I have bitcoin-qt-0.8.1-beta installed on a computer. I also have another computer in which I'd like to share the same wallet.

First, for backup purposes, I have exported the wallet into a backup file and saved it on cloud (the wallet is encrypted!!!). Now I can retrieve this new wallet wherever I want. Given that the new workstation is secure enough to handle Bitcoins, I'd like to import the existing wallet file into the second computer.

I see options for exporting the wallet in bitcoin-qt, not vice versa.

I understand this question is very similar to How to import my wallet? but in my case I'm going to show my try-and-fail.

Copying wallet.dat wasn't successful onto a computer running bitcoin-qt-0.8.1 for Linux (notice that it's not the beta)

bitcoin-qt -debug


************************
EXCEPTION: St13runtime_error       
CDB() : can't open database file wallet.dat, error 22       
bitcoin in Runaway exception

The error is always the same. Even salvaging the wallet doesn't help, because my old addresses don't appear. I repeat, I transferred wallet.dat across different versions of bitcoin-qt.

I could think about dumping the private keys in the old client (which is still available and running, but not at my hand's reach), but I want to ask if there is a smart way to transfer an entire encrypted wallet from a computer to another.

In fact, the backup wallet option should be there for a reason, shouldn't it????