release-notes.md

Bitcoin Knots version 0.13.2.knots20170102 is now available from:

https://bitcoinknots.org/files/0.13.x/0.13.2.knots20170102/

This is a new minor version release, including new features, various bugfixes and performance improvements, as well as updated translations.

Please report bugs using the issue tracker at github:

https://github.com/bitcoinknots/bitcoin/issues

Compatibility

Microsoft ended support for Windows XP on April 8th, 2014, an OS initially released in 2001. This means that not even critical security updates will be released anymore. Without security updates, using a bitcoin wallet on a XP machine is irresponsible at least.

In addition to that, with 0.12.x there have been varied reports of Bitcoin Knots randomly crashing on Windows XP. It is not clear what the source of these crashes is, but it is likely that upstream libraries such as Qt are no longer being tested on XP.

We do not have time nor resources to provide support for an OS that is end-of-life. From 0.13.0 on, Windows XP is no longer supported. Users are suggested to upgrade to a newer version of Windows, or install an alternative OS that is supported.

No attempt is made to prevent installing or running the software on Windows XP, you can still do so at your own risk, but do not expect it to work: do not report issues about Windows XP to the issue tracker.

From 0.13.1 onwards OS X 10.7 is no longer supported. 0.13.0 was intended to work on 10.7+, but severe issues with the libc++ version on 10.7.x keep it from running reliably. 0.13.1 now requires 10.8+, and will communicate that to 10.7 users, rather than crashing unexpectedly.

Notable changes

importmulti is no longer stored in debug console history

Since v0.12.0, Knots has supported importing private keys via the importmulti RPC method. However, the logic to exclude sensitive commands from the debug console history did not include this RPC method.

This security issue is fixed as of this release. Additionally, when you start Knots, it will scan through your current persisted history and filter out any importmulti uses it finds. This is implemented such that the sensitive info is erased as securely as possible, but due to the nature of configuration storage, it is unlikely to succeed in entirely removing it from your disk.

Change to wallet handling of mempool rejection

When a newly created transaction failed to enter the mempool due to the limits on chains of unconfirmed transactions the sending RPC calls would return an error. The transaction would still be queued in the wallet and, once some of the parent transactions were confirmed, broadcast after the software was restarted.

This behavior has been changed to return success and to reattempt mempool insertion at the same time transaction rebroadcast is attempted, avoiding a need for a restart.

Transactions in the wallet which cannot be accepted into the mempool can be abandoned with the previously existing abandontransaction RPC (or in the GUI via a context menu on the transaction).

Bumpfee RPC method improvements

Knots 0.13.1 added a new RPC method bumpfee to make use of opt-in RBF for increasing transaction fees. This release updates the bumpfee method to the latest version, including a number of improvements.

Specifying the change output index is now optional, and requires that if it is specified, it is in fact a real change output. Support for specifying the change output is deprecated, and will be removed no later than 0.14.

A new maxFee option is added to limit the maximum fee that bumpfee will attempt to use.

Finally, there are new restrictions: a transaction can only be bumped once (its replacement may be bumped for similar behaviour), and transactions with spent outputs may not be bumped (to avoid breaking them).

RPC method to sweep private keys

Private keys in WIF can now be "swept" into the local wallet using the new sweepprivkeys RPC method. Unlike importing private keys, this should be safe for even untrusted private keys (although you should wait for confirmation of the sweep), and does not require a rescan. See help sweepprivkeys for usage.

Memory pool statistics

The memory pool can now keep up to 10 MB of statistical information. To enable this, use the -statsenable option; it is enabled default for the GUI and can be disabled using -statsenable=0. The stats can be accessed with either the new getmempoolstats RPC method, or the "Mempool Statistics" GUI on the "Help" menu.

BIP 67 sorting for multisig addresses

The addmultisigaddress and createmultisig RPC methods now accept an optional parameter to sort the keys according to BIP 67. The interface to enable this is considered temporary and is likely to be changed without notice (or backward compatibility) in future releases.

Saving and restoring of node memory pool

When cleanly shutdown, Knots will now store a copy of the node's memory pool to disk. This will then be restored at startup, allowing for restarting the node without redownloading unconfirmed transactions.

Nested calls in debug console

The debug console will now interpret nested calls specified using parenthesis syntax. For example, since getblock accepts a block hash, you can use getblockhash to specify it from a block height:

getblock(getblockhash(1))

0.13.2 Change log

Detailed release notes follow. This overview includes changes that affect behavior, not code moves, refactors and string updates. For convenience in locating the code changes and accompanying discussion, both the pull request and git merge commit are mentioned. Changes specific to Bitcoin Knots (beyond Core) are flagged with an asterisk ('*') before the description.

