External signer: in case of error shows only “External signer failure” #31004

1. 
   cobratbq commented at 11:29 pm on September 30, 2024: none

   Is there an existing issue for this?

   • I have searched the existing issues

   Current behaviour

   Shows a dialog with title “External signer failure” and description “External signer failure”.

   Expected behaviour

   Report the error that is received as part of the execution result in the error field designated for such execution failures/errors.

   Steps to reproduce

   Have an external signer perform a signtx (stdin) operation and report back a result that includes a body to the error field of the json.

   Relevant log output

   N/A

   How did you obtain Bitcoin Core

   Pre-built binaries

   What version of Bitcoin Core are you using?

   v27.1

   Operating system and version

   Fedora Linux

   Machine specifications

   Basic laptop with Intel CPU. Nothing special.

2. 
   Sjors commented at 12:13 pm on August 1, 2025: member

   v27.1 is quite old and I think we’ve made some improvements since. Can you try again with v29.0 or ideally v29.1rc1?
3. 
   cobratbq commented at 11:04 pm on November 2, 2025: none

   This has indeed improved in later version. I am currently running v29.2.0 which does show output. Personally, I think the current implementation does not take into account the cases where there is excessive output, e.g. logging entries. Instead, the first line is assumed to be relevant information concerning the error. Arguably, in such a case, the last line would be better.

   It is not a serious problem. I might start stderr output with a line that refers to stderr-output and/or logging.

4. 
   cobratbq commented at 4:25 pm on November 17, 2025: none

   @Sjors you might want to decide whether it’s worth changing behavior of how stderr output is displayed. Otherwise, feel free to close. I left it open in case there is interest in following up.
5. 
   Sjors commented at 11:57 am on November 18, 2025: member

   Unless you’re going to open a PR to improve it yourself, probably nobody else will :-)

   I can’t close it though, only you or the maintainers can.

6. pinheadmz closed this on Nov 18, 2025

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