BitShares Forum

Main => Technical Support => Topic started by: AdamBLevine on July 20, 2015, 04:20:45 am

Title: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: AdamBLevine on July 20, 2015, 04:20:45 am
Are there any bitshares-vanilla compatible 3rd party wallets available where I can import my current wallet.dat? 

I've been trying to get my copy of bitshares up to date and stable for literally weeks working on it every few days.  I've had a variety of problems the most recent one is I now connect successfully and load my wallets properly but despite connecting to 19 peers the program usually starts stalling and crashes about 50- 64% into parsing the blockchain.  I'm using an i7 laptop that's a little more than a year old.

Any thoughts or suggestions?
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: Shentist on July 20, 2015, 05:03:02 am
do you run windows?

as far as i know their is not a 3rd party solution, so you need to use the normal wallet.

i run my wallet on a computer windows 7 64 bit , I5 with 8 GB and is running most of the time stable.

Some more technical usefull people will answer and will hopefully help.
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: puppies on July 20, 2015, 05:14:44 am
I have had great luck running the qt wallet on Ubuntu.  You can install Ubuntu inside of windows https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide).  That might help.  If you don't want to have to build from source maqifrnswa maintains a PPA https://launchpad.net/~showard314/+archive/ubuntu/bitshares (https://launchpad.net/~showard314/+archive/ubuntu/bitshares). 

I am not sure of the state of development on the light wallet https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,14323.0.html (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,14323.0.html)  Someone might have a windows binary you can use.

One thing I have done to access the wallet on the go is to host the web_wallet from a server, and set up the httpd endpoint to allow me to dial in remotely.  Its rather slow, but it works as a kind of mobile wallet. 

I am not sure if any of these options would work for you.  If you need any help getting any of them up and running let me know.
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: emailtooaj on July 20, 2015, 05:20:09 am
I had this issue and I ended up deleting the whole bitshares roaming file (save your .json wallet first if u have anything in it) and then reinstall fresh. Also be sure to run .exe as admin (if using windows). Firewalls and anti-virus programs are also big culprits hindering a smooth usage, so u may want to check into that also. I temporarily  turned off both my firewall and anti-virus when reinstalling and it went along very smooth, even after turning those back on after I got wallet up and running. I'm on a Win8.1, AMD cpu w/8gb Ram.
You mentioned "wallet.dat"? Is this for the PTS wallet? If so, here is a link to a PTS import thread...
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=6113




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: Xeldal on July 20, 2015, 05:37:34 am
I've found running BitShares GUI on windows completely intolerable.  I gave up on that a long time ago.  Its only stable on Linux and mac it seems.   

The only way I've been able to use the GUI software at all on windows is through the browser.  Its a bit of a task to set up but once running it has no issues at all.  aboutbts.com has an easy video walkthrough here: http://www.aboutbts.com/2015/01/how-to-use-bitshares-wallet-in-your-web-browser-with-command-line-wallet.html

There are probably some other suggestions that might be easier for you.

A trick you might try, that I had marginal success with is; first start the CLI client without the GUI.  /program files/BitShares/bin/bitshares_client.exe  After it has completely synced type 'wallet_open default'  enter your password and give it some time to rescan transactions.  type 'stop'  and then launch the regular gui version.   This seemed to work for me sometimes but results varied.
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: donkeypong on July 20, 2015, 05:57:19 am
Welcome back.
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: cass on July 20, 2015, 11:48:51 am
Welcome back.

yup welcome back Adam! Guess you're running a Mac, right?
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: Riverhead on July 20, 2015, 01:20:16 pm

I run the wallet in all supported environments and once sync'd they all work fine. Getting it to sync without crashing or stalling is the key (they call me capt. obvious :) ).

There are people that host the chain folder as a .zip file that can cut out literally days of pain.

My solution is to delete the data directory and try again. Once it has sync'd for the first time then I worry about importing wallets. Sync'ing and indexing the chain is painful and importing a wallet can be painful if it has many keys. Doing both at the same time is, in my experience, nearly impossible.

1) Fire up the wallet and a task manager. So long as Bitshares is doing a lot of work leave it alone. Let it sit. On an i7 that can be up to a day or so. Less with an SSD more without.

2) Once sync'd shutdown your client and when you're sure the executable is no longer running create a copy of the chain folder.

3) Fire up the client and import your .dat file.

If you ever get off on a fork or corrupted don't try to fix it. Delete everything in the data directory, copy in your chains folder from step 2 above, and once it's happy again restore your wallet from backup.

