Topic: Transactions won't announce/process (Read 4343 times)

Did you try restarting the client with a '-rescan' flag?

Did you ever get this resolved?  I'm having the same problem.

Reading this thread was frustrating, but I think it will help me solve the problem.

The problem seems to be the following:

I started with 10 BTC and started spending them one at a time.

Each time I spend one, I get a new coin back with the change - so after the first 1 BTC spend I'm left with a new 9 BTC coin in my wallet.

The transactions when I had 8 BTC and tried to spend 1 BTC 'got lost'.  My wallet now thinks that has a 7 BTC coin, but when I try to spend any of it, the network hasn't heard of the 7 BTC coin.  It knows about the 8 BTC coin, and don't think it has been spent, buy my wallet only thinks I have a 7 BTC coin.  It's a separate address, a separate private key, etc.

So now, when I try to spend any of the remaining 7 BTC, the network tells me:


ie. one of the inputs to the new transaction isn't found in the blockchain (the 7 BTC coin).  This transaction will wait until the network sees the 8 BTC coin being spent.  In the mean time, my wallet now thinks it has a 6 BTC coin, but that isn't spendable either, since it won't be in the blockchain until the 7 BTC coin is, and that won't be until the lost transaction gets 'found'.

The solution, I guess, is to export all the private keys from my wallet to a text file, then make a new wallet and import them into that, and then get the bitcoin client to rescan the blockchain to get only the transactions that are in the blockchain.  Then I'll have 8 BTC again, I presume.

Unfortunately the standard client doesn't let you export or import wallet keys yet, but it will in the next release.

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I just use 'dumpwallet' and 'importwallet' as described here: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8091.0 and it worked for me.  I don't see any of the 0/unconfirmed transactions now, and have transferred my whole balance to a new address in case any of the 'lost' transactions ever get found again.

How do I load my keys?  How do I manually construct a wallet that has my keys, but not the hung transactions?  You think I'm a dev?  You think I'm a programmer and can just DO stuff like that?  I've used hex editors before, but I don't KNOW what to do with one, it just seems neat to be able to see unscrambled stuff that a normal text editor wouldn't be able to decipher.  What, I open my current wallet with a text editor, copy the stuff I want to a new wallet.dat, and ignore the hung stuff?  How do I separate out the good from the bad?  I Do Not Know What You Are Talking About!

Ok, so, I uninstalled bitcoin from windows, it may be messed up somehow, but I dunno.  I have a plan.  At some point I'll switch this windows Hard Drive for my Linux hard drive which has a more recent copy of my wallet on it, but it doesn't include all those hung transactions, just he one from months ago, I'll run bitcoin there and let it update the block chain.  Then I'll see if it has all the transactions it should, not including the hung ones of course.  If it does, Yippeeee, I'll just copy that wallet to my external drive, and use that on windows.

Lessons learned from all this?  Always backup my wallet, and keep multiple backups for different periods, say maybe once a week or something, and keep a month's worth of backups, or something.  Or maybe backup my wallet before EVERY payment I make, that way if they get hung and totally unresponsive, I can backtrack to an earlier backup, wiping out the hung transactions.

As for your advice, sheesh, you're just confusing the daylights out of me.  I wonder how a non-computer literate person would handle this mess.

Any other client in the world. And it can have the same keys because you can load your keys into any client you wish.[/quote]

You'll have to manually construct a wallet that contains all your keys but not the hung transactions.

I don't understand what you are talking about.  What other client, and how would it have the same key(s)?

I've tried loading an old backup of my wallet, it didn't work out very well.  Sure, those hung transactions were not there, as they only existed in the wallet, not the block chain, but a bunch of other transactions that Should be listed, from the block chain, were not because the wallet was too old, didn't have the same bunch of addresses in it as the newer copy.  So, since I haven't been backing up my wallet regularly, I can't load one that would include all the blockchain transactions, but not the hung transactions that only exist in this wallet.  So, now what?

Nothing is forcing you to use that client. If another client has the private key corresponding to this account, it will show the correct balance and it will allow the transfer. The issue is 100% localized to that particular client. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, you have your full balance and are free to transfer it. Just stop trying to perform the transactions on the busted client. Perform them on some other client that also has the same key(s).

I don't know whether you've ever used this client or not, but it seems like you haven't.  It is not totally irrelevant, unless you know how to get around the client saying you can't do something because you don't have the funds in your balance.  How about a picture to illustrate, since you clearly do not understand what I'm talking about.

