RPC calls fail in offline mode #4620

In Bitcoin 0.7 it was possible to run bitcoind in offline mode to call RPC functions. For example: Link

[offline]$ bitcoind getnewaddress
[offline]$ bitcoind decoderawtransaction
etc.

Now (tested with commit b7bba43a14a641b6b64bbf48357b2987c1b05800) it does not work:

$ ./src/bitcoin-cli getnewaddress
error: You must set rpcpassword=<password> in the configuration file:
/home/kostaz/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf
If the file does not exist, create it with owner-readable-only file permissions.

$ ./src/bitcoind getnewaddress
Error: There is no RPC client functionality in bitcoind anymore. Use the bitcoin-cli utility instead.

It is wrong IMHO, because Bitcoin Core (bitcoind / bitcoin-cli) need to be useful offline.

This is still possible, but you need a bitcoin.conf file so bitcoin-cli knows what bitcoind to talk to.

All that changed was that bitcoin-cli now does what bitcoind did when it was given a command on the command line.

This is true - I can run bitcoind and bitcoin-cli on the same machine to perform local RPC calls (even without bitcoin.conf):

$ ./src/bitcoind -regtest -datadir=datadir -port=18333 -rpcport=18332 -rpcallowip=127.0.0.1 -rpcuser=bitcoinrpc -rpcpassword=123456

$ ./src/bitcoin-cli -regtest -rpcconnect=127.0.0.1 -rpcport=18332 -rpcuser=bitcoinrpc -rpcpassword=123456 getblockhash 0

But it is really cumbersome. Why not enable RPC functionality in bitcoin-cli without the actual RPC calls?

Because bitcoin-cli's only functionality is taking the command line and sending it to bitcoind. It doesn't have any bitcoin-related logic in it.

Nothing changed. Except instead of ./bitcoind [command] you use ./bitcoin-cli [command] now.

So I have the impression that you think that previously "bitcoind getrawtransaction" worked without communication to another running bitcoind. This is not correct - such functionality never existing, and whenever you typed "bitcoind [command]", it always needed to find a running daemon to talk to. This did not change, only the ability to send commands elsewhere was moved from bitcoind to bitcoin-cli.

However, very recently a new command was added (bitcoin-tx; not in a release yet), which allows for some simply offline transaction manipulation, without assistance from a bitcoind. It cannot manipulate your wallet though, just individual transactions.

This has never been possible and is also not planned. bitcoin-cli is a JSON-RPC client and nothing more. The whole point is to communicate to a bitcoind.

If you need something else, use other software. As Sipa says the bitcoin-tx tool may be useful here. There is also sx (https://github.com/spesmilo/sx) with similar functionality.