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Install-MMGen-on-Microsoft-Windows.md

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Install MSYS2 and MMGen

Keeping your installation up to date

Introduction

MMGen is supported on Microsoft Windows via MSYS2, which provides a Unix-like command-line environment within Windows. Windows 8.1 and later versions are supported.

MSYS2 is the successor project to MinGW-64 and the earlier MSYS, bringing many improvements such as package management and support for Python 3. The MSYS2 project page is located here and its wiki here.

Before you get started, just a reminder that MMGen must be installed on two computers, one online and one offline, if you want to use it securely. All operations involving private data—wallet generation, address generation and transaction signing—are handled offline, while the online installation takes care of tracking balances and creating and sending transactions.

This means that once you’ve finished the install process, the computer you’ve designated for offline use must be taken offline permanently. Furthermore, its wi-fi and bluetooth interfaces should be disabled as well to safeguard against the possibility of private data leakage.

With some extra steps, it’s possible to perform the installation on a machine that’s already offline. These steps will be additionally outlined in sections entitled Offline install. When doing an online install you may skip over these sections.

Install MSYS2 and MMGen

1. Install MSYS2

Download the MSYS2 executable installer for your architecture from the MSYS2 homepage, but ignore the installation instructions there.

Run the installer, accepting all defaults. At the end of the installation, uncheck ‘Run MSYS2 now’ and click ‘Finish’. From the Start menu, drag the ‘MSYS2 UCRT64’ icon to the desktop. This is the icon you will use to launch all MSYS2 terminal sessions from now on. Double-click the icon to launch the terminal.

Note that the root of your MSYS2 installation is located in C:\\msys64, so the following commands, for example, will produce a listing of the same directory:

$ ls /etc              # the path as seen within MSYS2
$ ls 'C:\\msys64\etc'  # the path as seen by Windows

2. Upgrade MSYS2

Online users:

Optionally edit your mirror lists as described in Offline install below.

Update the package database and core system packages:

$ pacman -Syu

Exit and restart the MSYS2 terminal. If you’re using modified mirror lists, they may have been overwritten by the update operation, in which case you should restore them from your modified versions.

Now complete upgrading the system:

$ pacman -Su

Offline install:

You must now download the required database and package files from the Internet on your online computer and copy them to your offline box. A USB flash drive works ideally for this.

The mirror list files located in the directory /etc/pacman.d specify the servers to download packages from.

The server that’s listed first in these files is the one that will used by default, so you may wish to edit them and place the server you wish to use first in the list. For this you may use a text editor such as Notepad or Nano:

$ nano /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.msys
... repeat for remaining mirrorlist files ...

You need to update your database files as well. The database files and their associated signature files can be listed by issuing the following command:

$ ls /var/lib/pacman/sync

Download up-to-date versions of these files from a fast MSYS2 mirror:

https://mirror.yandex.ru/mirrors/msys2/msys/x86_64/msys.db
https://mirror.yandex.ru/mirrors/msys2/msys/x86_64/msys.db.sig
https://mirror.yandex.ru/mirrors/msys2/mingw/x86_64/mingw64.db
https://mirror.yandex.ru/mirrors/msys2/mingw/x86_64/mingw64.db.sig
https://mirror.yandex.ru/mirrors/msys2/mingw/i686/mingw32.db
https://mirror.yandex.ru/mirrors/msys2/mingw/i686/mingw32.db.sig
https://mirror.yandex.ru/mirrors/msys2/mingw/clang64/clang64.db
https://mirror.yandex.ru/mirrors/msys2/mingw/clang64/clang64.db.sig
https://mirror.yandex.ru/mirrors/msys2/mingw/clang32/clang32.db
https://mirror.yandex.ru/mirrors/msys2/mingw/clang32/clang32.db.sig
https://mirror.yandex.ru/mirrors/msys2/mingw/clangarm64/clangarm64.db
https://mirror.yandex.ru/mirrors/msys2/mingw/clangarm64/clangarm64.db.sig
https://mirror.yandex.ru/mirrors/msys2/mingw/ucrt64/ucrt64.db
https://mirror.yandex.ru/mirrors/msys2/mingw/ucrt64/ucrt64.db.sig

Copy the files to your offline machine, replacing the originals at C:\msys64\var\lib\pacman\sync.

Now issue the following command:

$ pacman -Sup > urls.txt

This command may cause your MSYS2 terminal window to close. If so, just reopen another one.

