Running NameCoin under CentOS and RedHat 6.2

This is a follow-up to the my notes on Compiling NameCoin under CentOS and RedHat 6.2. After the successful compilation, I've tried to start the software and... got a core dump. Running it under debugger quickly revealed the source of problem.

Upon startup, NameCoin daemon attempts to load wallet keys or generate a new wallet if one does not exist (i.e. the wallet.dat file is missing in the data directory, set in the configuration). In either case, it uses OpenSSL to create or load an Elliptic Curve (ECC) key. ECC keys are initialized with certain parameters. Normally, OpenSSL users would use EC_GROUP_new_by_curve_name API call and pass in the unique identifier of the pre-configured parameter set that was shipped with OpenSSL. Apparently, not all OpenSSL distributions are created the same. The version on CentOS and RedHat 6.2 is missing the NID_secp256k1 definition, which results in failure to initialize the key on these platforms.

I've created and submitted a patch, based on ideas and some code from similar patch for BitCoin. However, my patch is still not accepted. Feel free to apply it manually in the mean time.