Well I did what you suggested, I have a new wallet, I told bitcoin to transfer all of my remaining bitcents to my new wallet, and I've been waiting and waiting and waiting for Any confirmation at all.  None.  Now I'm totally broke, with All of my bitcoin money hanging in limbo.  Nothing is happening.  Am I doing something wrong?  Am I supposed to have two instances of bitcoin running at the same time with two wallets at the same time?!

Your balance, as shown by your client, is totally irrelevant. All that matters is what your balance is according to committed blocks in the chain and unconfirmed transactions known to miners that aren't blocked by conflicting transactions.

You can completely ignore the balance shown in your client. It's purely for your convenience.

I still don't understand.  I can blow away all the files except my wallet, and address book, sure, but my wallet keeps a history of all my transactions, not just the block chain database.  So, blowing away the block chain database won't give me back my limbo transactions.  Sending bitcoins again to those addresses in limbo won't bring back my limbo transactions, I'll just use more money, and still have limbo transactions.  I have no intention of never using this client again, that's silly, the client isn't doing anything except working with the data in my data directory.  If I switch to another wallet, then I can use that as a different account, but I'd have to run bitcoin with the new wallet, copy a receiving address to notepad or something, shut down bitcoin, run it again with the older wallet, transfer whatever remains in my account to my new wallet...*deep breath*, wait a while for that to announce, shut down bitcoin, run bitcoin with my new wallet, and wait for the network to confirm the transfer... *deep breath* Then what?  My old wallet will still have stalled, limbo, transactions, and trying to do any further transactions with it will not work because it will say I have 0 balance!  I keep telling you, my bitcoin client won't let me send a conflicting transaction with money that is not available.


But it Won't be empty, that's what I keep trying to explain to you, as far as my wallet is concerned the money has already been spent, but is unconfirmed, I won't get it back, the way you are explaining things.  I'll just spend more money, and still not have the 40 bitcents!

And how would sending the same amount to the same address be a conflicting transaction, exactly?  It would still be seen as a New Separate transaction.  And the addresses that I would send to, for Bitcoin Darts, are one time use only, so maybe I'd finally see the darts games complete, and maybe get something in return, but those limbo transactions Still won't be fixed.  Nothing you have suggested makes any sense to me.  I'm still completely confused.  I'm going to blow away the stuff in my data directory and let bitcoin re-download everything, except of course for my wallet and address book.  I'll see if that helps it finally get those hung transactions announced.  If not, I'll eventually be back to where I was.



Here it is, all 0/unconfirmed, no blocks downloaded, now the waiting and wringing of hands, feet, and ears.

Ok, as far as my client is concerned I have 0 balance.  I can try spending money right now, and nothing will happen.  Yup, "Amount exceeds your balance".  I can wait for enough blocks to download that it shows I have more money in my Balance than I really do have, then try to spend money I don't really have, weeeee, what fun.

See my post #4. If you're not going to run that client ever again, just issue the transactions again. If you are, issue conflicting transactions to make 100% sure those transactions can never go through.

Say you have 10BTC in an account. You transfer 1BTC to me. Say that transaction is in limbo, you don't know what happened to it.

A simple solution is:

1) Transfer 9BTC from that account to yourself in another account.
2) Wait for that transfer to go through.
3) Transfer 1BTC to me.

Now, either your original transaction can go through or that last transaction can go through but not both. Most likely, that last transaction will go through because your 'stuck' transaction never went out at all. But you don't have to worry about it every getting out if you keep that account empty.

Update: This is actually incorrect. You don't need to do step 1 or 2. You can just do step 3. Both transactions cannot go through because every transaction empties the address it transfers from.

Huh?  I don't understand.  So, install another copy of bitcoin, load my wallet, and do what?

Your money's not stuck. Your client is stuck. The simplest solution really is to issue a conflicting transaction from another client.

If they're only on your client, you can perform conflicting transactions on another client.
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Yah, so, conflicts should be resolved by the network, right?  So, what happens when a transaction is rejected by the network as being invalid?  I am not using two computers running bitcoin, I'm using ONE.  I can't run two instances of bitcoin on the same computer, just ONE.  So, the idea that I could be trying to do conflicting transactions is silly.  If the transactions that have not been processed from a client are backtracked, as in reversed, then there would BE no conflicting transactions on another client.  I've been running my client now for a whole bunch of hours.  Before I went to bed last night I decided to do a little test, I sent some money to myself, it stayed unconfirmed for only a few minutes.  When I came back to look at it this morning, it had 77 confirmations from the network.  While the hung transactions were still HUNG!  My whole point is, There is no possibility of conflicting transactions with transactions that aren't being processed at all, there would be no harm at all in just reversing these, since they only exist on My client.  How about until something is confirmed, it is not counted against the balance.  How about, instead, you have two separate numbers, one that is the Current Balance, and one that is the Future Balance, or whatever you want to call it.  And if you backtrack a transaction before it's even been announced to the network, then no harm done.  But that should only be allowed if it says 0/unconfirmed, or maybe there should be a separate indicator that says how often it's been announced, and the announcement recognized by the network.  If it's already been announced, doesn't the number next to the confirmed/unconfirmed indicator change too?  I've noticed that number does not necessarily mean it's been confirmed yet.  So, it will be 1/unconfirmed, then 2, then 3, then eventually it will say it's confirmed.

