mmgen-wallet/doc/MMGenInstallLinux.md

MMGen = Multi-Mode GENerator

a Bitcoin cold storage solution for the command line

Install MMGen on Debian/Ubuntu Linux

Perform the following steps on both your online and offline computers:

Install the pip Python installer:

    $ sudo apt-get install python-pip

Install required Python modules:

    $ sudo pip install ecdsa scrypt pycrypto bitcoin-python

Install MMGen:

    $ git clone https://github.com/mmgen/mmgen.git
    $ cd mmgen; sudo ./setup.py install

Install vanitygen (optional but recommended):

    $ git clone https://github.com/samr7/vanitygen.git
    (build and put the "keyconv" executable in your path)

At this point you can begin trying out MMgen, creating a test wallet and generating keys as described in Using MMGen below. To be able to track addresses and create and sign transactions, however, you'll need to have bitcoin daemons installed on your online and offline machines.

Install the offline bitcoind:

Instructions here.

Install the online bitcoind:

The bitcoin daemon on the online machine, a.k.a. the "watch-only" bitcoind, is used for tracking addresses and requires the full blockchain. For this, a more powerful computer is desirable. In particular, importing addresses is especially CPU-intensive. You'll also need plenty of free disk space for the rapidly-growing blockchain (~20GB at the time of writing).

The standard bitcoin daemon at present lacks the watch-only address support we need, so you'll have to get and compile a patched version by Bitcoin core developer Pieter Wuille, aka Sipa. Fortunately, it builds out of the box when the proper dependencies are installed.

The boost development packages are the dependencies you're most likely to be missing. Check that the following are on your system (package names may vary; the version should be 1.48 or greater):

    libboost-system-dev
    libboost-filesystem-dev
    libboost-program-options-dev
    libboost-chrono-dev
    libboost-test-dev
    libboost-thread-dev

Download the bitcoin-watchonly zip archive (commit a13f1e8 [check]) from GitHub, configure, and build:

    $ unzip watchonly.zip
    $ cd bitcoin-watchonly
    $ ./autogen.sh
    $ ./configure (add --with-incompatible-bdb if libdb version > 4.8)
    $ make -j4 src/bitcoind

With your online machine connected to the Internet, start the freshly compiled daemon and let it synchronize the blockchain, taking care to move any existing wallet.dat out of harm's way beforehand. You'll use the new wallet created by the daemon upon startup as your tracking wallet.

Congratulations! Your MMGen installation is now complete.