Consensus

• #9293 e591c10 [0.13 Backport #9053] IBD using chainwork instead of height and not using header timestamp (gmaxwell)
• #9053 5b93eee IBD using chainwork instead of height and not using header timestamps (gmaxwell)
• n/a ce96c2a *Add a new checkpoint at block 438,784 (luke-jr)

RPC and other APIs

• #9041 87fbced keypoololdest denote Unix epoch, not GMT (s-matthew-english)
• #9122 f82c81b fix getnettotals RPC description about timemillis (visvirial)
• #9042 5bcb05d [rpc] ParseHash: Fail when length is not 64 (MarcoFalke)
• #9194 f26dab7 Add option to return non-segwit serialization via rpc (instagibbs)
• #9347 b711390 [0.13.2] wallet/rpc backports (MarcoFalke)
• #9292 c365556 Complain when unknown rpcserialversion is specified (sipa)
• #9322 49a612f [qa] Don't set unknown rpcserialversion (MarcoFalke)
• #8456 60d8e8c *[RPC] bumpfee (mrbandrews)
• n/a 0716303 *wallet/rpc: Tolerate former change output index parameter to bumpfee so long as it is actually change (luke-jr)
• #8704 645b21c *[RPC] Transaction details in getblock (achow101)
• #8751 0b0f4f7 *RPC: addmultisigaddress / createmultisig: parameterize _createmultisig_redeemScript to allow sorting of public keys (BIP67) (Thomas Kerin)
• #8992 f2eb1cf *Enable pubkey lookup for p2sh-p2wpkh in validateaddress (instagibbs)
• #8952 ed5bc96 *Add query options to listunspent rpc call (Pedro Branco)
• #9025 b979006 *getrawtransaction should take a bool for verbose (jnewbery)
• #9152 db7634e *Wallet/RPC: sweepprivkeys method to scan UTXO set and send to local wallet (luke-jr)
• #9222 274975f *Add 'subtractFeeFromOutputs' option to 'fundrawtransaction'. (Chris Moore)
• #8501 039d1d5 *Add mempool statistics collector (jonasschnelli)
• #8775 41383de *RPC: Pass on CRPCRequestInfo metadata (wallet) for "help" method (luke-jr)

Block and transaction handling

• #9267 0a4aa87 [0.13 backport #9239] Disable fee estimates for a confirm target of 1 block (morcos)
• #9196 0c09d9f Send tip change notification from invalidateblock (ryanofsky)

P2P protocol and network code

• #8995 9ef3875 Add missing cs_main lock to ::GETBLOCKTXN processing (TheBlueMatt)
• #9234 94531b5 torcontrol: Explicitly request RSA1024 private key (laanwj)
• #8637 2cad5db Compact Block Tweaks (rebase of #8235) (sipa)
• #9058 286e548 Fixes for p2p-compactblocks.py test timeouts on travis (#8842) (ryanofsky)
• #8865 4c71fc4 Decouple peer-processing-logic from block-connection-logic (TheBlueMatt)
• #9117 6fe3981 net: don't send feefilter messages before the version handshake is complete (theuni)
• #9188 ca1fd75 Make orphan parent fetching ask for witnesses (gmaxwell)
• #9052 3a3bcbf Use RelevantServices instead of node_network in AttemptToEvict (gmaxwell)
• #9048 9460771 [0.13 backport #9026] Fix handling of invalid compact blocks (sdaftuar)
• #9357 03b6f62 [0.13 backport #9352] Attempt reconstruction from all compact block announcements (sdaftuar)
• #9189 b96a8f7 Always add default_witness_commitment with GBT client support (sipa)
• #9253 28d0f22 Fix calculation of number of bound sockets to use (TheBlueMatt)
• #9199 da5a16b Always drop the least preferred HB peer when adding a new one (gmaxwell)
• #9245 294b8f5 *Drop IO priority to idle while reading blocks for getblock requests (luke-jr)

Build system

• #9169 d1b4da9 build: fix qt5.7 build under macOS (theuni)
• #9326 a0f7ece Update for OpenSSL 1.1 API (gmaxwell)
• #9224 396c405 Prevent FD_SETSIZE error building on OpenBSD (ivdsangen)
• #7522 ed1fcdc *Bugfix: Detect genbuild.sh in repo correctly (luke-jr)
• n/a 8f93b0c *Makefile: Rename RES_RENDERED_ICON_SOURCES to RES_RENDERED_ICON_SRC to avoid automake giving it special meaning (luke-jr)

