Bug#803949: electrum: Electrum unable to start; Cannot read config file

[Zachary Peterson]

Package: electrum
Version: 1.9.8-4
Severity: grave
Justification: renders package unusable

Dear Maintainer,

I've never had this problem before, but after recently re-installing
Debian, I am unable to start Electrum. When I try from the command line,
I get the following:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/electrum", line 174, in 
config = SimpleConfig(config_options)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/electrum/simple_config.py", line 33, 
in __init__
self.read_user_config()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/electrum/simple_config.py", line 157, 
in read_user_config
raise IOError("Cannot read config file.")
IOError: Cannot read config file.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.2
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages electrum depends on:
ii  python   2.7.9-1
ii  python-electrum  1.9.8-4

electrum recommends no packages.

electrum suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information

Bug#803949: electrum: Electrum unable to start; Cannot read config file

[Tristan Seligmann]

On Tue, 3 Nov 2015 at 17:09 Zachary Peterson  wrote:

>   File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/electrum/simple_config.py", line
> 157, in read_user_config
> raise IOError("Cannot read config file.")
> IOError: Cannot read config file.


This error is raised if an exception occurs reading the configuration file,
located at ~/.electrum/config. Unfortunately the reraised exception
contains no information about what went wrong.

The following command should reproduce the process used by Electrum 1.9.8
to load the config file:

python -c 'import ast, os; print
ast.literal_eval(open(os.path.expanduser("~/.electrum/config")))'

This should fail with a Python exception; could you reply to this bug with
the output?

(The problem could be that your configuration is corrupt somehow, or the
file is unreadable for some reason. Another possibility is that you have
run a newer version of Electrum somehow; newer versions use a different
format for the configuration and wallet files, and will upgrade it
automatically, making older versions unable to read the files.)

Bug#803949: electrum: Electrum unable to start; Cannot read config file

[Zachary Peterson]

> Tristan Seligmann  writes:

> The following command should reproduce the process used by Electrum
> 1.9.8 to load the config file:

> python -c 'import ast, os; print
> ast.literal_eval(open(os.path.expanduser("~/.electrum/config")))'

> This should fail with a Python exception; could you reply to this bug
> with the output?

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/ast.py", line 80, in literal_eval
return _convert(node_or_string)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/ast.py", line 79, in _convert
raise ValueError('malformed string')
ValueError: malformed string

> (The problem could be that your configuration is corrupt somehow, or
> the file is unreadable for some reason. Another possibility is that
> you have run a newer version of Electrum somehow; newer versions use a
> different format for the configuration and wallet files, and will
> upgrade it automatically, making older versions unable to read the
> files.)
That seems a likely cause. I was running Testing for a while before
reverting to Stable due to some issues with other packages.

-- 
Zachary Peterson
zap5...@psu.edu
(317) 828-2377
OpenPGP key: BF5879D6

Bug#803949: [Pkg-bitcoin-devel] Bug#803949: electrum: Electrum unable to start; Cannot read config file

[s7r]

Hello,

That is right. You should use 2.5.2 or newer - 1.9.8, aside the fact
that it uses only old version seeds, it won't be able to sign a
transaction and broadcast it to the network because it doesn't contain
the low-S enforcement in ECDSA signatures update. So you will have a
hard time spending coins with electrum 1.9.8.

2.5.2 is in unstable, but it still has a bug in install wizard which
affects Debian. I reported it and it was fixed in 2.5.3 which will be
released very soon. Make sure you update to 2.5.3 when it's in sid or
from unstable if you are ok with that.

On 11/3/2015 7:16 PM, Zachary Peterson wrote:
>> Tristan Seligmann  writes:
> 
>> The following command should reproduce the process used by Electrum
>> 1.9.8 to load the config file:
> 
>> python -c 'import ast, os; print
>> ast.literal_eval(open(os.path.expanduser("~/.electrum/config")))'
> 
>> This should fail with a Python exception; could you reply to this bug
>> with the output?
> 
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "", line 1, in 
>   File "/usr/lib/python2.7/ast.py", line 80, in literal_eval
> return _convert(node_or_string)
>   File "/usr/lib/python2.7/ast.py", line 79, in _convert
> raise ValueError('malformed string')
> ValueError: malformed string
> 
>> (The problem could be that your configuration is corrupt somehow, or
>> the file is unreadable for some reason. Another possibility is that
>> you have run a newer version of Electrum somehow; newer versions use a
>> different format for the configuration and wallet files, and will
>> upgrade it automatically, making older versions unable to read the
>> files.)
> That seems a likely cause. I was running Testing for a while before
> reverting to Stable due to some issues with other packages.
>