removable diskettes, display a directory and rename, erase, display or copy files.

Pascal Compiler -- This language compiler allows separate compilations of program elements for maximum system performance. In addition, it supports several programming features for advanced programming work.

CP/M-86* and UCSD p-System* -- IBM has contracted with Digital Research, Inc. and Sof- Tech Microsystems, Inc. to make CP/M-86 and the UCSD p-System available for the IBM Personal Computer. We expect their availability will provide the opportunity for many current applications to be transferred to the IBM Personal Computer with minimal modifications.

I owned one of these, and ran a NAT router on it before 99% percent of the population had heard of the internet and before most TCP/IP people knew what NAT was. Didn't get it new for $2000 though, more like $5 at a university surplus auction.

Jet Cash

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Apologies re: Xerox. I've been trying to find references to the Xerox OS, and it looks as if the Xerox 820 (which was the micro-computer of the time) used CP/M. I've lost touch with the retired Xerox guy, so I may not be able to get him to clarify the situation. There are a lot of stories about the industry at that time. There is even one that attributes DR's loss of the IBM contract to a bad case of halitosis by one of the DR execs, that seems unlikely to me. I believe it was Rank's influence that caused Xerox to drop their micro-computer business though, and they may have sold elements of this to other companies.

Jet Cash

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Apologies re the number of the disk that I worked on. The smaller one was a 2311, and there was a larger faster one that followed it with double the number of platters -nthis was a 2314. Both of these were washing machine sized, and had exchangeasble platters. The devolopment work on hard drives for micro-computers was done in the IBM Hursley laboratories, and this were often referred to as IBM winchester, as were the drives.

The Xerox comment was based on a discussion with a retired Xerox executive, who was involved with the search for an addition to the Hovis bread business, and this led to the purchase of Xerox. The expansion was needed to fund Lord Rank's obsession with the film industry, and the film stars of the time. The Rank film organision required a fair amoiunt of cash to sustain I believe. Certainly Digital Research seemed to be the preferred choice for IBM, and the fledgling Microsoft was only chosen after they had reputedly turned down IBM. DR-DOS/CP/M was the OS standard for 8080 and 8085 based machines, and was loaded via 5 1/4 inch floppy disks which had replaced the old 8 inch disks.

deepceleron

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Quote from: Jet Cash on January 23, 2016, 05:25:51 AM

Here is another tit-bit for you. Microsoft didn't write the original PC/MS-DOS. They purchased it from Xerox, just after Lord Rank bought the company for its Xerography process, and refused to sell the products, but only allowed them to be rented with a pay-per-copy contract. Of course M/s went on to develop the OS.

Also wrong. Microsoft licensed the code and then purchased full rights for Tim Patterson's Seattle Computer Products 86-DOS for $50,000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS

Jet Cash

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Here is another tit-bit for you. Microsoft didn't write the original PC/MS-DOS. They purchased it from Xerox, just after Lord Rank bought the company for its Xerography process, and refused to sell the products, but only allowed them to be rented with a pay-per-copy contract. Of course M/s went on to develop the OS.

Jet Cash

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Sorry - The first winchester was 5Mb, and it was about the size of a house brick. The research and development was done in IBM's Hursley labs just outside Winchester. I used 3340s back in the days when I was a mainframe programmer, and nobody called them Winchesters. I read the Wikipedia article, and they seemed to think that Seagate made the first drives for the PC. I believe that IBM made the drives they put into the XT. I also worked with a removable drum storage device on an ICT 1900. That was one of the worst drives ever. It wrapped a flexible medium around a fixed drum, and didn't last very long.

My first programming was done on an IBM 421 which used a plug board, and then on an IBM 1401 using punched cards.

Is anyone here older than me?

deepceleron

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Quote from: Jet Cash on January 20, 2016, 12:20:18 PM

btw - did you guys know that a hard drive is known as a Winchester disk because it was developed just outside Winchester in Hampshire, England.

Hard drives were developed by IBM in San Jose, the first being the RAMAC 350 in 1956.

The "Winchester" name came in 1973 from the IBM 3340 project head Kenneth E. Haughton. This drive, which was to have two 30MB disk banks (30-30), got the nickname from the Winchester 30-30 rifle.

Just to note - you must destroy a SD card that had any unencrypted wallet data on it. There is no method to securely erase data off them (although filling them with raw 00s and FFs multiple times might deter the casual discovery).