This process has always worked for me in all environments.
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: santaclause102 on July 20, 2015, 03:07:26 pm
I am just trying to sync as well. This looks promising atm https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,17629.msg224847.html#msg224847 (downloading the chain from a chain server instead of via the p2p network)
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: Ander on July 20, 2015, 04:25:52 pm
I've found running BitShares GUI on windows completely intolerable.  I gave up on that a long time ago.  Its only stable on Linux and mac it seems.   

So true.  I've been having very similar problems to Adam's the past couple days.  Keeps crashing 50-75% of the way through.  Been trying to get it to finish syncing the blockchain so I can buy some more NOTES! ;)
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: bobmaloney on July 20, 2015, 05:06:13 pm
It may just be timing out.

Drop down user name at top right of client (if you have many user names, you will need to scroll down to get to "Advanced")

Advanced > Preferences > Logout timeout

Change "Logout timeout" from 1776 to >9000!!!!


*this single change has allowed me to run the 0.9.1 Bitshares client (fairly certain it was 0.9.1 - I haven't fired up this laptop since April or May) with the following Frankenstein setup (although, not recommended for those with a productive schedule):

Dell Latitude D830
Windows 8.1 Pro - 32-bit
Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2.00GHz
2GB RAM
Seagate Momentus HDD @ 5400RPM - 120 GB - SATA 1.5Gb/s

Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: santaclause102 on July 20, 2015, 07:31:44 pm
I've found running BitShares GUI on windows completely intolerable.  I gave up on that a long time ago.  Its only stable on Linux and mac it seems.   

So true.  I've been having very similar problems to Adam's the past couple days.  Keeps crashing 50-75% of the way through.  Been trying to get it to finish syncing the blockchain so I can buy some more NOTES! ;)
If you use this http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/BitShares/Chain-Server it can crash and you can resume downloading. Normally if it crashes then you have to begin from 0...
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: devlux on July 21, 2015, 12:23:32 am
I've found running BitShares GUI on windows completely intolerable.  I gave up on that a long time ago.  Its only stable on Linux and mac it seems.   

So true.  I've been having very similar problems to Adam's the past couple days.  Keeps crashing 50-75% of the way through.  Been trying to get it to finish syncing the blockchain so I can buy some more NOTES! ;)
If you use this http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/BitShares/Chain-Server it can crash and you can resume downloading. Normally if it crashes then you have to begin from 0...

Oh wow, that's so simple and explains a lot of problems I'm seeing.  Didn't realize it started from scratch on a crash.
By the way what the heck are the system requirements on this thing?  I have it on a 2 core dedicated box with 4GB of and it gets pegged so bad that SSH barely works.  I really don't have the budget for a bigger box.

Wish that there was a the equivalent of SPV for BitShares.  I would love to just trust a delegate right about now and start asking for balances etc and not have to deal with the whole blockchain sync thing.  I mean it seems a bit pointless to have DPOS & a requirement for a local chain.  I can see a need to add fully verifying as an option you can turn on and off, but really why not SPV as the default?  It would make it so much easier and less resource intensive.
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: Riverhead on July 21, 2015, 01:30:36 am
Have you tried wallet.bitshares.org ?
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: santaclause102 on July 21, 2015, 08:41:55 am
I mean it seems a bit pointless to have DPOS & a requirement for a local chain.  I can see a need to add fully verifying as an option you can turn on and off, but really why not SPV as the default?  It would make it so much easier and less resource intensive.
With DPOS and a local chain you trust that 51 delegates or less won't collude, that is much more safety than trusting one delegate. But you are right the syncing is a pain atm! I am at 92% after about 28 hours :)
All active development has stopped for BitShares 1.0. According to BM / tests BitShares 2.0, where all development efforts go into atm, will only need 250 mb of Ram and a proper light client / web wallet will be available (standard wallet).
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: JoeyD on July 21, 2015, 12:54:07 pm
I mean it seems a bit pointless to have DPOS & a requirement for a local chain.  I can see a need to add fully verifying as an option you can turn on and off, but really why not SPV as the default?  It would make it so much easier and less resource intensive.
With DPOS and a local chain you trust that 51 delegates or less won't collude, that is much more safety than trusting one delegate. But you are right the syncing is a pain atm! I am at 92% after about 28 hours :)
All active development has stopped for BitShares 1.0. According to BM / tests BitShares 2.0, where all development efforts go into atm, will only need 250 mb of Ram and a proper light client / web wallet will be available (standard wallet).

