how to install bitcoin-qt wallet on debian 7

Question

WARNING: Complete noob to linux (somewhat noob - if something can be installed w/ a package manager, I'm ok, else completely lost). I loaded debian 7 on a VBox VM (took 2 days to get everything to run correctly, but cool now) and just want to put a BitCoin wallet on, so I went to the bitcoin site and downloaded the wallet. Unfortunately, there is no install package, just a bin and src directory. I figured the bin was the correct place to look and found a directory named "32" under that. In that directory, I see bitcoind and bitcoin-qt. Found out I needed PPA to install this, so I came up with (in a terminal):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bitcoin/bitcoin

ran the command, seemed to work. then ran

sudo apt-get update

but discovered some files apparently are no longer on the site it's pulling stuff from:

Hit http://ftp.us.debian.org wheezy Release.gpg
Hit http://ftp.us.debian.org wheezy-updates Release.gpg                        
Hit http://ftp.us.debian.org wheezy Release                                    
Hit http://ftp.us.debian.org wheezy-updates Release                            
Hit http://ftp.us.debian.org wheezy/main Sources                               
Hit http://security.debian.org wheezy/updates Release.gpg            
Hit http://ftp.us.debian.org wheezy/main i386 Packages
Ign http://ppa.launchpad.net wheezy Release.gpg                      
Hit http://ftp.us.debian.org wheezy/main Translation-en              
Hit http://security.debian.org wheezy/updates Release                
Hit http://ftp.us.debian.org wheezy-updates/main Sources             
Hit http://ftp.us.debian.org wheezy-updates/main i386 Packages/DiffIndex
Hit http://security.debian.org wheezy/updates/main Sources           
Hit http://ftp.us.debian.org wheezy-updates/main Translation-en/DiffIndex
Ign http://ppa.launchpad.net wheezy Release    
Hit http://security.debian.org wheezy/updates/main i386 Packages
Hit http://security.debian.org wheezy/updates/main Translation-en
Err http://ppa.launchpad.net wheezy/main Sources
  404  Not Found
Err http://ppa.launchpad.net wheezy/main i386 Packages
  404  Not Found
Ign http://ppa.launchpad.net wheezy/main Translation-en_US
Ign http://ppa.launchpad.net wheezy/main Translation-en
W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/bitcoin/bitcoin/ubuntu/dists/wheezy/main/source/Sources  404  Not Found

W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/bitcoin/bitcoin/ubuntu/dists/wheezy/main/binary-i386/Packages  404  Not Found

E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

Naturally, because of errors above, the installation fails.

 sudo apt-get install bitcoin-qt

results in:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package bitcoin-qt

Being a noob, I have no clue as to where it is looking for the bitcoin-qt file, so I tried the same command in the directory the file was in that I downloaded it to, same error. I know I'm doing something completely wrong here, but have no idea how to proceed. (sorry, spoiled by win/mac 2-click installations!)

Answer 1

Here is what I did on Debian Wheezy.

• Create /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bitcoin.list with content

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/bitcoin/bitcoin/ubuntu precise main

• Import this repository PGP public key with

apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys D46F45428842CE5E

• Create (temporarily) /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-squeeze.list with content

deb http://ftp.ch.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main

• Run aptitude update and

aptitude install libdb4.8++-dev=4.8.30-2 libdb4.8++=4.8.30-2 \
   libdb4.8-dev=4.8.30-2

• Disable squeeze repository again with

mv /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-squeeze.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-squeeze.list.bak
aptitude update

• In an empty folder, get package sources with apt-get source bitcoin-qt

• Edit bitcoin-0.9.0/debian/control to remove libminiupnpc8-dev from Build-Depends

• Install any lacking dependencies to build the package, for example:

aptitude install libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-system-dev libboost-test-dev
aptitude install libboost-program-options-dev libboost-thread-dev libqt4-dev
aptitude install libqrencode-dev libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler devscripts

• After cd bitcoin-0.9.0, invoke dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot

• When over, install with dpkg -i ../bitcoin-qt_0.9.0-precise1_amd64.deb (in case of amd64 system) so you can now run bitcoin-qt

Remark: libdb4.8 is obsolete in Debian Wheezy but it is a requirement to work with portable Bitcoin wallet. The easiest way was to get binary packages from Squeeze.

Answer 2

Add below line to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian sid main 

Then

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bitcoind

Answer 3

Okay, for all the noobs out there pulling their hair out, here's how you do it. Turns out, after much experimenting, Mint Linux is the only distro I could find that seems to be relatively small, relatively fast & works great (for me, that it). Starting w/Mint & after all updates - open a terminal & type the following in order:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bitcoin/bitcoin
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install bitcoin-qt

Once complete, close your terminal & go to the menu: Office --> Bitcoin.

Very simple! Works like a charm!

Answer 4

You can either get a statically linked binary from https://bitcoincore.org/en/download/ or use one of the package managers:

• https://snapcraft.io/bitcoin-core
• https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.bitcoincore.bitcoin-qt

Answer 5

Here is what i did on my debian wheezy server :

How to compile and install bitcoin core on debian wheezy

In order to compile and run, Bitcoin Core depends on some other tools which must be installed prior to compiling :

Install some dependencies:

1. For bitcoin-core

   sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf libssl-dev libboost-dev libboost-chrono-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-program-options-dev libboost-system-dev libboost-test-dev libboost-thread-dev
   

2. For bitcoin-qt (graphical interface)

   If you want the graphical frontend, also install the following dependencies. If you just want bitcoind, you can skip this step.

   sudo apt-get install libqt4-dev libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler libqrencode-dev
   

Installing Berkeley DB 4.8

Compiling Bitcoin Core requires the Berkeley DB version 4.8 which is not available in the wheezy repositories, so we must use squeeze repositories. Note that if you don't need a wallet (i.e. if you want to run a headless Bitcoin node and keep your wallet elsewhere) you can completely skip this section and jump directly to downloading and compiling Bitcoin Core.

1. Change the sources.list to use squeeze repositories

   Edit /etc/apt/sources.list :

   vi /etc/apt/sources.list
   

   Add the following lines in the head of file :

   deb http://[your favorite repository]/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
   deb-src http://[your favorite repository]/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
   

2. Now you can install Berkeley DB version 4.8 (libdb4.8)

   apt-get install libdb4.8++-dev libdb4.8-dev
   

Downloading and Compiling Bitcoin Core

Go to the branches list on the Bitcoin Core project site (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/branches), locate the latest version number, and substitute "0.11" in the command below with that.

cd /root git clone -b 0.11 https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.git cd bitcoin/

1. Configure the system for compilation

   ./autogen.sh
   

   if you dont need bitcon GUI, use this command :

   ./configure --without-gui
   

   else use this :

   ./configure
   

   Note: If you skipped the Berkeley DB 4.8 dependency above because you don't need a wallet, you must add "--disable-wallet" (without the quotation marks) to the end of the line that starts with ./configure above.

2. Compile

   make
   

Installing and Running Bitcoin Core

make install

After that, you will be able to run Bitcoin Core by typing: bitcoind (the text based backend) or bitcoin-qt (the graphical frontend), or bitcoin-cli (command-line client)