Backup and restore your Groestlcoin address wallet (cli)

In real world backups are lifesavers and in crypto world the backups are even more important! Backup everything about your crypto wallet and node install!
If you have followed our howtos (Running a Groestlcoin node (wallet cli) from source under Ubuntu 16 LTS and “Building from source a Groestlcoin node (cli only) under Ubuntu 16 LTS“) you would have the correct software for managing the Groestlcoin wallet and all the paths bellow will be accurate.

STEP 1) Backup of Groestlcoin wallet

If you want to backup up your Groestlcoin (addresses) wallet you need to find your

wallet.dat

file the place for it is in your

“home directory/.groestlcoin/wallet.dat”

So first stop the Groestlcoin Core program with one of the following command:

  • By sending kill signal:
    srv@local:~$ killall groestlcoind
    
  • OR in your screen or shell of the running program ctrl+c will stop it

After you wait for the Groestlcoin Core to exit you can check the logs in

~/.groestlcoin/debug.log

2018-04-12 01:00:36 UpdateTip: new best=0000000000026458ea4ffb8d781179393f9f339bf3504936d1a6eb05d1a6d433 height=2041250 version=0x20000000 log2_work=61.378625 tx=2730651 date='2018-04-12 01:00:16' progress=1.000000 cache=0.7MiB(2279tx)
2018-04-12 01:00:52 tor: Thread interrupt
2018-04-12 01:00:52 msghand thread exit
2018-04-12 01:00:52 addcon thread exit
2018-04-12 01:00:52 torcontrol thread exit
2018-04-12 01:00:52 opencon thread exit
2018-04-12 01:00:52 scheduler thread interrupt
2018-04-12 01:00:52 Shutdown: In progress...
2018-04-12 01:00:52 net thread exit
2018-04-12 01:00:52 Dumped mempool: 3e-06s to copy, 0.001741s to dump
2018-04-12 01:00:52 Shutdown: done

So now you can copy to a secure place your

“home directory/.groestlcoin/wallet.dat

In our real world example the path is “/home/ubuntu/.groestlcoin/wallet.dat”

srv@local:~$ cp /home/ubuntu/.groestlcoin/wallet.dat /home/ubuntu/backups/cryptos/groestlcoin-wallet.dat

STEP 2) Restore Groestlcoin wallet

To restore our wallet from a backup you also need the Groestlcoin wallet program (Groestlcoin Core – the Groestlcoin node) not to be running, so if it is started just follow the STEP 1) to stop it. Then override

“home directory/.groestlcoin/wallet.dat

with your backup file (the name of the file must be “wallet.dat”!!! It is important because your backup file could have any name). So in our real world example we override our /home/ubuntu/.groestlcoin/wallet.dat with our backup:

srv@local:~$ cp /home/ubuntu/backups/cryptos/groestlcoin-wallet.dat /home/ubuntu/.groestlcoin/wallet.dat

And then start your Groestlcoin wallet program with option

-rescan

this option is required when you first start the Groestlcoin Core with your backup wallet to “Rescan the block chain for missing wallet transactions on startup”, if you do not start the program with “-rescan” you could have strange numbers for your funds when checking with “groestlcoin-cli”

srv@local:~$ cd ~/groestlcoin-core/bin
srv@local:~/groestlcoin-core/bin$ ./groestlcoind -rescan &> groestlcoind.log