If it takes 28 hours, are you sure it's syncing at all? On my reasonably fast internet connection it takes less than 1 hour for the wallet to download the entire blockchain from scratch. But I can't imagine that you'd have 28x slower internet. Are you sure you haven't got some firewall up and running or some advanced router option like IP-flood-protection enabled?
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: santaclause102 on July 21, 2015, 02:14:46 pm
I mean it seems a bit pointless to have DPOS & a requirement for a local chain.  I can see a need to add fully verifying as an option you can turn on and off, but really why not SPV as the default?  It would make it so much easier and less resource intensive.
With DPOS and a local chain you trust that 51 delegates or less won't collude, that is much more safety than trusting one delegate. But you are right the syncing is a pain atm! I am at 92% after about 28 hours :)
All active development has stopped for BitShares 1.0. According to BM / tests BitShares 2.0, where all development efforts go into atm, will only need 250 mb of Ram and a proper light client / web wallet will be available (standard wallet).

If it takes 28 hours, are you sure it's syncing at all? On my reasonably fast internet connection it takes less than 1 hour for the wallet to download the entire blockchain from scratch. But I can't imagine that you'd have 28x slower internet. Are you sure you haven't got some firewall up and running or some advanced router option like IP-flood-protection enabled?
It has now synced completely. It runs in a virtual machine (2 gb ram). It may have to do with that...
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: AdamBLevine on July 29, 2015, 03:20:32 pm
Some time later i'm still not able to access any of my bitshares and i've now tried and failed to get the basic client working on four computers, three PCs and a mac it stalls out and eventually crashes like 50-60% through syncing

I also have an ongoing wallet recovery issue that I fear is going to get worse when the switch to graphene happens
https://github.com/bitshares/bitshares/issues/1509

I suspect the already troublesome process of syncing has been made worse because I have a line of sight internet connection that regularly fluctuates with small drops that I imagine are not making things any easier.

So here's my question
Is there any way to dig a "Backup seed" out of my old and usable (but not sync'd to the blockchain) 0.5.3 account that can be plugged in here and bailed out of?


https://wallet.bitshares.org/#/unlockwallet
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: xeroc on July 29, 2015, 06:02:04 pm
So here's my question
Is there any way to dig a "Backup seed" out of my old and usable (but not sync'd to the blockchain) 0.5.3 account that can be plugged in here and bailed out of?

Nop ... but there will be an upgrade to the BitShares0.9 client that will make the transition to bts2.0 much easier .. there you will not require to sync a full-node if you do not like to ..

It's really strange .. I have BitShares running continuously on 4-6 machines .. no issues at all .. (unless hard forking :) )
Have you tried syncing from a chain-server?
http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/BitShares/Chain-Server
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: vikram on July 29, 2015, 06:13:41 pm
Some time later i'm still not able to access any of my bitshares and i've now tried and failed to get the basic client working on four computers, three PCs and a mac it stalls out and eventually crashes like 50-60% through syncing

I also have an ongoing wallet recovery issue that I fear is going to get worse when the switch to graphene happens
https://github.com/bitshares/bitshares/issues/1509

Are all of these syncing attempts using the GUI client with your wallet open? Assuming yes, do you get any different behavior if you just create a new wallet on startup and try to sync? Best bet is to sync first then worry about importing any wallets you have.

Using the command line client will be even better. There are some details here about how to run it on Windows: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,17386.msg223161.html#msg223161

The ideal way is to use the command line client to fully sync first, and then we can import your wallet.
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: toast on July 29, 2015, 07:30:43 pm
I've found that the only really reliable option is the linux CLI client on a machine with plenty of RAM. I had a vps just for bitshares at one point.
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: santaclause102 on July 29, 2015, 08:06:01 pm
I've found that the only really reliable option is the linux CLI client on a machine with plenty of RAM. I had a vps just for bitshares at one point.
that plus the chain server syncing xeroc mentioned above worked well for me in the end.
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: AdamBLevine on July 29, 2015, 08:32:18 pm
I'm trying again using the cli, gotta say this has been the single most difficult get-a-wallet-working experience i've yet come across in crypto.
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: twitter on July 29, 2015, 10:06:31 pm
My wallet crashes at least once per day. Bitshares will be out of market if wallet stay the same in coming bts 2.0
Title: Re: Is there a way to load a bitshares account without using the bitshares software?
Post by: BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode on July 29, 2015, 10:13:02 pm
I'm trying again using the cli, gotta say this has been the single most difficult get-a-wallet-working experience i've yet come across in crypto.

If you are looking for quick and easy I highly recommend https://wallet.bitshares.org