In any case, this idea that you can perform a conflicting transaction on another client does not help me with my current problem.  Is there absolutely NO WAY at all to either push these transactions through the network, or get my money back from this limbo it is stuck in?!

If they're only on your client, you can perform conflicting transactions on another client.

I dunno how to do what you just said.  How do I transfer 1 of 10 bitcoins to you, transfer the other 9 to another account I own, then transfer 1 to you Again?!  It wouldn't let me, it would say I have a balance of 0!  That's what is so frustrating to me with these totally hung transactions, if they only exist on my client and won't go through, why can't I just backtrack?  I think that is a feature we need in the bitcoin UI, the ability to backtrack unconfirmed, Hung, transactions, as long as the network has not yet received any notice of them.  Like for instance if your client can't seem to connect to any other node for whatever reason, then the network obviously isn't handling the transactions, so why keep them hanging around in a limbo that only exists on the client?!  I'm going to keep PeerBlock shut off for a couple days, see if that helps.  I wish I could actually See the connections activities going on, like when I'm on a Bit Torrent client, or TOR, I2P, or Freenet, they all give me a lot of info about what is going on with the node.  The Bitcoin UI barely gives me Any info.

If they're not posted as unconfirmed transactions, in all probability they are only on your client. This may be because they are so low priority they're not getting relayed. It may be because your connectivity is so bad.

You can always stop that client, blow away all files except the wallet.dat file, restart the client, synch back up to the block chain, and do the transactions again.

The risk is that those old transactions are floating around somewhere. If you're worried about that, empty out the accounts the old transactions are from first. For example, if you transferred 1BTC to me from an account with 10BTC, transfer 9 to another account you control. Then transfer 1 to me. Never put any funds in that account again, so only one transaction to me can ever go through.

Go ahead and post the debug log. I probably can't help you, but it could be useful for someone else that might.

*bump*

Can you see my post Now???

What if I pay you 10 bitcents to fix my problem?  I'm offering a bounty of 10 bitcents to help me.  Sure, it's not much, but I'm poor.

I now have FOUR transactions that are hung, bitcoin is apparently unaware of them because they haven't been announced, or it is ignoring them.  The block explorer does not show these transactions having been processed either.  That's 40 bitcents in limbo now, plus the processing fees.  What do I do?  Is there a way to find out what is going on?!  I really wish there was a way to save the transaction history as a spreadsheet, I can't even copy/paste the entries to something else.  The bitcoin application is not accurately calculating the balance.  The unconfirmed, limbo, payments have all been deducted from the balance, even though the network still refuses to do anything with them!

I'm seeing a lot of these but I think that's because I'm using PeerBlock, I've noticed it blocks a Lot of bitcoin connections.

I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but, I did find errors in the debug.log, I see a LOT of these.


Is there a way to see a live updating console of the debug.log file?  I just want to see the newest entries as they get written, not load the whole file over and over again in a text editor.

I guess you want more information, but I don't know since there has been No response.

http://blockexplorer.com/address/1DYJpoPYGE1DCYoxiwp2RZzg4RxNGMcsi2 shows nothing happening on 2011-06-20.
http://blockexplorer.com/address/1EXcrEtjeGYemVVBxxLcaWckKMD5hdHanP also shows nothing happening on 2011-06-20.
http://blockexplorer.com/address/1CYaXVpZZLJimrwFyMykdYx6KP5iwMKFbH also shows nothing happening on 2011-06-20.

And the really really old supposedly double spent one that is still hanging around on my bitcoin client, http://blockexplorer.com/address/1KWCfAWnxCreasVqBWRgT5aQ1zeWsUorkb, has a totally empty ledger. How was it double spent again? I don't know, but I do know all four of these happened while I was playing around with Bitcoin Darts. I think I will stop playing with it.

http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/ shows nothing about any of these transactions, unless searching for them by the send to address is not the way to look them up on that page.  Do you want me to upload my Entire debug.log file somewhere, would that help?  I wish I could see more info about announcements, or attempts to announce, and what nodes are accepting announcements and what nodes are not.  Is there some way I can kickstart stalled announcements?!