Jet Cash

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I guess I'd still be interested in finding out why boost doesn't like SD disks, but I guess that's a topic for another thread. I'd assumed that an SD disk was the equivalent of a hard disk, but a bit slower.

btw - did you guys know that a hard drive is known as a Winchester disk because it was developed just outside Winchester in Hampshire, England.

cr1776

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Quote from: sase007 on January 19, 2016, 01:56:47 PM

...
If he compresses it first, It should work then.
The magnitude of files needed for the SD card is too much for it to handle, however, one file will copy over fine.
As SanDisk are one of the two largest flash makers (the other bing Kingston), it shouldn't be the disk itself, just flash technology in genreal.
It may also depend on the type of drive: SDHC, SDHD, SDXC... ETC, this may have an effect, or whether his drive's port actually has the power to power the drive enougth to power it.

Title: "encrypted wallet backup to SDdisk"
1st sentence: " experimenting with wallet security"
Next: "I then backed up the unencrypted wallet directly to a sub-directory on the SDcard"
Next: "Then I encrypted the wallet"
Next: "...backup the encrypted wallet directly to the SDcard, and this failed."

Clearly he is talking about backing up the wallet, not the entire directory.

Perhaps not a sig campaigner, if not, apologies.

Jet Cash

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Update -

Tried saving to a USB stick, and that worked without any problems
Tried saving to a micro-SD card via an adapter, and core said that I couldn't save it there.
Went back to the original SD card, and tried saving to that. Core now tells me that I can't save it there either.

I guess that I should just accept life, and use USB sticks for Bitcoin backups. I don't think it is worth pursuing the original error any further, although it would be nice to know why it tried to use the card yesterday and failed, and today it just says "tough, you can't do this". I guess Bitcoin is better than me, at least it learns by its mistakes.

Jet Cash

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Thanks. I looked at the log file, and there is some extra stuff in there, so I thought I would wait until I could replicate the problem before posting it. I'm just catching up with the blockchain atm. I was 11 hours behind, and I'm on public WiFi running at around 30Kb/s, so it will be a few more minutes.

Thanks for the comment about boost, and I hope that is the problem. I was concerned that it might be something that Windows 10 was doing. I can live with a Bitcoin limitation, as I said, it's easy to back up my wallet using a two stage process.

I guess I need to read up on boost. I assume it is a file handling routine.

achow101

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Just writing some code

Quote from: Jet Cash on January 20, 2016, 12:05:08 AM

Good morning guys, I've now got myself a black coffee, and I'll sit here and do a bit more experimenting. Debug file to come later when I've worked out where it is.

The debug.log file is located in %appdata%/bitcoin if you did not change the datadir.

From your error message, I would guess that there is a problem with boost and its file writing capabilities. Maybe the SD card has read/write problems which boost can't handle but windows can?

Jet Cash

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Good morning guys, I've now got myself a black coffee, and I'll sit here and do a bit more experimenting. Debug file to come later when I've worked out where it is.

The blockchain is not a problem. The directory contains (wait for it

) a chain of blocks, and each one is a discrete file of around 130Kb. I think there are over 400 of them, and there is no problem copying them. I'm going to try direct back-ups to an USB stick, and another SD card ( a cheaper one that is in the camera). Obviously I can only work with the encrypted wallet now. I'm in McD at 5am, and they have just started breakfasts, so give me time to get another coffee, and an egg wrap.

cr1776

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Quote from: sase007 on January 19, 2016, 01:56:47 PM

Quote from: cr1776 on January 19, 2016, 01:35:24 PM

Quote from: Jet Cash on January 19, 2016, 12:45:44 PM

Sorry I should have been a bit clearer in my description. Core uses the blockchain stored on the hard disk. I backed it up by using a simple file copy, and that worked perfectly. I did think of trying to run a node on my chromebook using and SDcard for the storage, but I gave it up. One of the reasons was the point you made. I made the backup of the blockchain because it took me over two weeks to download it using public wifi.

I could do a direct backup of the unencrypted wallet, bu nowt get the error every time I try to backup since I have encrypted the wallet.

You were quite clear.

It could be an error on the SD card. Do you have a second one to try it with?

If he compresses it first, It should work then.
The magnitude of files needed for the SD card is too much for it to handle, however, one file will copy over fine.
As SanDisk are one of the two largest flash makers (the other bing Kingston), it shouldn't be the disk itself, just flash technology in genreal.
It may also depend on the type of drive: SDHC, SDHD, SDXC... ETC, this may have an effect, or whether his drive's port actually has the power to power the drive enougth to power it.

He is only talking about storing the wallet on the SD card as he has said several times. Consequently, the "magnitude of the files needed" to store the wallet there is not an issue. The wallet.dat file is almost always quite small.

