Fresh install version 30.0 bitcoin-cli kicks me out if adding rpc creds

SeaSquared24 commented at 2:33 am on November 23, 2025: none

I have already read this other issue and could not determine if it was relevant to mine.

This is a fresh install of Bitcoin Core 30.0 and I am using the conf file from Ministry of Nodes 2024 guide MINUS the rpc creds because I am too lazy at the moment to do the rpcauth.py stuff and found that I can use the node normally until I add lines for rpcuser= and rpcpassword=, after which I lose the ability to run bitcoin-cli because my user doesn’t have the rpc creds to access bitcoin-cli. I can delete the two lines, save the file and immediately regain access to bitcoin-cli. At no point have I stopped and started the node, just modifying the file. In the past, I know you are supposed to restart the node for changes to take effect so I’m really not sure what’s going on. Can someone enlighten me to the new behavior?

Running on Debian 13.

Current conf file:

 0server=1
 1txindex=1
 2daemon=1
 3rpcport=8332
 4rpcbind=0.0.0.0
 5rpcallowip=127.0.0.1
 6rpcallowip=10.0.0.0/8
 7rpcallowip=172.0.0.0/8
 8rpcallowip=192.0.0.0/8
 9zmqpubrawblock=tcp://0.0.0.0:28332
10zmqpubrawtx=tcp://0.0.0.0:28333
11zmqpubhashblock=tcp://0.0.0.0:28334
12whitelist=127.0.0.1
13disablewallet=1
14dbcache=2048
15maxconnections=125

*Edit: did rpcauth.py and everything works as expected. I assume this means that the old user and pass lines are fully deprecated?

achow101 commented at 7:59 am on November 23, 2025: member

Without rpcuser and rpcpassword, the RPC server creates an ephemeral user and password saved in .cookie in the datadir. bitcoin-cli will parse your bitcoin.conf for rpcuser and rpcpassword first, and if it doesn’t find them, then it looks at .cookie. Since you haven’t restarted Bitcoin Core yet, your new credentials aren’t being used by the RPC server, but bitcoin-cli is trying to use them, hence an unauthorized error.

When you use rpcauth, the password is not included directly in the bitcoin.conf so the RPC server still creates the cookie file which bitcoin-cli still uses in that mode. If you tried to specify the rpcauth credentials with bitcoin-cli -rpcuser=<user> -rpcpassword=<password>, it would also fail until you restart Bitcoin Core.

achow101 closed this on Nov 23, 2025

Fresh install version 30.0 bitcoin-cli kicks me out if adding rpc creds #33928