The command's output is now saved in the file urls.txt (this redirection trick using '>' works for most shell commands, by the way). Copy urls.txt to your online machine and download the URLs listed in it.

Create a new folder on your offline machine:

$ mkdir packages1

Transfer the downloaded package files to the offline machine and place them in this folder.

Now issue the following command to install the packages:

$ pacman -U packages1/*

When the process is finished, close your terminal window and reopen another one.

Now reissue the pacman -Sup command, which will generate a much longer list of URLs this time. Repeat the same download/copy/install procedure with the new URLs, only using a new packages2 directory instead of packages1.

Your system upgrade is now complete.

3. Install MSYS2 MMGen dependencies

Now that your system’s fully up to date, you’re ready to install the packages specifically required by MMGen.

Offline install:

As you’ve probably noticed by now, the command pacman -S <pgknames> installs MSYS2 packages and their dependencies, while pacman -Sp <pgknames> prints a list of download URLs for the same packages and dependencies. So before running the command shown below, you must first issue it with -Sp instead of -S to produce a URL list. Then repeat the above download/copy/install steps once again with the new URLs, replacing packages2 with packages3.

Install the MMGen requirements and their dependencies:

pacman -S tar git vim autoconf automake-wrapper autogen libtool cygrunsrv \
	mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-python-build \
	mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-python-wheel \
	mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-python-pip \
	mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libltdl \
	mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gcc \
	mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-make \
	mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-pcre \
	mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libsodium \
	mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-python-pynacl \
	mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-python-cryptography \
	mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-python-pycryptodome \
	mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-python-six \
	mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-python-pexpect \
	mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-python-gmpy2 \
	mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-python-pysocks \
	mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-python-requests \
	mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-python-aiohttp \
	mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-python-pyreadline3

4. Set up your environment

Create the /usr/local/bin directory. This is where you’ll place various binaries required by MMGen:

$ mkdir -p /usr/local/bin  # seen by Windows as 'C:\\msys64\usr\local\bin'

Open your shell’s runtime configuration file in a text editor:

$ nano ~/.bashrc

Add the following lines to the end of the file (if this is a Bitcoin-only installation, you may omit the non-Bitcoin components of daemon_paths):

win_home="/${HOMEDRIVE/:}${HOMEPATH//\\//}"
daemon_paths="/c/Program Files/Bitcoin/daemon:/c/Program Files/Litecoin/daemon:/c/Program Files/Bitcoin-Cash-Node/daemon:/c/Program Files/Geth"
export PATH="$win_home/.local/bin:$PATH:$daemon_paths"
export PYTHONUTF8=1

Save and exit. Close and reopen the terminal window to update your working environment.

5. Install the Python ECDSA library (offline install only)

On your online machine:

$ python3 -m pip download ecdsa

Copy the downloaded file to your offline machine and install:

$ python3 -m pip install --user ecdsa-*.whl

6. Install the standalone scrypt package (required for strong password hashing)

Thanks to a faulty implementation of the scrypt function included in Python’s hashlib, the standalone scrypt module is required for stronger-than-default password hashing, i.e. hash presets greater than 3. Installing the package is therefore highly recommended.

On your online machine, clone the Py-Scrypt source repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/holgern/py-scrypt.git

Copy the cloned repo to your offline machine.

Enter the repo root and edit the file ‘setup.py’, adding the following lines before the line beginning with elif sys.platform.startswith('win32'):, making sure to preserve indentation:

elif os.environ.get('MSYSTEM') == 'UCRT64':
    define_macros = []
    includes = []
    libraries = ['crypto']
    CFLAGS.append('-O2')

Save ‘setup.py’. Now build and install:

$ cd py-scrypt
$ python3 -m build --no-isolation
$ python3 -m pip install --user dist/*.whl

7. Clone and copy the secp256k1 library (offline install only)

On your online machine, clone the secp256k1 repository from Github:

$ git clone https://github.com/bitcoin-core/secp256k1.git

On your offline machine, create a magic location and copy the cloned secp256k1 directory into it:

$ mkdir -p ~/.cache/mmgen                # the magic location
$ cp -a /path/to/secp256k1/repo/secp256k1 ~/.cache/mmgen
$ ls ~/.cache/mmgen/secp256k1/autogen.sh # check that files were correctly copied

8. Install MMGen

Now you’re ready to install MMGen itself. On your online machine, clone the repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/mmgen/mmgen
Cloning into ’mmgen’...

