I have had my peercoins in the V 0.3 client for some time and do not want to lose my coinage by upgrading to the new V 0.4 client. How can I be sure to do this?
coinage is based on the date your transaction is received on the network.
Not based on the client you are running to read the wallet.dat file.
You will not lose coinage. Your coinage earned is already hardcoded in the peercoin blockchain that all nodes have a copy of when you received the transaction.
Uninstalling v0.3 does not remove the blockchain, so essentially after installation of v0.4 you retain all your old addresses in the wallet. Obviously if you wipe everything clean by let’s say re-installing your OS; you will have to restore your addresses to the wallet from a back up.
Uninstalling? I wouldn’t uninstall anything.
Backing up your wallet.dat and dumping your private keys to paper is always a good idea before doing anything.
Install 0.4 over top of 0.3, it just overwrites the \program files\ppcoin folder’s contents and leaves your wallet.dat file intact.
What to do in laymen’s terms?
So I download the new mac osx client and my coins will just be there? Then I will need to make a new backup wallet.dat file?
[quote=“kschneezy, post:5, topic:2192”]What to do in laymen’s terms?
So I download the new mac osx client and my coins will just be there? Then I will need to make a new backup wallet.dat file?[/quote]
Ben is our best MAC person, who understands what works that operating system. (I don’t own a Mac)
If you don’t already have a backup of your private keys or wallet.dat, then this is a problem before upgrading. You really should have a backup of your keys or wallet.dat.
What I will tell you is this… ppcoind 0.4 only creates a new wallet.dat file if one doesn’t already exist. Therefore, yes, theoretically you can just download the new mac osx client and you should still have access to your coins same as before.
But what if your hard drive or disk fails one day? You’d lose access to your wallet and your coins. So if you have never done a backup of wallet.dat or used the command “dumpprivkey” before, it is a good idea to learn how to do that now, before the upgrade to 0.4 just in case.
I had this same fear YEARS ago when I started mining bitcoin. You can safely run the setup of the new installation without worrying about deleting or replacing your wallet.dat. Having said that, I do recommend that you backup your wallet.dat at a given interval (quarter, month, week, what floats your boat).