Clarification on updating to v0.12

Question

So I'm trying to update to the newest version of the wallet.

I found these instructions and am trying to follow them.

I'm trying to do it thru the gui but I'll do whatever is easier.

Download the new binaries (the .zip file (Windows) or the tar.bz2 file (Mac OS X and Linux)) from the official website or Github.

Extract the new binaries to a new directory of your liking.

Copy over the wallet files from the old directory (the one that contains the v0.11.0.0 or v0.11.1.0 binaries).

So in this last step I don't get what the binary files are. All I see in my monero folder is dll files, some exe files and a bat file, then some folders. Please, I'm confused. What do I need to do exactly?

I have like k4 xmr caught up at an exchange because of this.

After googling binary file its the exe file right? I want to be 100% sure im doing this. I just copy and overwrite the old exe files with the new ones? I have my priv key and stuff if i need to restore my wallet but id rather not have to resynch it again.

Ok so i copied over all the exe files into my monero folder i did the pop blocks cmd twice cause i thought the base number per day was 600 not 800 so i did 3600 then 4800. I got the dameon running plus the cmd line i used for the pop blocks. Its stuck at 1542123 and its not advancing...

i guess im slowly figuring this out on my own i restarted monerod and its synching past the stuck block now

Answer 1

The binary files are the .exe files, and I guess the .dll files too. The ones from 0.11.1.0 are wholly obsoleted by the ones in 0.12.0.0, and you should use only the ones from 0.12.0.0.

The wallet files are FOO and FOO.keys, with FOO being whatever you named your wallet. You don't necessarily have to copy them, if you give the path to them when loading monero-wallet-cli, ie:

./monero-wallet-cli --wallet-file /home/yourlogin/monero/walletname

Replace yourlogin and walletname with the right names. And set the path to wherever the wallet files are.

I think the instructions tell you to copy because they assume you put your wallet in the same directory as the binaries, which you might or might not have done.

In any case, if you delete any directory, make sure you didn't put your wallet files in there first.