You could check debug.log and you’ll see the transactions for your wallet

2018-04-12 01:21:07 Using obfuscation key for /home/ubuntu/.groestlcoin/blocks/index: 0000000000000000
2018-04-12 01:21:07 Opening LevelDB in /home/ubuntu/.groestlcoin/chainstate
2018-04-12 01:21:07 Opened LevelDB successfully
2018-04-12 01:21:07 Using obfuscation key for /home/ubuntu/.groestlcoin/chainstate: 0000000000000000
2018-04-12 01:21:26 LoadBlockIndexDB: last block file = 8
2018-04-12 01:21:26 LoadBlockIndexDB: last block file info: CBlockFileInfo(blocks=75749, size=48230812, heights=1965243...2041250, time=2018-02-15...2018-04-12)
2018-04-12 01:21:26 Checking all blk files are present...
2018-04-12 01:21:26 LoadBlockIndexDB: transaction index disabled
2018-04-12 01:21:27 LoadBlockIndexDB: hashBestChain=0000000000026458ea4ffb8d781179393f9f339bf3504936d1a6eb05d1a6d433 height=2041250 date=2018-04-12 01:00:16 progress=0.999999
2018-04-12 01:21:27 init message: Rewinding blocks...
2018-04-12 01:21:34 init message: Verifying blocks...
2018-04-12 01:21:34 Verifying last 6 blocks at level 3
2018-04-12 01:21:34 [0%]...[16%]...[33%]...[50%]...[66%]...[83%]...[99%]...[DONE].
2018-04-12 01:21:34 No coin database inconsistencies in last 7 blocks (16 transactions)
2018-04-12 01:21:34  block index           26840ms
2018-04-12 01:21:34 init message: Loading wallet...
2018-04-12 01:21:34 nFileVersion = 2130300
2018-04-12 01:21:34 Keys: 0 plaintext, 205 encrypted, 205 w/ metadata, 205 total
2018-04-12 01:21:34  wallet                   11ms
2018-04-12 01:21:34 init message: Rescanning...
2018-04-12 01:21:34 Rescanning last 2041250 blocks (from block 0)...
2018-04-12 01:21:34 AddToWallet c5ed5ff668503412eed4568c3b226523e2ff6db2a1b3740f0aea5250a3c36e7b  
2018-04-12 01:21:34 AddToWallet fc99017780dbafaf5723196351d4adaaee9991c35391ecb013ed74bbb57a44a5  
2018-04-12 01:21:34 AddToWallet 52f883907385dd8205273ebdc987e88ed71f0e894b57df1a6a2f2c9fcb546922  
2018-04-12 01:21:34 AddToWallet a8b84a2d0b1114c4f2d710a45e0e13dfab547512b1b775a9617fa41809b75926  
2018-04-12 01:21:34 AddToWallet 0d4f1d8e9f6c42b4dbaaf33fe4fb33efc5f646df8724f1e66ab54ccbedbb84f1  
2018-04-12 01:21:34 AddToWallet 1a2984f011a6ff5d44c549b0f6da44b3a1654e2ccbb9f897f5106f88ed931498  
.....
.....
2018-04-12 01:21:46  rescan                12622ms
2018-04-12 01:21:46 setKeyPool.size() = 99
2018-04-12 01:21:46 mapWallet.size() = 415
2018-04-12 01:21:46 mapAddressBook.size() = 4
2018-04-12 01:21:46 mapBlockIndex.size() = 2041278
2018-04-12 01:21:46 nBestHeight = 2041250
2018-04-12 01:21:46 init message: Loading addresses...
2018-04-12 01:21:46 Imported mempool transactions from disk: 1 successes, 0 failed, 0 expired
2018-04-12 01:21:46 torcontrol thread start
2018-04-12 01:21:46 Loaded 2994 addresses from peers.dat  40ms
2018-04-12 01:21:46 init message: Loading banlist...
2018-04-12 01:21:46 init message: Starting network threads...
2018-04-12 01:21:46 net thread start
2018-04-12 01:21:46 addcon thread start
2018-04-12 01:21:46 init message: Done loading
2018-04-12 01:21:46 dnsseed thread start
2018-04-12 01:21:46 opencon thread start
2018-04-12 01:21:46 msghand thread start
2018-04-12 01:21:47 receive version message: /Groestlcoin:2.13.3/: version 70015, blocks=2041268, us=18.220.186.120:42996, peer=0

Now if you check your balances they must be properly reported (correct numbers of coins):

srv@local:~/groestlcoin-core/bin$ ./groestlcoin-cli listaccounts
{
  "": 0.00000000,
  "myfunds": 527.36851543,
  "tests": 0.00000000
}