I know that current version of Electrum (1.7.3) supports offline transactions already, which is very good.
But anyway, I have (apparently in parallel) created a collection of Linux bash scripts that provide a very comfortable and fairly noob-proof front-end to do offline transactions on a pair of offline & online PC (& a USB stick of course).
You can download my PGP-signed file at
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18219492/Bitcoin/S-Electrum_v1.0.zip.zipUPDATE: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18219492/Bitcoin/S-Electrum_v1.3b.zip.zip(recommended to be used with Electrum 1.7.2 or 1.7.4, as of today, 17 May 2013)
After having installed Electrum and having extracted all files of that zip container to a folder of your choice, you just need to call
./selectrum.sh
in a terminal window. That's all. (whatever you want to do, you never ever need to call any other script than "./selectrum.sh")
The user will be guided through all steps, be it the
- initial steps of selection of whether this is your online or offline PC, the creation of the offline wallet, the deseeding of the offline wallet and saving to USB stick, the import of the deseeded wallet on the online PC, or
- the later regular steps of initiating (online), signing (offline) and sending (online) the transaction to the network, incl. facilitated/automated read/write operations to/from the USB stick.
Everything is kept as fool-proof and comfortable as possible - despite this being a script running on the console.
I am using it now myself (a new EeePC is my dedicated Offline PC...) and find it very comfortable, so I wanted to share it with the community. Personally, I find it more comfortable than the Electrum GUI's built-in function for offline transactions, because you cannot really do anything wrong if you use it.
The script will know if this is your online or offline PC, it will show you only that menu options that are applicable in the given situation, it remembers the mounting point of your USB stick from last time and reads/writes there by default using default file names instead of querying the user where to load/save transaction files, it has many consistency checks, etc. So overall, there is less clicking, because e.g. it reads and writes from/to USB stick automatically, using default file names.
Some "screenshots", so you get an idea...:
When you start ./selectrum.sh the VERY first time on your respective PC, you'll see this:
=====================================================================
*********************************************************************
Secure Electrum BTC Transactions v.1.3
--- MAIN MENU -- USER WIZARD ---
*********************************************************************
=====================================================================
Do you want to use this computer as your
1- (OFF)LINE PC (i.e. a special PC just used for "bitcoin banking"), or
2- (ON)LINE PC (e.g. your 'normal' PC)
Press to continue...
Later, the "Main menu" of your offline PC e.g. will look like this:
=====================================================================
*********************************************************************
Secure Electrum BTC Transactions v.1.3
--- MAIN MENU -- USER WIZARD ---
*********************************************************************
=====================================================================
OFFLINE Computer Main Menu
=====================================================================
Please make your choice:
(2) Sign transaction(s) created on your Online PC
(i) Import private key(s) to your offline wallet
(single key or bulk import of many keys from a text file)
(d) Make a de-seeded wallet file from your fully seeded offline
wallet and save it to internal disk or USB stick
(to be imported afterwards to your Online PC)
Note: You have to do this only once, or after further key import
(G) Start the Electrum GUI to view your wallet's addresses
(Q) Quit
Your choice?
Hope this is useful for some of you.
