While we hope the Ethereum buying experience runs smoothly for everyone, we recognize that there will always be situations where things don’t go as planned. Perhaps your Internet connection dies in the middle of your purchase. Maybe you accidentally click the back button or some link or just hit refresh while the purchase is in progress. Maybe you forgot to download your wallet. Perhaps you think that you may have forgotten your password and want to make sure that you typed it correctly. For all of these situations, the user experience will unfortunately be a bit more complicated than just downloading a web app; some command line action with a python script will be required.
First, let’s go over downloading the python script. To install the script, download the zip file from here, and unzip it. Then navigate to the directory and you should see a number of files, including pyethsaletool.py. At this point, open a command line in this directory. To run python pyethsaletool.pyand you should see a list of help instructions.
Now, let’s go through the most common potential problems one by one.
1) I forgot to download my wallet before closing the browser tab.
You should receive a backup of your wallet in your email. If you entered a fake email address and at the same time forgot to download your wallet, you have no recourse, unfortunately.
2) I want to make sure that my ether has actually been bought.
To run python pyethsaletool.py list -w /path/to/your/wallet.json, replacing the path with the path where you downloaded your wallet. You should see a record of your purchase. If not, then run python pyethsaletool.py getbtcaddress -w /path/to/your/wallet.json and look for the address in blockchain.info. If there is a non-zero balance, you are in situation #4.
3) I want to make sure I remember my password.
To run python pyethsaletool.py getbtcprivkey -w /path/to/your/wallet.json, substituting the path. When it asks for the password, enter it and see if you get an error. If you get an error related to PKCS7 padding, you entered the wrong password; if you get a BTC private key (ie a sequence of 51 characters starting with a 5), then you’re fine.
4) I sent my BTC to the intermediate address, but it never made it to the exodus.
To run python pyethsaletool.py getbtcprivkey -w /path/to/your/wallet.json, substituting the path appropriately. Then, import this private key into the blockchain.info wallet either Kryptokit. Alternatively, you can also run python pyethsaletool.py finalize -w /path/to/your/wallet.json to finish the purchase process through Python.
5) I want to make sure that I will be able to access my ether later.
To run python pyethsaletool.py getethprivkey -w /path/to/your/wallet.json, substituting the path. then download stoneyinstall and use pyethtool privtoaddr c85ef7d79691fe79573b1a7064c19c1a9819ebdbd1faaab1a8ec92344438aaf4, substituting the Ethereum private key you got in the first step. If the address you get matches the address you saw when you were buying ether, then you know you have your Ethereum private key.
6) I sent more BTC to the intermediate address after the web app finished.
This situation is identical to #4. You can recover the BTC or finish it whenever you want.
If you have other problems, ask them in the comments and they will be added to this article.
