Just an update - seems to have worked, thanks! I had to delete the custom path set in the app itself in order for it to recognize the one set in the config files, even if the custom path set in the app was actually the same.

When both the config file and path in settings is set to a non-default one, it reverts back to the default one for some reason.

PhoenixFire: Thanks for the tip, will try that! Still strange though as in the Settings tab the correct custom path is also set. So technically it should override it with the same path, yet it defaults to the standard one?

Armory used to work on my PC, using the E:/Bitcoin (set under Settings) path and run Bitcoin Core manually when I need to update the node DB. The E:/Bitcoin side is over 500GB now.

There was also a smaller node DB in the standard location (under Appdata) from an old Bitcoin Core installation. It was not being updated and had around 70GB of DB data there, several years old.

I manually deleted it and (I believed) I did not need it. But for some reason it seems Armory still needed something to be in there (though an empty folder will not do), even if it was otherwise reading the correct data from E:/Bitcoin. Weird.

OK, a bit late to the party but I have the same issue. Error from the log:

(ERROR) -- BDM.pyc:197 - DB error: C:\Users\Tom\AppData\Roaming/Bitcoin/blocks is not a valid path

That path is indeed not valid. But I created armoryqt.conf in the correct Armory directory (the same where the log is) with this content:

satoshi-datadir="E:\Bitcoin\blocks"

Yet it seems to ignore it. I have the latest version available - 0.96.5. Perhaps the info has not been updated and the config file is different now? It definitely seems to be ignoring it.

Even when I tried running ArmoryQT via CLI with the satoshi-datadir="E:\Bitcoin\blocks" switch, it ignored it too.

Thanks for any ideas!

The "Tower PC" was using its main SSD for the Bitcoin database but initially, the laptop PC was also using its SSD (and its faster than the one in the Tower PC) and it was just as slow on the laptop as when using the NAS.

The NAS has write speeds similar to what many people have in their PCs unless they have SSDs, so that's probably not the issue.

One thing I noticed - the Tower PC CPU usage was around 30% and it did not feel overloaded at all. I could browse the net, for example, without noticing any performance degradation. On the less powerful laptop PC, the CPU usage was only around 5-7% according to task manager, but it felt much slower than that. Badly managed hyperthreading maybe?

Really odd.

Update: So I installed Bitcoin Core on the other PC I mentioned (Core i7 4790K etc) Yesterday and it's almost finished syncync now, downloaded over 75GB since Yesterday and most of the time the PC actually was sleeping as Windows 10 in their eternal wisdom did not believe Bitcoin Core was doing anything and let the PC enter hibernation.

In other words, on the more powerful PC, connected to the same network as the core i7 laptop, it's exponentially faster. Probably around 15x+ faster...

That's the part I do not fully understand - the CPU is not weak as we discussed before, it's a Core i7, albeit a laptop version in a relatively old Lenovo Thinkpad T520 with 8GB RAM and my Internet connection is 240/25Mbps cable - although I can get only around 180Mbps due to old router but that's more than good still I suppose.

I mean, it does not feel like it's broken, it's definitely syncync as the NAS is basically unusable now and working on the laptop is a pain. It's just slow. Extremely slow. Couldn't perhaps Windows Defender or firewall be interfering with the process?

I can also test it on a game rig I have access to (ex-BTC mining machine, though upgraded to a very fast core i7 4790K with 16GB RAM).

It *almost* worked for me in the end, but it crashed at the armoryDB.exe part still. I reinstalled Armory and without wallet it worked, then when I imported the old wallet it happened again after trying to sync.

So i thought maybe the blockchain got corrupt (Bitcoin Core was synced but there were no wallets in it). Anyway, I am now running Bitcoin Core getting fresh blockchain. Problem is, it seems it will take at least 10 days to fully sync. Is it normal these days?

I am running it on the NAS and while the CPU and RAM usage is relatively low, the NAS is hammered badly. I can hear its 6 RAID-6 connected HDDs working all the time now. The NAS has write speed of around 100MB/s.

When I was syncing the blockchain on the internal SSD, the laptop was unusable almost completely.

I have just left prime95 running the Blend test for over 2 hours, no problems at all.

