App does not accept Bitcoin-Core connection

[SebiCreator]

In my settings i configured the Server as a bitcoin-core server on a remote machine. If i test the connection in settings it all works as it should.

But outside of the settings the app always shows "Connection failed: Server Error (Check if Bitcoin Core is running and the authentication details are correct".

The logging from Bitcoin-Core shows the following
2022-11-05T16:50:50Z [sparrow] External scriptPubKey Manager for output type 0 does not exist
2022-11-05T16:50:50Z [sparrow] External scriptPubKey Manager for output type 1 does not exist
2022-11-05T16:50:50Z [sparrow] External scriptPubKey Manager for output type 2 does not exist
2022-11-05T16:50:50Z [sparrow] Internal scriptPubKey Manager for output type 0 does not exist
2022-11-05T16:50:50Z [sparrow] Internal scriptPubKey Manager for output type 1 does not exist
2022-11-05T16:50:50Z [sparrow] Internal scriptPubKey Manager for output type 2 does not exist
...

I dont know how to interpret this information.
To me it looks like a bug?

Does somebody know what's the problem and how to solve it?

[gStart9]

I am experiencing this too. Here, I put in my .onion of my bitcoin RPC, and yet it (suppsedly) connects to an electrs somewhere -- but where? I'm not running electrs!

[craigraw]

@SebiCreator this appears to be an issue related to Bitcoin Core, not Sparrow. Do you have any unusual configuration of Bitcoin Core? See this link too: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/96415/wallet-files-are-empty

@gStart9 You are not starting Electrs. Sparrow contains a library called BWT which creates an Electrum server backed by a Bitcoin Core wallet. Sparrow then communicates with the network via that Electrum server. Electrs is another implementation of an Electrum server. Note that communicating with Bitcoin Core using BWT over Tor is not recommended with Tor being as slow as it is currently - the architecture does not lend itself to this, and there are privacy issues besides (anyone with your onion address can see your balance and control your node).

[SebiCreator]

@craigraw thanks for your answer.
This is my bitcoin.conf file.

I start the daemon with sudo bitcoind -conf=/mnt/ssd/mainnet/bitcoin.conf

Any problems with this?

[craigraw]

It looks ok to me. Try shutting down Bitcoin Core and Sparrow, and deleting the 'sparrow' wallet in the Bitcoin Core wallets folder. Sparrow will recreate it. It may also help to upgrade Bitcoin Core, but that's less likely. If you do, upgrade Sparrow first if you haven't already.

[gStart9]

@gStart9 You are not starting Electrs. Sparrow contains a library called BWT which creates an Electrum server backed by a Bitcoin Core wallet. Sparrow then communicates with the network via that Electrum server. Electrs is another implementation of an Electrum server. Note that communicating with Bitcoin Core using BWT over Tor is not recommended with Tor being as slow as it is currently - the architecture does not lend itself to this, and there are privacy issues besides (anyone with your onion address can see your balance and control your node).

So these Electrum Server ready things are coming from the bwt library running within Sparrow? How can I tell if I'm getting through to the .onion bitcoin rpc? The test never seems to fully indicate.

So in other words, it sounds like sparrow doesn't speak to the bitcoin rpc directly, but speaks electrum server protocol to bwt which translates the calls to the bitcoin rpc? Understood about tor sucking right now, but in theory, .onion can work, correct?

[craigraw]

So in other words, it sounds like sparrow doesn't speak to the bitcoin rpc directly, but speaks electrum server protocol to bwt which translates the calls to the bitcoin rpc? Understood about tor sucking right now, but in theory, .onion can work, correct?

Correct - I suspect some of the required calls are not completing over Tor. Unfortunately with the current Tor issues this approach is going to be a poor user experience. Connecting to an Electrum server over Tor requires far fewer calls and is still a reasonable approach, even with the current DDos attack.

[turkycat]

+1 this issue while trying to set up Sparrow for the first time today. I'm having the exact same experience as OP, but I'm not using TOR. I'm also not running Electrs. I'm on the latest release of Sparrow with Bitcoin Core v22.0.0

[SebiCreator]

It looks ok to me. Try shutting down Bitcoin Core and Sparrow, and deleting the 'sparrow' wallet in the Bitcoin Core wallets folder. Sparrow will recreate it. It may also help to upgrade Bitcoin Core, but that's less likely. If you do, upgrade Sparrow first if you haven't already.

Ok i removed my wallets in sparrow and noticed that if i dont have an Taproot Wallet i can connect to my bitcoin-core server

[craigraw]

Yes, Taproot wallets are not supported when connecting to Bitcoin Core. See bwt-dev/bwt#91 to view the upstream issue on this. It's frustrating that some projects become blocking dependencies on certain functionality, but that's unfortunately the case here.

I was hoping this problem could be resolved more quickly, but since it doesn't look like rust-bitcoincore-rpc is getting any regular updates, I've added an error message to warn of the incompatibility in a25b53b (and a comment on the relevant issue!)

Closing this off as I believe the original issue has been identified.

[turkycat]

I can confirm the root cause. I was also trying to import a taproot wallet using an xpub.