If you’re doing an offline install, then copy the cloned mmgen directory to your offline machine.

Enter the repo directory, build and install:

$ cd mmgen
$ git checkout stable_msys2 # See 'Note' below
$ python3 -m build --no-isolation
$ python3 -m pip install --user dist/*.whl

Note: if you want to use features that have appeared since the latest stable_msys2 release, then you can omit the git checkout stable_msys2 step and remain on the master branch. Please bear in mind, however, that security vulnerabilities are more likely to be present in new code than in a stable release. In addition, while the tip of master is always tested on Linux before being pushed to the public repository, it’s not guaranteed to install or run on MSYS2. Installation or runtime issues may also arise due to missing dependencies or installation steps not yet covered in the documentation.

Install Note: The --force and --no-deps options also come in handy on occasion. Note that MMGen has a test suite. Refer to the Test Suite wiki page for details.

9. Install Python Ethereum dependencies (Ethereum users only)

If you’ll be using MMGen with Ethereum, then you must install a few dependencies. From the MMGen repository root, type the following:

$ python3 -m pip install --no-deps --user -r eth-requirements.txt

For an offline install, do this instead:

$ python3 -m pip download --no-deps -r eth-requirements.txt

Then transfer the downloaded files to your offline machine, cd to the directory containing the files and install them as follows:

$ python3 -m pip install --no-deps --user *.whl

10. Install and launch your coin daemons

At this point your MMGen installation will be able to generate wallets, along with keys and addresses for all supported coins. However, if you intend to do any transacting, as you probably do, you’ll need to install and launch a coin daemon or daemons. MMGen has full transaction support for BTC, BCH, LTC, ETH, ETC and ERC20 tokens.

Go to the Install Bitcoind and other supported coin daemons wiki page and follow the instructions for your coins of choice. You can skip the parts about adding to the Windows path, since your PATH variable was taken care of in Step 5. Note that the daemons must be installed on both your online and offline machines.

To transact ETH, ETC or ERC20 tokens you’ll need the latest Geth or Parity (for Ethereum Classic) binary. See the Altcoin-and-Forkcoin-Support page for information on downloading and launching these daemons. The parity.exe and ethkey.exe binaries should be copied to /usr/local/bin. For Geth, download and run the Windows installer and add /c/Program Files/Geth to the end of the PATH variable in your ~/.bashrc file:

Please note that Ethereum daemons perform rather poorly under Windows due to threading limitations. Unless you have very fast hardware, transacting and syncing the blockchain could be painfully slow.

11. You’re done!

Congratulations, your installation is now complete, and you can proceed to Getting Started with MMGen. Note that all features supported by MMGen on Linux, except for autosigning, are now supported on MSYS2 too. Please be aware of the following, however:

  • Non-ASCII filenames cannot be used with the mmgen-xmrwallet utility. This is an issue with the Monero wallet RPC daemon rather than MMGen.

  • The Bitcoin Cash Node daemon cannot handle non-ASCII pathnames. This is an issue with the Bitcoin Cash Node implementation for Windows, not MMGen.

Keeping your installation up to date

MSYS2

You should periodically upgrade your MSYS2 installation, especially when new releases of the installer appear. You can check your currently installed version of MSYS2 by issuing the command pacman -Ss msys2-base.

To perform the upgrade, just repeat Step 3 of this guide. Assuming your currently configured download mirrors are functional, you can skip the parts relating to downloading and editing mirrorlists.

Note that Step 4 need not be performed, as the MMGen dependencies are already in pacman’s database.

MMGen

You should periodically upgrade your MMGen installation from the MMGen public repository, especially when new releases appear. You can check your currently installed version of MMGen by issuing the command mmgen-tool --version.

To perform the upgrade, enter the MMGen repository root on your online computer and issue the following commands:

$ git checkout master
$ git pull
$ git checkout stable_msys2 # See 'Note' to step 9
$ rm -rf dist build *egg-info
$ rm -rf /mingw64/lib/python*/site-packages/{mmgen,MMGen}*
$ python3 -m build --no-isolation
$ python3 -m pip install --user dist/*.whl
$ rm -rf dist build *egg-info

To update your offline installation, copy the updated repository (after git pull) to your offline machine, cd to the root of the copied repository and continue from the git checkout stable_msys2 step.