I mangaged to solve my problems on my own:
The issue with the german umlauts seems to have to do with some encoding problems. It dissappeared when I used linux instead of Windows.
I am now running the script brute.rb on a virtual machine provided my Amazon using Linux. After registering for Amazon Web Services (AWS), you can use one of their smallest virtual machine instances ('micro') for free for one year. After starting the bitcoind, you just start the script like this:
ruby brute.rb > log.txt &
It then sends its output to log.txt and you can just logout. It takes quite some time, since the AWS micro instance is rather low on CPU power. An attempt to crack an 8 character password took about one week. However, it is absolutely free; you don't even have to pay for the electricity ...
Hi again,
I keep having problems with Revalins script and the german umlaute (Ä Ö Ü). I have added them to brute.rb and then let the script try to find the correct password - no luck so far. Looking at the stream of passwords brute.rb tried I recognized that it always displayed question marks instead of the umlauts. Changing the character encoding of the terminal to 'Western" changed that. However, I remained suspicious. I let bitcoin create a new wallet (whilst renaming the one I do not know the password of) and encrypted this wallet with a password containing umlauts. If I now let this script run it does not find the correct password, no matter what character encoding I am using on the terminal.
Does anyone have a solution for this problem? It could quite possibly be the case that my password contains umlauts since these are close on my keyboard to some of the characters i assume are contained in the password.
Thanks