curl solved all of my problems!  got the code I needed here: http://pastebin.com/vREuHVr5
where would you like the 5 btc sent?

Great ideas.  I'll play around with this and get back to you.

I am using the json-rpc php library from the bitcoin wiki (http://jsonrpcphp.org/) to send commands to my bitcoind instance.  For the most part, it works as expected, but occasionally, when I use the sendtoaddress command, it will return one of the following errors:
or
I noticed that the first one seems to happen only when there are insufficient funds in the wallet.  The second seems to happen at random.  When the first occurs, no coins are sent.  When the second occurs, the coins are almost always sent just as if there was no error even though it seems, based on the error, that the command never made it to bitcoind.  Occasionally though, the second error will be returned and the coins aren't sent.

This ambiguity is a problem for me.  What I would really like is for the jsonrpc client to return a meaningful error when it cannot process the request (such as insufficient funds) and to return the usual output (txid) when sendtoaddress is successfully executed.  I'm most comfortable in php, but am willing to learn other languages to achieve the same ends.  Ultimately I need to take addresses/amounts from a mysql database and construct transactions in my bitcoind server.

So, if anyone knows how to make this work in php or another language, perhaps perl or ruby or python and can walk me though it, and it works as described, 5 btc will be yours.

that part of the solution was actually on these forums:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=43496.msg1065765#msg1065765

found and confirmed a hack that takes the import time down to 6 seconds per key.

psy please provide an address for your 10 btc reward for helping me find pywallet.

ok, pywallet works well to get the privkeys from wallet a, but unfortunately it is not designed to work with wallets with versions later than 32500, so when I try to import into a new wallet, the wallet gets corrupted.

So, I am very close, and I like this bulk import/export method because I can prune this giant wallet I have, but I am at a loss how to import the addresses.  The new client has the importprivkey function, but it takes 1-2 minutes per address to import.

Does anyone know a way to import privkeys into a wallet quickly?

I think pywallet plus some scripting will do the trick.  I'll check back in here when/if I get it to work and hit you guys up for payment addresses for the bounty.

ok, im looking into pywallet.

Let me make sure I have this straight.  I start wallet a with bitcoind -detachdb=1, then stop it with bitcoind stop, then take the wallet.dat for wallet a and try to run the latest client with it?

I'm using the headless client on a server, so there must be a flag or something.  I usually shutdown by doing

a wild guess is better than none.  how do I "detach databases on shutdown"?

I am running 2 bitcoind instances on ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS server, wallet a and wallet b.  The version info from getinfo() for wallet a is

The version info from getinfo() for wallet b is

If I try to export wallet.dat from wallet a, put it in an empty .bitcoin directory and run it with the latest client version (7.0.2) I get the following error

Obviously wallet b will run with the latest client as seen in the version output.  This leads me to believe that the issue is the protocol version.  For some reason 60001 is incompatible with the latest client, and 60002 is.

So, here is the 10 btc question:
How can I get wallet a to run on the latest client?  It doesn't work for me to just transfer the balance to a new wallet, because I need the addresses in wallet a.  Also, wallet a has a bunch of addys.  It's around 1 gb in size.

First person to post a solution that I can get to work wins the 10 btc.  Thanks in advance!

what addresses are those?

success!  where would you like your coins sent fcmatt?

sorry it's a bit over my head.  I did: , but didn't see a command for rescanning.  can you please be more specific about what I should type in exactly?

that means I should stop the wallet, delete everything but wallet.dat and bitcoin.conf, and then start it up again, right?

I own this address:

1MR6pXDZ6gpBVN8n61SqCNF61vU8ZzRu8Y

If you look it up in the blockchain, you can see that currently it contains 44,914.031337 BTC

When I try to restore the wallet containing this address in bitcoind on ubuntu, it tells me the balance is zero.  Here are some outputs:


As you can see, the address is present in the wallet, and the blockchain is up to date, yet the balance reads zero.  If anyone with the correct privileges feels it is appropriate, I would very much appreciate a repost of this in the main tech support section.  100 btc to anyone who can help me solve this problem.  Thanks!