Unfortunately, no luck. Armory still crashes at the ArmoryDB.exe part. These are the last records in dbLog.txt:

-ERROR - 1480209973: (..\lmdb_wrapper.cpp:1435) Headers DB has no block at height: 0
-ERROR - 1480209973: (..\lmdb_wrapper.cpp:1415) No headers at height 0

Before the command prompt window crashed I also saw error about missing key pairs as before. The PC is really stable, I don't think that's the issue. Perhaps something is left from the old version installation somewhere still?

I am not sure if I am the only person with such problems, though I may be the only person who reported it at the forums but that's a different thing. I am not sure what caused these issues but the PC is actually an extremely stable machine running Windows 7 which I restart only about once a month. There is definitely no malware etc.

The last time I used Armory was the 0.93.x version several months ago and I did not experience any of the issues at all. Of course, there can always be another application or previous installation interfering.

Hopefully it will work in the end.

I believe the PC is actually very stable, I have not experienced a similar issue before. But now it seems it has finished building the database, well maybe.

In the command prompt window i know see this:

-INFO  - 1480142143: (..\DatabaseBuilder.cpp:268) parsed block file #688
-INFO  - 1480142189: (..\DatabaseBuilder.cpp:268) parsed block file #689
-DEBUG - 1480142189: (..\Blockchain.cpp:242) Organizing chain
-INFO  - 1480142227: (..\DatabaseBuilder.cpp:56) updated HEADERS db in 2603.85s
-INFO  - 1480142227: (..\BlockUtils.cpp:1636) Enabling zero-conf tracking


That is the last line I see in there and it does not update. There is no error recorded either though so I suppose it finished? The Armory database has 142MB.

It was all so simple last year...

OK, thank you for spotting that! Not sure how it got there. However, the DB creating did not finish I am afraid. It stopped at this error:

-DEBUG - 1480128093: (..\Blockchain.cpp:242) Organizing chain
-INFO  - 1480128131: (..\DatabaseBuilder.cpp:56) updated HEADERS db in 2484.12s
-INFO  - 1480128131: (..\BlockUtils.cpp:1636) Enabling zero-conf tracking
-ERROR - 1480128133: (..\BDM_mainthread.cpp:257) caught exception in main thread: no sdbi at this key

I tried running this command:

armorydb.exe --db-type=DB_BARE --ram-usage=1 -–satoshi-datadir="X:\Other\BTC\Bitcoin" --datadir="X:\Other\BTC\Armory"

but it seems there is a syntax error with the -–satoshi-datadir="X:\Other\BTC\Bitcoin" part but I just can't see it.

OK, will do. Just to clarify - the database folder I should delete is under "Armory\databases", correct?

The Errors recorded in log before the crash look like:

-ERROR - 1447113712: (..\lmdb_wrapper.cpp:152) Returning dirty key ref

Log file opened at 1480059815: X:\Other\BTC\Armory\armorycpplog.txt
-ERROR - 1480060049: (..\SocketObject.cpp:438) POLLERR error in readAndWrite

Hmm... armoryDB.exe is just crashing now right after headers scan. Any idea? The error right before the crash seem to be always somewhat different.

That's what I am doing - the databases folder was deleted so Armory is building it from scratch. It seems to be working OK now, in 12 minutes the database should be built it says.

Update: It seems to be building the database now, I restarted Armory 3 times, each time a different problem with armoryDB.exe, but now it's building so it looks OK. Quite sensitive though...

Thanks everyone for the help! I was able to finally get the BTC database synchronized. Bitcoin Core is working. Unfortunately, Armory is not. After armoryDB.exe opens its command prompt window, Armory crashes with error "tried to use invalid lmdb iterator".

At first there was a problem with database version mismatch so I deleted the "databases" folder under Armory, then the new error happened. Any suggestions? I will post the log in a short while if I can save it before Armory crashes.

How do I find those? I tried Googling it before but most of the time it was just old info.

In my opinion, this is a major Bitcoin issue though. I do realize most users will never use Bitcoin Core but still, there if there is lack of reliable nodes, it has to cause problems. A year or so ago this was working smoothly.