error: {"code":-4,"message":"Error adding key to wallet"} #3456

I am not able to import a private key using the importpvtkey command. I tried with with and without passphase set, it always throw the error

error: {"code":-4,"message":"Error adding key to wallet"}

Here is the getinfo about my setup.

{
    "version" : 80600,
    "protocolversion" : 70001,
    "walletversion" : 60000,
    "balance" : 0.00000000,
    "blocks" : 276480,
    "timeoffset" : -3,
    "connections" : 8,
    "proxy" : "",
    "difficulty" : 1180923195.25802612,
    "testnet" : false,
    "keypoololdest" : 1387767080,
    "keypoolsize" : 101,
    "paytxfee" : 0.00000000,
    "unlocked_until" : 1387806110,
    "errors" : ""
}

I am on ubuntu 12.04. Any suggestions ?

What version of bitcoin? From the GUI or directly from RPC? Any more specific error in debug.log?

@laanwj Bitcoind version 8.6.

No error messages in the debug.log but there some messages related to flushing the wallet

2013-12-23 02:57:03 ThreadRPCServer method=importprivkey
2013-12-23 02:57:04 AcceptToMemoryPool: 178.63.190.234:8333 /Satoshi:0.8.2.2/ : accepted c055ddde27996e3eb4370b37f3018cc517c173f51ec4091f3dbad1e25fcb6367 (poolsz 112)
2013-12-23 02:57:05 Flushing wallet.dat
2013-12-23 02:57:05 Flushed wallet.dat 5ms

My guess is that your wallet is still locked somehow and that you need to unlock it. importprivkey does not check for the wallet to be locked and gives a weird error message if that is still the case (see #957, #3457).

The only other cause of this error (AFAIK) would be a database problem with your wallet, so let's first completely rule out the wallet lock status.

The most common cause of this error message is actually that one already has the key imported.

IIRC, git head has a specific message for that.

Yes, there is a check for that nowadays. Didn't know that wasn't in 0.8.

@laanwj, Originally when I tried, the wallet does not even have the passphasse, so there we can rule out the case of locked. Later I added passphase and tried. I have posted getinfo, it has unlock_until set to 1387806110 which shows wallet is unlocked. @sipa @laanwj In 8.6, there is no check for existing keys, but I have tried with different keys, none of them worked https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/0.8.6/src/rpcdump.cpp#L35-L78

Does this still happen with 0.9.1?