cyrillic/unicode issue requires daemon/QT to be run as admin. #15092

After this fix is applied: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/5bb0164ceecc2e61f1839b482e821909e05a736e which fixes /issues/15089

there is another problem that prevents windows users with usernames that are cyrillic/unicode using bitcoin core:

2019-01-03T21:42:16Z * Using 2.0MiB for block index database 2019-01-03T21:42:16Z * Using 8.0MiB for chain state database 2019-01-03T21:42:16Z * Using 440.0MiB for in-memory UTXO set (plus up to 286.1MiB of unused mempool space) 2019-01-03T21:42:16Z init message: Loading block index... 2019-01-03T21:42:16Z Opening LevelDB in C:\Users\Даниелька\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin\blocks\index 2019-01-03T21:42:16Z Fatal LevelDB error: IO error: C:\Users\Даниелька\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin\blocks\index\LOCK: Could not lock file. 2019-01-03T21:42:16Z You can use -debug=leveldb to get more complete diagnostic messages 2019-01-03T21:42:16Z Fatal LevelDB error: IO error: C:\Users\Даниелька\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin\blocks\index\LOCK: Could not lock file. 2019-01-03T21:42:16Z : Error opening block database. Please restart with -reindex or -reindex-chainstate to recover.

Running bitcoind.exe and bitcoin-qt.exe as administrator fixes this issue but this should not be required - it's like having to run something as root on linux.

Running the same bitcoind.exe and bitcoin-qt.exe on windows with a standard windows username (no special characters) works fine without having to run as administrator.

Tested using Windows 10 64bit and the latest Master branch using the cross compile guide with the patch https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/5bb0164ceecc2e61f1839b482e821909e05a736e

You can test on windows by just creating a new user called "Даниелька" (copy and paste it).

The prebuilt binaries [https://bitcoin.org/bin/bitcoin-core-0.17.1/bitcoin-0.17.1-win64.zip] work without having to run as admin.

Related #13869, bitcoin-core/leveldb#18

Confirmed the issue by creating a new user bitcoin-Даниелька, building from depends (using WSL) and running bitcoin-qt:

As suggested, running as administrator (right-click Run as Administrator), runs the binary, however, that's because Bitcoin Core will be using the administrator data directory (i.e C:\Users\IEUser\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin on my VM), so you wont see any unicode issues. @xaya I assume your admin username doesn't contain any unicode characters?

Hi. You also need to make the "Даниелька" user an adminstrator (log in and out as well - actually reboot is the best way).

When you run as an administrator with an administrator account it will use that users "userdata" directories.

edit: worth noting that even though it works with "run as administrator", on the first run the QT will ask to reindex.. you press yes and then it works. if you run the daemon first, you will need to run it again with re-index. (it asks you this even if the datadir is empty before you run it)

this update referenced by @ken2812221 https://github.com/bitcoin-core/leveldb/pull/18

fixes this issue

Closing this, as it should have been solved by https://github.com/bitcoin-core/leveldb/pull/18 which was pulled into Core via #15270 and released as part of v0.18.0.