Many of the people with sig campaigns are just posting to get their post count up, so their advice is best taken with a grain of salt.

sase007

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Quote from: cr1776 on January 19, 2016, 01:35:24 PM

Quote from: Jet Cash on January 19, 2016, 12:45:44 PM

Sorry I should have been a bit clearer in my description. Core uses the blockchain stored on the hard disk. I backed it up by using a simple file copy, and that worked perfectly. I did think of trying to run a node on my chromebook using and SDcard for the storage, but I gave it up. One of the reasons was the point you made. I made the backup of the blockchain because it took me over two weeks to download it using public wifi.

I could do a direct backup of the unencrypted wallet, bu nowt get the error every time I try to backup since I have encrypted the wallet.

You were quite clear.

It could be an error on the SD card. Do you have a second one to try it with?

If he compresses it first, It should work then.
The magnitude of files needed for the SD card is too much for it to handle, however, one file will copy over fine.
As SanDisk are one of the two largest flash makers (the other bing Kingston), it shouldn't be the disk itself, just flash technology in genreal.
It may also depend on the type of drive: SDHC, SDHD, SDXC... ETC, this may have an effect, or whether his drive's port actually has the power to power the drive enougth to power it.

cr1776

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Quote from: Jet Cash on January 19, 2016, 12:45:44 PM

Sorry I should have been a bit clearer in my description. Core uses the blockchain stored on the hard disk. I backed it up by using a simple file copy, and that worked perfectly. I did think of trying to run a node on my chromebook using and SDcard for the storage, but I gave it up. One of the reasons was the point you made. I made the backup of the blockchain because it took me over two weeks to download it using public wifi.

I could do a direct backup of the unencrypted wallet, bu nowt get the error every time I try to backup since I have encrypted the wallet.

You were quite clear.

It could be an error on the SD card. Do you have a second one to try it with?

shorena

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No I dont escrow anymore.

Quote from: Jet Cash on January 19, 2016, 12:45:44 PM

Sorry I should have been a bit clearer in my description. Core uses the blockchain stored on the hard disk. I backed it up by using a simple file copy, and that worked perfectly. I did think of trying to run a node on my chromebook using and SDcard for the storage, but I gave it up. One of the reasons was the point you made. I made the backup of the blockchain because it took me over two weeks to download it using public wifi.

I could do a direct backup of the unencrypted wallet, bu nowt get the error every time I try to backup since I have encrypted the wallet.

Its pretty obvious that sase007 never looked into a folder that stores the blockchain. Im too lazy right now to show how few files actually are below 1MB though.

Anyway, back to topic: Can you show the debug.log at the times you tried to backup to the SDcard? It might give more clues to the source of the error.

Jet Cash

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Sorry I should have been a bit clearer in my description. Core uses the blockchain stored on the hard disk. I backed it up by using a simple file copy, and that worked perfectly. I did think of trying to run a node on my chromebook using and SDcard for the storage, but I gave it up. One of the reasons was the point you made. I made the backup of the blockchain because it took me over two weeks to download it using public wifi.

I could do a direct backup of the unencrypted wallet, bu nowt get the error every time I try to backup since I have encrypted the wallet.

sase007

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Quote from: Jet Cash on January 19, 2016, 05:09:30 AM

I've started experimenting with wallet security. The first thing I did was to backup the blockchain, wallet and associated files by copying them onto an SDcard. I then backed up the unencrypted wallet directly to a sub-directory on the SDcard, and this worked perfectly. Then I encrypted the wallet, and this seems to have been successful. The next stage was to backup the encrypted wallet directly to the SDcard, and this failed. There is quite a long message, but it seems to have been caused by a CRC error which caused a fatal exception inthe core, and it shut down. I restarted, and backed up the wallet onto the hard disk, and then copied the file onto the SDcard without problem. Does anyone have any idea why backing up directly to an SDcard would cause a problem when the wallet is encrypted?

Details -

HP core i5 computer with lots of space on the hard drive. OS is Windows 10 ( ! ) Bitcoin core 0.11.2 is working well with no other problems.
SDcard is a 128Gb SanDisk Extreme (class 10 ) with an 80 Mb/s rated transfer. No problems with any other use of this card.

Simple: flash technology is majorly uncabable at taking this type of demand. You have to consider, when backing up the blockchain ever file is less than 1 mb in size, and he folder is more than 50GB in size.

If you did want to do this, I would suggest you use something like 7 zip to change the files into a Zip, then put it onto the SD card, also making it more efficient.

This is how I understand it anyway.

Jet Cash

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Obviously it is not a hardship to backup to disk, and then make a file copy. I'm trying to understand the fault in case there is something in Windows 10 that is causing the problem. I don't trust Microsoft, and hope that they aren't still keylogging and copying my data.

Topic: encrypted wallet backup to SDdisk (Read 2395 times)