You plug your hardware wallet into the computer, run Electrum or Sparrow, try to create a new wallet, and Damn it, the computer doesn’t detect the device. We are still early.
If you’re using Sparrow with Linux, the solution is easy. Go to the menu and select “Install Udev Rules”:
On a Linux machine running Electrum, it could be that the UDEV rules need to be updated. Guides to do this exist, but this is a more basic walkthrough so anyone can do it.
First, update your Linux machine:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Then, check if you have PIP installed:
pip --version
If it reports back that PIP is not installed, it will give you the command to install it:
sudo apt-get install python3-pip
This assumes you have python 3. If you don’t have python3, you can either install it, or use python 2. In the latter case, use python2-pip in the command above where you see python2-pip. The installation will take several minutes.
Install the protocol on your hardware wallet
For the commands below, use python2 instead of python3 if you don’t have python3. I haven’t tested it, but I think it should work.
ColdCard
python3 -m pip install ckcc-protocol
BitBox02
python3 -m pip install bitbox02
Trezor
python3 -m pip install trezor[hidapi]
Ledger
python3 -m pip install btchip-python ecdsa Jade python3 -m pip install pyserial cbor
Configure the Rules
The GitHub page for Electrum has a page to copy the rules for various hardware wallets:
The far left column is a link to text documents for the corresponding hardware wallets. For the ColdCard, you’ll need the second one, “51-coinkite.rules”; the others are obvious. Right-click and save the appropriate file, making sure not to change the file name, or the “rules” extension.
Next, copy or move the file to the following directory:
/etc/udev/rules.d/
Then execute the following commands, one after another:
sudo groupadd plugdev
sudo usermod -aG plugdev $(whoami)
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm trigger
Electrum should now detect your hardware wallet. Note, some devices will tell you to connect proprietary software to use the device. Ignore this and proceed to create a wallet with Electrum and when Electrum scans for a device, the device should ask for your PIN at that point, +/- passphrase if required.
Tips:
Static Lightning Address: dandysack84@walletofsatoshi.com