Topic: MultiBit - page 13. (Read 336145 times)

Hello,

I use Multibit 0.5.18 for a time.today not connecting,no sync.
thank you in advance

Ah, thanks for explaining!

For every address there will be a private key (safely stored inside the wallet file, you usually don't need to see the keys, you just need to know that they are there and that you should have backups to avoid losing them). Every Bitcoin address is derived from its own private key, if you have the key you can calculate the address from it (thats the reason why the .key file only contains keys and does not also the corresponding addresses, the addresses can be easily generated from the keys when you import it again).

You cannot generate a key from the address, if you lose a key then you lose access to the bitcoins that are lying at that particular address. If you make backups of the .wallet (or of the .key files) you can't lose your keys. Please always password protect your wallet and the key export files.

You can safely replace every occurrence of "generate a new address" with "generate a new key" and vice versa, it means the same thing. Under the hood a new key is generated (and stored in the wallet file) and from this its corresponding address is calculated and shown to you so you can use it to receive coins. You never see the key itself displayed in the user interface because you don't actually have any use from looking at it, only the wallet app needs it under the hood for its calculations when signing a bitcoin transaction.

You mean receiving addresses, right?

Ok, I get it now.

The old one will import correctly, but will not contain the new private keys (obviously). Only then will you lose your coins, but only if you are not careful.

So if I don't make a new backup, the old one will fail to import and I lose my coins?

You need to make a new backup when you created new addresses.

The way I did it myself is I created a few dozen addresses in advance and labeled them all "reserve", then made my backups. Now if I quickly need a new receiving address I just pick one of my reserve addresses and rename it and use it. When I'm running low on reserve addresses I create another bunch of them and make new backups. This way I am not forced to do it too often, I don't need to do it when I'm in a hurry (and then forget to do it), I can make new backups at the times when it is most convenient for me.

Bitcoin-core maintains a pool of 100 reserve addresses hidden from the user and creates new ones all the time, this has the disadvantage that you can never be quite sure when its time to make a new backup unless you painstakingly count all events that took addresses from the pool since you made the last backup. In Multibit on the other hand with the above technique you know **exactly** when to backup because it will never generate new addresses on its own automatically, it only happens when you explicitly request new addresses and you have 100% control over it.

Bump?

Ah, I see.

What does this mean, though: https://multibit.org/help_backupWalletUsingPrivateKeys.html

What happens if I create new receiving addresses sometime after I exported my private key?

you can backup either one. Each one of them alone contains all keys, so only one of them is needed to restore access to your coins.

The .wallet you can just open (file -> open), the .key needs to be imported into a newly generated wallet. The .key file can also be used to merge two wallets into one because it can be imported into an existing wallet.

The key file (when you decrypt it manually) is a plain text file, so theoretically you could import it elsewhere even if you don't have an installation of Multibit. It has the same file format as the file you would get from bitcoin-core when executing the dumpwallet command and can be imported by all programs that support this file format (Schildbach, Bitcoin-core, Multibit, probably a few more).

You should also keep a copy of the .info file, its not strictly needed but it adds some convenience, it contains the labels you gave to the addresses, its easier to interpret your old tx history if your addresses keep their names. But this is optional.


I personally backup my .wallet along with its .info file instead of the .key because I will always have a Multibit installation around (or my own wallet-key-tool converter program which can read/write them all)

Is there any particular reason why I should backup both the .wallet file and the private key, and not just the private key?

If something happens to my disk and lose the .wallet file, can't I just re-access it by importing the private key into an empty wallet?

Worked! Thx a lot! Have a nice day..

Good to know! Thanks for the info!

No. Export works perfectly. there was an issue with import of blockchain.info aes.json files because the blockchain.info file format and its old import code (which has been removed) is screwed up but it could only lead to loss if you deleted old backups or generally didn't care about making backups or at least verify that everything is ok and you have new backups before deleting old backups. Backup (export) itself is working perfectly.

Hey guys is there some sort of issue with exporting the private keys from a Multibit client? I thought I read that somewhere when the Maidsafe IPO was going on.

Ok i will test that tomorrow. I am not leaving home. Thanks for your help again.
Perhaps Jim can also tell me that this way is save or if he has another idea.

Now lets try something else (please first make sure you find the exact location of the .wallet file in explorer, remember where it is, maybe even make a copy of that file to a safe location so you won't accidentally delete it)


The following requires you to trust me not to be a malware producer intending to steal your coins, It is ok if you don't want to do that, you don't have to! Go to this website https://github.com/prof7bit/wallet-key-tool/releases and download wallet-key-tool. Start it.

* Click the load button, find your .wallet file open it, enter password to decrypt.
* It should show you a list of your 3 addresses and their keys.
* right-click each of them and choose "fetch balance and creation date from blockchain.info", verify that the numbers are correct.
* Click the save button, choose "Multibit wallet" as file type and a convenient folder and file name where you can easily find it, it will not allow you to overwrite your existing wallet, it will save a new wallet file.
* open Multibit
* close the existing wallet file (file -> close).
* click "file->open"
* open the newly created .wallet file from above
* watch it sync (do not reset, it will sync on its own) and balances should be ok.

Yes i have left one wallet and right 3 receiving addresses.
One is working fine. The other two one i send coins with the 2 tx i posted before.
They are also in the blockchain confirmed.
But i have got no coins to my wallet.

Yes, you are supposed to be able to receive to all receiving addresses on the request tab. Every wallet can have multiple receiving addresses. You keep using the term "payment id", this terminology does not exist in Bitcoin, I suppose you mean "bitcoin address" or "receiving address"? Lets get the terminology straight:

• on the left side panel you see wallets. A Wallet is a collection of receiving addresses. You can manage more than one wallet in Multibit, you can switch between them, each one is represented by a *.wallet file, each wallet can have as many receiving addresses as you want.
• on the main panel in the "request" tab at the bottom you see the list "your receiving addresses", these are the bitcoin addresses contained in the active wallet (the wallet that is currently selected in the left side panel if you have more than one wallet or the only wallet if there is only onel), a payment to any of these addresses should show up in the transaction list of that wallet and add to that wallet's balance
• if you switch to a different wallet on the left side then you will see how receiving addresses, transaction history and balances are switched also to show the information for the currently selected wallet

If you have more than one wallet (on the left side) then it is possible that only one of them is suffering from this out-of-sync condition. Close all other wallets (file->close), open only the "broken" one (file -> open), apply the above mentioned full force sync method to the broken wallets individually.

Thx for your answer. Tried that. Its now synced again but i have still the same balance.
The 3 transactions of the other 2 wallet ids still not appear.
But it is synced to date. Also received yesterday some payments to my first id.
The other two dont work.
All payment ids which are shown at tab request under the point your receiving addresses are active and i can send to, right ?
It is possible to have in one wallet more that one receiving address, right ?
Thanks again