Topic: [Round #5] Final Testing Release Before Armory v0.88 - page 2. (Read 6430 times)

I'm fairly certain it's a unicode issue.  The installation path or datadir have a unicode character in them, and it's breaking the settings.  This is one reason I'm anxious to do the new wallets and just clear this up once and for all.  Do you still see a unicode error in the log file?

EDIT: Now after I installed the version of bitcoind from the official Ubuntu repository Armory can see it, but I still can not open the settings window, so I guess it's an independent problem.

Yeah, Armory has no unicode support yet.  It would've been trivial if I had known from the beginning what "unicode" is and how to support it... but I didn't.  I haven't been able to upgrade it, because I didn't want to risk breaking the wallet code (fixed-width fields overflow with unicode characters).

However, I'm totally revamping wallets in the near future, so I will go through and upgrade all of Armory with it.  It shouldn't be too hard, I just don't want to risk coin-losing bugs by upgrading the old wallets in a hurry, and they're going to be obsolete soon, anyway.

For now, let's see if I can get around this for you.  Is it failing because of a custom bitcoind installation path?  Or does it fail anyway?  In the ArmorySettings.txt file, do you see fields with non-ASCII characters?  I can probably work around a specific instance of unicode problems, I just can't upgrade the whole app, yet.

Okay Alan, I compiled 0.87.94-beta, after startup it prompted me that the bitcoind installation cannot be found, I tried to point it to the location of the installation, by clicking the "Change Settings" button in the dashboard, or the "Settings" item in the menu, both gave no response, no window popped up, instead, the console showed the following error message whenever I tried:


So it seem like a encoding support problem(FYI u+5e74 is the unicode representation for the Chinese character meaning year), I don't know how difficult it's to sort this out, if you can't please just tell me what configurations I should change on my part to make it work.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "ArmoryQt.py", line 716, in openSettings
    dlgSettings = DlgSettings(self, self)
  File "/home/****/BitcoinArmory/BitcoinArmory/qtdialogs.py", line 9913, in __init__
    'specified format.' % exampleStr )
  File "/home/****/BitcoinArmory/BitcoinArmory/qtdefines.py", line 203, in __init__
    self.setText(txt, **kwargs)
  File "/home/****/BitcoinArmory/BitcoinArmory/qtdefines.py", line 206, in setText
    text = str(text)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\u5e74' in position 232: ordinal not in range(128)

No command line qrguments for bitcoinqt. bitcoin.conf is

That 0 is returned when it can't communicate with Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind (it normally returns the port number on which it was found, though by default it only searches one port).  Is it possible that you are using different command line arguments for it?  Bitcoin.conf file?

I'm really at a loss for this one...

Strange question:  is your clock UTC or local?  I ran into an infinite-initializing problem when my clock was set wrong.  Now that I bring it up myself, I guess I should actually make it clock-independent.

I've conceded that some OS will just have to do manual mode (OSX, probably XP).  But I'm not sure why that broke for you.  Can you check the log after trying it in manual mode?

The automatic mode calls bitcoind successfully, but stopped at inititalizing bitcoin engine. Nothing interesting in log.

That's happened before when there's been some kind of messup in the install directory.  Can you completely uninstall it and remove the C:\Program Files (x86)\Armory directory.  Then reinstall.  It should go away. 

I never quite figured out what conditions cause that...

It's even worse

Error: "The specified module could not be found. LoadLibrary(pythondll) failed"

Error: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Armory\Armory Bitcoin Client\PYTHON27.DLL

It doesn't work for me. I'm running Windows Server 2008 R2 64bit. bitcoind is launched automatically, blockchain is synchanized, but armory keeps saying "initializing bitcoin engine". I change it to the traditional mode but it keeps saying offline while bitcoin-qt is running. I have moved back to 0.87.2 and everything work as usual

This is one of the two major upgrades I need in order for Armory to be usable to users with shorter attention spans.  When this is working properly, you will never need to run Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind again.  Just start Armory and it will do the rest.  

The other major upgrade is the resource usage and load time.  Those are both getting knocked out with the blockchain management/DB stuff.  That is top priority after this (including not rescanning every time).

I finally have a testing version in Windows (64-bit only).  This really is a remarkable P.I.T.A. ... and this is still quite a bit rough around the edges, but it's at least demo-ready.  A lot of time was spent making the download-and-run window for when you click "Install for me!".  Especially if you are running an old version of Bitcoin-Qt (not 0.8.1), please uninstall it and then run Armory and let it install it for you.  And don't worry, there is cryptographic verification of the installer before it runs it!  (see the top of versions.txt)

Linux users can still help test, but you have to use the "managesatoshi" branch and compile it yourself.

---

What I've done:

If you are running Bitcoin-Qt when you start Armory, it will now tell you to stop.  "Let Armory manage the Bitcoin software" is the default.  You will be told to either close Bitcoin-Qt, or change your settings (with a convenient button in the middle of the dashboard).   You can go into your settings and uncheck the box to carry on using Armory exactly as you used to.  Or you can leave it checked and just close Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind.

If you do not have bitcoind installed or it is in a non-standard location, it will tell you to install it, or change your settings to point to where it is located.  I just spent a fair amount of time not only producing instructions for installing in Linux, but a "Do it for me!" button for the PPA.  It's experimental, but so far it has worked for me in two environments.  Please try this feature!  I want to find out if it is actually reliable (I actually don't know why it wouldn't be; it simply executes the 3 commands using gksudo, but I suppose it could choke if your package manager is broken, in which case I have no clue what happens).  (EDIT: yes I know gksudo is a gnome thing ... but if you are not using gnome, i.e. default Ubuntu, then you probably can handle setting up the PPA yourself or manually installing it).

I need help testing, especially from the Linux folks, because they're the ones most likely to have non-standard configurations that will break this.  I also need testing in non-Ubuntu environments.  I've done a lot of testing, but somehow I'm confident it won't be enough.  And I know there's still some things missing (like the count-down timer on the initial blockchain sync).   Also, bear in mind this version has a lot of debugging output left on, to help me figure out the code flow.  I'm sorry if it's annoying (it sometimes annoys me, too).

---

To use 0.87.8 (which will be 0.88 when it's released):

Linux:
-- Pull and switch branches: "git checkout managesatoshi"
-- Must install python-psutil package.  This is a new dependency to help with managing the background process.  It will be added to the next offline bundle.
-- Recompile

Windows:
-- http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1139081/ArmoryTestingReleases/armory_0.87.8-testing_win64.msi

Please mention everything that doesn't look right.  Most likely, configurations/combinations of options that lead to a dashboard that doesn't say the right thing, or buttons missing that should be there, etc.  Try out the new settings (renamed from "preferences").   One thing I threw on top was added a permanent "--skip-online-check" to the settings.  Try that out, too.

Crap, I guess I need to catch that condition!  At least I have access to that output so I can interpret the error message.

Also, having the bitcoind.exe in that directory is not normal.  It should be in the daemon directory.  I wonder if that's an ancient version of bitcoind.exe...?