Looking for old Bitcoin versions with reliable file verification?

The files available here only start from version 0.9.5. If you check this folder, you’ll find 0.8.6, but it’s marked as (insecure) for some reason: But older versions seem to be missing. At least those versions come with some signed files. SHA256SUMS.asc                                     05-Feb-2014 19:32                1260 SHASUMS.asc                                        05-Feb-2014 19:32                1162 So I guess you could go ahead and install that safely. Anyone know how to track down older versions? I’m particularly looking for stuff from 2012-2013. You can see them listed, but the files just won’t download.

Maybe this helps: docker images of most (historical) bitcoin core versions back to v0.2.0 in 2009.

Probably due to CVE-2015-6031 explained on https://bitcoincore.org/en/2024/07/03/disclose_upnp_rce/. https://bitcoincore.org/bin/insecure-CVE-2015-6031/ also include version 0.8.6. While it may be obvious, it require you know how to setup/use docker and operate Bitcoin Core solely using CLI/RPC call since it exclude GUI.

I gave you a link to someone who has the old versions you're looking for. If you don't like docker (I don't!), ask for the source.

I don't know what docker is. No one really has saved older versions with the checksums at least?

Or use dockerc to turn said Docker images into a standalone binary.

This isn't mine nor counts as vouching but this website (in Russian) has those older versions that you're looking for. However, there are no hashes provided to verify the files' integrity, so try to look for those in any archived old official download pages. Link: bits.media/programms/bitcoin/old/ (download at your own risk)

Versions this old are still on Github too if you look under tags: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/tags?after=v0.8.5 Some assembly may be required.

Yeah, I wouldn't download those, links above seem safer, but im testing the given binaries that are on bitcoin.org in the insecure folder for the 0.8.6 version in a safe environment. It appears all these older versions were signed only by Gavin Andresen? I found his key on Ubuntu and MIT's repository, it is a good signature for the sha256 file, and I managed to get some wallets to look at it's structure, I don't really need the node itself. The thing is, there is an error when you try to load the wallet on a modern client: For testnet, I run prune because who cares, so it looks like these old wallets wouldn't work in pruned mode. I don't see how redownloading the whole blockchain in pruned mode will do, so I will need to run it in assumevalid=0 to play around with testnet coins in old wallets. But I have also tried with a main chain wallet and it wouldn't load and my node is fully synced. It's stuck trying to load in "Opening wallet: walletname" with the loading bar... so yeah, wtf is up with that. Edit: I ran the bitcoin-qt binaries in a Tails live session and got the wallet.dat files from there. I then tried loading with loadwallet on my normal full synced node and looks like there is an error: What went wrong there? It's the same error as here: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/100736/corrupted-old-bitcoin-wallet-file-unknown-has-lsn Trying to open the wallet.dat file generated these files: /.bitcoin/wallets/database/log.0000000001 /.bitcoin/wallets/db.log /.bitcoin/.walletlock

Oh, that's expected for nodes in pruned mode since it cannot scan the blocks that are already pruned. The ideal setup for a node that'll be used to load old wallet.dat is with prune setting disabled. Or if you really don't have the disk space to spare, load all wallet.dat files before (re)syncing so all wallets will be scanned while the node is syncing. assumevalid=0 wont make it work BTW, it'll only make your node verify every script in every block, with prune enabled, it'll still delete old blocks.