Ethereum: Automating Wallet Reloads on Startup for Convenience and Security
As Ethereum continues to grow in popularity, managing multiple wallets has become a significant challenge. One issue that can make things more complicated is when you restart your Bitcoin client or wallet software, such as
Bitcoin Core, which frequently reloads all existing wallets, including new ones.
In this article, we will explore an approach to automate the loading of all Ethereum wallets on startup using bitcoin-cli, making it easier and less likely to make mistakes during the initial startup process.
The Problem with Manual Wallet Reloads
Before we dive into the solution, let’s briefly review the current workflow:
- Restart your Bitcoin client or wallet software.
- Run “bitcoin-cli listwallets” to check which wallets are connected.
- If multiple new wallets were created during the restart, reload all existing wallets using bitcoin-cli loadwallet
.
As shown in your example: “bitcoin-cli listwallets” will list all existing wallets. However, when starting with Bitcoin Core or other wallet software, the process of reloading individual wallets is tedious and error-prone.
Solution: Automating wallet reloading using bitcoin-cli
To solve this problem, we will use the power of bitcoin-cli. Specifically, the command-line interface’s ability to load all connected wallets on startup can be put to good use.
Here’s how you can change your workflow.
- Detect existing wallets: After restarting or updating your wallet software, run bitcoin-cli listwallets again.
- Get a list of new wallets: Use the same command to get a list of all the wallets you have added, but this time look for the optional flag “-w” (with a space between the “-” and the wallet name).
For example: “bitcoin-cli -w –listwallets”.
This will output:
bitcoin-cli -w - listwallets
[
""
]
As you can see, all the existing wallets are still listed. Since Bitcoin Core uses the same list of wallets to determine which ones to load at startup, we can modify this command to load all the wallets we have added:
loadwallet command
The “bitcoin-cli loadwallet” command takes the wallet name as an argument, allowing us to specify which wallet(s) to load.
To automate the process, you need to create a script that runs after every restart or wallet software update. Here’s how to do it using “sh” (short for shell script):
- Create a new file in your home directory called “.bitcoinrc”.
sudo nano ~/.bitcoinrc
- Add this line to enable automatic wallet loading at startup:
loadwallet -w "" -- update
Here's how it works:
- -w “
“ : Specifies the name(s) of the wallet(s) to load.
- –update`: Allows you to update all connected wallets after a restart.
- Save and close the file, then make the script executable by running:
chmod +x ~/.bitcoinrc
Now, when you start your Bitcoin Core or other wallet software, it will automatically reload all existing wallets on startup using the modified “loadwallet” command:
Use case examples:
After updating to a new Bitcoin Core version, restart the client:
sudo bitcoin-core --restart
This should load all connected wallets from the previous session. There is no need to manually reload each wallet.
Using “bitcoin-cli”, we have successfully created an automated workflow that reduces errors and ensures consistency across operating systems when starting a new installation or update with multiple Ethereum wallets.