Running Bitcoin

There are two variations of the official bitcoin program available; one with a graphical user interface (usually referred to as just “Bitcoin”), and a 'headless' version (called bitcoind). They are completely compatible with each other, and take the same command-line arguments, read the same configuration file, and read and write the same data files. You can run one copy of either Bitcoin or bitcoind on your system at a time (if you accidently try to launch another, the copy will let you know that Bitcoin or bitcoind is already running and will exit).

Command-line arguments

Give Bitcoin (or bitcoind) the -? or –help argument and it will print out a list of the most commonly used command-line arguments and then exit:

Usage:

 bitcoin [options]                     
 bitcoin [options] <command> [params]  Send command to -server or bitcoind
 bitcoin [options] help                List commands
 bitcoin [options] help <command>      Get help for a command

Options:

 -conf=<file>      Specify configuration file (default: bitcoin.conf)
 -gen              Generate coins
 -gen=0            Don't generate coins
 -min              Start minimized
 -datadir=<dir>    Specify data directory
 -proxy=<ip:port>  Connect through socks4 proxy
 -addnode=<ip>     Add a node to connect to
 -connect=<ip>     Connect only to the specified node
 -server           Accept command line and JSON-RPC commands
 -daemon           Run in the background as a daemon and accept commands
 -?                This help message

Bitcoin.conf Configuration File

All command-line options (except for -datadir and -conf) may be specified in a configuration file, and all configuration file options may also be specified on the command line. Command-line options override values set in the configuration file.

The configuration file is a list of setting=value pairs, one per line, with optional comments starting with the '#' character.

The configuration file is not automatically created; you can create it using your favorite plain-text editor. By default, Bitcoin (or bitcoind) will look for a file named 'bitcoin.conf' in the bitcoin data directory, but both the data directory and the configuration file path may be changed using the -datadir and -conf command-line arguments.