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restore mymonero to simplewallet

charliev posted this 9 years ago

charliev | 9 years ago

Last night mymonero went down with a server error (thanks for the quick fix, fluffypony). I thought it was a good chance to play with restoring a mymonero wallet into a simplewallet. There are a couple of mentions in various forums (btctalk, reddit) that there is a way to do this, and that the direction are on github. I'm not a github expert, but did a search there and couldn't find this information. Could someone please post a step-by-step (command line info is okay) on how to do this restore? I'm aware that the mnemonic seeds are not compatible between the wallets.

The second thing I wanted to do is get my impressions out on Monero as a non-coder newb, but relatively tech-adept layperson. I've been following XMR for a few months, bought some then when it had bottomed out (got lucky there), run a node on a PC, mine monero (barely - clocking 7+ H/s now using wolf's miner on the old PC), and have donated to the dev team. I find the technology fascinating, and the community genuine and knowledgeable. Indeed, I think it is very much 'what I thought bitcoin was, when I got into bitcoin'. Despite my limited success interacting with the XMR protocol, it is still pretty difficult and confusing to use. I dual boot my PC to Windows 7 and Ubuntu, and cannot get bitmonerd running properly in Ubuntu. It took me quite a bit of time to figure out the dependencies, and when I did get the daemon running, it crashed the computer every time after a few hours (RAM issue?--but runs fine in Windows on the same computer). The new MoneroX wallet also froze my computer in Ubuntu. I also have a Mac, and have been unable to run bitmonerod there, as well. On the Mac, I get the 'Illegal instruction: 4', which is a known problem, but still haven't found the workaround.
Which brings me to my second impression: the important detailed information on Monero is still scattered among various websites - bitcointalk, reddit, github, former monero sites, etc.. I know this website, with the MRL and MEW sites, is supposed to gather the information in one place. But last night I was looking for the command line input to restore a wallet from seed, and it took me quite a bit of time until I finally found it on reddit (I now know that the command is listed within simplewallet). The most useful monero tutorial I've found is the old bounty-generated windows setup, with screenshots, that is still posted on monerotalk.org. My suggestion, especially for the next update with the database merge, is to have separate, step-by-step tutorials with screenshots, for the different operating systems on this website in the user guide section. Perhaps collect some donations just for these tutorials, and leave the comments open underneath as a way to compile all issues and questions. There could be a single OpenAlias address for each bounty to collect donations--that way users can fund specific projects they're interested in. The User's Guide section of this website is still empty, and there's dearth of information on how to use the most basic monero tools (bitmonerod and simplewallet) for the layperson. Until there's an official, one-click install GUI, these tutorials are key. I'd love to do it if I had the knowledge, but I don't, as shown with my failures with linux and mac. The running of simplewallet off a Tails or UbuntuLive CD, in order to create an offline paper wallet, also needs flushing out. How do you create the necessary dependencies? Is this another tutorial worth a bounty? I'd donate to have that tutorial. Thanks for hearing me out, and I appreciate all the work the core devs have put into this project.

Replies: 2
fluffypony edited 8 years ago Replies: 1 | Weight: -491 | Link [ - ]

The "code is on Github" comment refers to this commit: https://github.com/warptangent/bitmonero/commit/35b1500536a98e02ea459ca6ccb42e8248de43a8 - basically what people are saying is that if I get hit by a bus tomorrow and MyMonero disappears then smooth or warptangent or tewinget or oranjuice or tacotime or anyone could prioritise implementing that in the main Monero repository, and have new binaries out within a day or two. The only hold-up in implementing it in simplewallet right now is in standardising the mnemonic generation schemes.

With regards to your second point, three things are true:

  1. We (the core team and those contributing code to development) don't have the time, energy, and financial resources to make a living, work on Monero core, help people out on IRC etc., research, etc. etc. We need the community to assist with adding documentation to the site. Which leads to the next point:

  2. The site is open-source, and there are people contributing, albeit very slowly (eg. https://github.com/monero-project/monero-site/pull/31)

  3. Bounties don't work, we end up with lowest-common-denominator garbage. The Forum Funding System is like 85% complete, so there's no need to fallback to bounties prematurely.

So basically the options are either to wait until the funding system is up and then we start creating tasks for various parts of the website, or contribute now by working on those parts directly.

Reply to: fluffypony
charliev edited 8 years ago Weight: -491 | Link [ - ]

Thanks for responding, and for the detailed explanations with links. I'll contribute, as able, which for now means donating XMR or BTC to core development. Cheers.