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Is it possible to run another instance of bitcoin-qt dedicated to testnet/regtest? If so, how do i do this?
My question is similar to "Running two bitcoind instances for different nets," but I want to associate bitcoin-qt, not just bitcoind, with the testnet/regtest.
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Depending on your OS you can start a 2nd bitcoin-qt acting on a non-mainnet with ./bitcoin-qt -testnet or ./bitcoin-qt -regtest (from a shell). You can also define a custom datadir and place a bitcoin.conf there (use bitcoin-qt -datadir=<path>).
On OSX/Mac you would need to use Terminal and run something like /Applications/Bitcoin-Qt.app/Contents/MacOS/Bitcoin-Qt -regtest
Oh, I didn't know it was that easy! thank you! The datadir flag was just what I was looking for, too, although don't testnet/regtest have their own dedicated directories anyways? (At least regtest does, according to the Bitcoin Developer Examples documentation: "Regtest wallets and block chain state (chainstate) are saved in the regtest subdirectory of the Bitcoin Core configuration directory.")
I just ran bitcoin-qt -regtest, and it launched with a green icon, distinguishing it from my already-running red one! Nice! – Geremia – 2015-06-11T01:30:03.763
2Right. Testnet and regtest has their own subdirectories. But not for the bitcoin.conf. So if you'd like to set -regtest (or similar) within the config and only set -datadir while executing the binary, this would require different data directories (which is always a good idea if you run multiple nodes). – Jonas Schnelli – 2015-06-11T05:16:44.610
+1 for researching and clarifying how your question is different than a similar question. – morsecoder – 2015-06-11T13:41:02.723