GUI

• #8972 6f86b53 Make warnings label selectable (jonasschnelli) (MarcoFalke)
• #9185 6d70a73 Fix coincontrol sort issue (jonasschnelli)
• #9094 5f3a12c Use correct conversion function for boost::path datadir (laanwj)
• #8908 4a974b2 Update bitcoin-qt.desktop (s-matthew-english)
• #9190 dc46b10 Plug many memory leaks (laanwj)
• #8877 19321e1 *GUI/RPCConsole: Include importmulti in history sensitive-command filter (luke-jr)
• #8985 6b474fa *Use pindexBestHeader instead of setBlockIndexCandidates for NotifyHeaderTip() (jonasschnelli)
• #8371 d81ec3d *[qt] sync-overlay: Don't show progress twice (MarcoFalke)
• #9130 b26febe *Mention the new network toggle functionality in the tooltip. (paveljanik)
• #9131 ea2d47c *fNetworkActive is not protected by a lock, use an atomic (jonasschnelli)
• #9145 58e922e *[qt] Make network disabled icon 50% opaque (MarcoFalke)
• #7783 9db5e22 *[Qt] RPC-Console: support nested commands and simple value queries (jonasschnelli)
• #9329 d63d8ab *[Qt] Console: allow empty arguments (jonasschnelli)
• n/a 84e423e *gui: add NodeID to the peer table (cfields)
• #8874 642641c *Multiple Selection for peer and ban tables (achow101)
• #8925 9667f76 *Partial: Display minimum ping in debug window. (rebroad)
• n/a 9994958 *Qt/Options: Configure minrelaytxfee using rwconf (luke-jr)
• #8550 71bfbf0 *[Qt] Add interactive mempool graph (jonasschnelli)
• n/a e4987a8 *Qt/Stats: Use native widgets (luke-jr)
• #8694 9f8717c *Qt: QComboBox::setVisible doesn't work in toolbars, so defer adding it at all until needed (luke-jr)

Wallet

• #9290 35174a0 Make RelayWalletTransaction attempt to AcceptToMemoryPool (gmaxwell)
• #9295 43bcfca Bugfix: Fundrawtransaction: don't terminate when keypool is empty (jonasschnelli)
• #9302 f5d606e Return txid even if ATMP fails for new transaction (sipa)
• #9262 fe39f26 Prefer coins that have fewer ancestors, sanity check txn before ATMP (instagibbs)
• #9167 844f0e1 *[wallet] Add IsAllFromMe: true if all inputs are from wallet (sdaftuar)

Tests and QA

• #9159 eca9b46 Wait for specific block announcement in p2p-compactblocks (ryanofsky)
• #9186 dccdc3a Fix use-after-free in scheduler tests (laanwj)
• #9168 3107280 Add assert_raises_message to check specific error message (mrbandrews)
• #9191 29435db 0.13.2 Backports (MarcoFalke)
• #9077 1d4c884 Increase wallet-dump RPC timeout (ryanofsky)
• #9098 ecd7db5 Handle zombies and cluttered tmpdirs (MarcoFalke)
• #8927 387ec9d Add script tests for FindAndDelete in pre-segwit and segwit scripts (jl2012)
• #9200 eebc699 bench: Fix subtle counting issue when rescaling iteration count (laanwj)
• #9097 f52b8b6 *[qa] preciousblock: Use assert_equal and BitcoinTestFramework.init (MarcoFalke)
• #9329 4fce7fc *Qt/Test: Check handling of empty arguments in RPC debug console (luke-jr)
• #8450 77b324e *Account wallet feature RPC tests. (phantomcircuit)

Miscellaneous

• #8838 094848b Calculate size and weight of block correctly in CreateNewBlock() (jnewbery)
• #8920 40169dc Set minimum required Boost to 1.47.0 (fanquake)
• #9251 a710a43 Improvement of documentation of command line parameter 'whitelist' (wodry)
• #8932 106da69 Allow bitcoin-tx to create v2 transactions (btcdrak)
• #8929 12428b4 add software-properties-common (sigwo)
• #9120 08d1c90 bug: Missed one "return false" in recent refactoring in #9067 (UdjinM6)
• #9067 f85ee01 Fix exit codes (UdjinM6)
• #9340 fb987b3 [0.13] Update secp256k1 subtree (MarcoFalke)
• #9229 b172377 Remove calls to getaddrinfo_a (TheBlueMatt)
• #8813 377ab84 *bitcoind: Daemonize using daemon(3) (Matthew King)
• #8848 7e4b10b *Store mempool and prioritization data to disk (sipa)
• #8936 046e4da *Report NodeId in misbehaving debug (rebroad)

Credits

Thanks to everyone who directly contributed to this release:

• Alex Morcos
• Andrew Chow
• BtcDrak
• Chris Moore
• Cory Fields
• fanquake
• Gregory Maxwell
• Gregory Sanders
• instagibbs
• Ivo van der Sangen
• John Newbery
• Johnson Lau
• Jonas Schnelli
• Luke Dashjr
• maiiz
• MarcoFalke
• Masahiko Hyuga
• Matt Corallo
• Matthew King
• matthias
• mrbandrews
• Patrick Strateman
• Pavel Janík
• Pedro Branco
• Pieter Wuille
• randy-waterhouse
• R E Broadley
• Russell Yanofsky
• S. Matthew English
• Steven
• Suhas Daftuar
• Thomas Kerin
• UdjinM6
• Wladimir J. van der Laan
• wodry

As well as everyone that helped translating on Transifex.