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authorBitflash <btf01@proton.me>2026-07-30 12:06:08 -0300
committerGitHub <noreply@github.com>2026-07-30 12:06:08 -0300
commitb539d776bd86df9224d97048f26f33d2750d1c92 (patch)
tree4a246ca7c8680e0b2d32613e388116a5d39247cf /README.md
parentdaac46893448e49a21244d9646acf0ec47518537 (diff)
wallet: export and import keys as text (#49)
The last door out. Everything else assumes Berkeley DB will cooperate. When it will not -- a build that cannot read the file, a truncation, an environment past recovering -- the keys are usually still perfectly intact and were unreachable anyway. #40 is one person's account of exactly that, and #46 only rescues the cases where BDB still opens the file at all. bitflash -dumpwallet=keys.txt bitflash -importwallet=keys.txt One key per line with its address and label. No database, no environment, no version coupling: anything that can read a line can recover from it. The format is the DER private key in hex, which round-trips exactly through SetPrivKey. Not interchangeable with other wallets -- worth having eventually, but a WIF encoder I got subtly wrong would be worse than no encoder at all, and this file exists for the case where nothing else works. Care taken, because the failure modes here cost money: - Refuses to overwrite an existing file. A mistyped path must not eat the only copy of something irreplaceable. - Written owner-only on POSIX, before any key reaches it. Windows inherits the folder's ACL; the README says so rather than pretending otherwise. - Newlines in labels are flattened, so a label cannot forge an extra entry on read-back. - Import skips keys already present, so running it twice does nothing, and one unreadable line is reported and stepped over instead of costing the reader every other key in the file. Verified on Linux and Windows: a key exported from one wallet imports into a different one and its address then appears there; re-importing adds nothing; a corrupted line is skipped while the rest still load; the dump is 0600 and refuses to overwrite. This does not solve #47. Keys still are not derived from a seed, so a dump is as much a snapshot as any other backup. What it does is make the keys reachable no matter what state the database is in.
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@@ -98,6 +98,30 @@ The second point is the pre-BIP32 problem that deterministic wallets were
98invented to solve; see [#47](https://github.com/Bitflash-sh/bitflash/issues/47). 98invented to solve; see [#47](https://github.com/Bitflash-sh/bitflash/issues/47).
99Until that lands, repetition is the only defence. 99Until that lands, repetition is the only defence.
100 100
101### When wallet.dat itself will not open
102
103Everything above still runs through Berkeley DB. If the database is the thing
104that is broken — a build that will not read it, a file truncated by a bad copy,
105an environment beyond recovery — the keys are usually still fine, and you can
106take them out as text:
107
108```
109bitflash -dumpwallet=/path/to/keys.txt
110bitflash -importwallet=/path/to/keys.txt # into any wallet, on any machine
111```
112
113One key per line with its address and label, no database and no environment.
114Importing skips keys the wallet already holds, so running it twice is safe, and
115an unreadable line is reported and stepped over rather than abandoning the rest.
116Restart the node afterwards so it scans the chain for transactions belonging to
117the new keys.
118
119**The dump is your private keys in the clear.** Anyone who reads that file can
120spend those coins. It is written owner-only on Linux and macOS; on Windows it
121inherits whatever the containing folder allows, so choose the folder carefully.
122Move it somewhere safe and delete the copy. `-dumpwallet` will not overwrite an
123existing file.
124
101--- 125---
102 126
103## Mining 127## Mining