bip32gen command not found

In this troubleshooting guide we learn how to fix bip32gen command not found error message

Introduction

When you run more command in linux terminal / console, you get the following error message

bip32gen: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: bip32gen: command not found

Solutions to bip32gen: command not found

How To Fix bip32gen: command not found in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux / Raspbian

In Ubuntu bip32gen is provided by python3-bip32utils package.

python3-bip32utils is:

The bip32utils library is a pure Python implementation of Bitcoin hierarchical deterministic wallet (“HD Wallet”) ECDSA key generation as specified in BIP0032 (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal #0032).

Deterministic ECDSA key generation allows creating a sequence of Bitcoin private and public ECDSA keys from an initial seed and a hierarchical set of indices. A number of benefits follow:

  • An entire wallet can be backed up once by storing the wallet seed or master extended private key, and all future addresses in the wallet can be restored from it.
  • The creation of public and private ECDSA keys may be separated from each other. That is, it is possible to create only the public ECDSA key half (and receiving address) of an ECDSA key pair, without the ability to create the private half. Thus, one can create receiving addresses on a public facing system that if compromised would not give the attacker the ability to spend bitcoin received at those addresses. A separate, offline machine can generate the corresponding private ECDSA keys and sign transactions.
  • Public and private ECDSA keys may be created in a hierarchy, and control over or visibility of portions of the hierarchy may be delegated to third parties. This has uses for auditing, for separating ECDSA key sequences into different logical groups or accounts, and for giving 3rd parties the ability to create spending transactions without first getting a receiving address in advance.

To fix this problem, we can install more using the command below.

sudo apt-get -y install python3-bip32utils

This command might take some time to finish depending on your machine internet connection.

You can also use apt command to install python3-bip32utils.

sudo apt -y install python3-bip32utils

Or if you have aptitude installed you can use the following command.

sudo aptitude install python3-bip32utils

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to fix bip32gen command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.