Blockchain gets corrupted if system crashes during initial download #605

While doing the initial block download for a new installation of mine, my laptop battery ended and the system crashed suddenly. The blockchain files got corrupted and I couldn't start bitcoin anymore. I've written this here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=46916.msg605718#msg605718

Copying the relevant part of the linked message:

"After I restart and tried to load the bitcoin client again, I got two error popups, with the following messages:

First popup:

EXCEPTION: NSt8ios_base7failureE
CAutoFile::read : end of file
bitcoin in AppInit()

Second popup:

EXCEPTION: NSt8ios_base7failureE
CAutoFile::read : end of file
bitcoin in CMyApp::OnUnhandledException()

And after clicking OK to the second popup, nothing happens, bitcoin does not start."

Workaround: Delete all block chain files and start over.

Yes we should eventually add a more robust failure mode in case of corrupted block chain files (ie, re-download instead of crash)

Or even better: discard blkindex.dat, and reconstruct from whatever valid blocks can be reconstructed from blk0001.dat.

I suggest we downgrade bitcoin's version to alpha until this is fixed.

As Bitcoin is experimental software I don't agree with you here. Is this bug reproduceable (with 0.6.1 RC1)?

Bitcoin should now be able to detect and work around this issue