Note: If you don’t have a genesis file, one is provided at the end.<\/p>\n
The run<\/p>\n
>\u00a0geth --datadir .\/chaindata --networkid 1994<\/span><\/pre>\nto spin up the private Ethereum blockchain<\/p>\n
Mist<\/h3>\n
The easiest way to connect Mist to this private blockchain is to start it via command line and passing in the location of the ipc file with the rpc flag.<\/p>\n
> .\/Mist --rpc \/Users\/cloudnthings\/privatechain\/chaindata\/geth.ipc<\/span><\/pre>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Screen-Shot-2018-02-09-at-11.24.23-AM-300x172.png\")
<\/p>\n
You should get the word PRIVATE-NET at the top. Click Launch Application and you should be away.<\/p>\n
If you get this error:<\/p>\n
NCAUGHT EXCEPTION { Error: connect ENOENT Users\/cloudnthings\/privatechain\/chaindata\/geth.ipc<\/span><\/p>\nThen it means you have your syntax wrong. The most common mistake is not having a double dash before rpc (- – rpc)<\/p>\n
MetaMask<\/h3>\n
To connect to MetaMask, you need to start the private Ethereum blockchain with an extra rpc flag.<\/p>\n
>\u00a0geth --datadir .\/chaindata --networkid 1994 --rpc<\/span><\/pre>\nYou can connect to the blockchain as per normal via geth attach like so:<\/p>\n
>\u00a0geth attach http:\/\/127.0.0.1:8545<\/span><\/pre>\nor in MetaMask, simple choose localhost<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Screen-Shot-2018-02-09-at-11.09.22-AM-227x300.png\")
<\/p>\n
The balance will be zero so be sure to import an account<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Screen-Shot-2018-02-09-at-11.10.22-AM.png\")
<\/p>\n
and find the JSON keystore file which you can locate in the folder where your private chain data is sitting.<\/p>\n
You should then be able to run<\/p>\n
>\u00a0web3.eth.accounts<\/span><\/pre>\nto confirm the public address is the same and then<\/p>\n
> eth.getBalance(web3.eth.accounts[0])<\/span><\/pre>\nwhere the 2 balances should match.<\/p>\n
A neat extension to this is to try mining and seeing the balance increase. Unfortunately Web3 does not expose the miner object via rpc<\/a> so you’ll have to connect via ipc like so:<\/p>\n>\u00a0geth attach ipc:\/Users\/cloudnthings\/privatechain\/chaindata\/geth.ipc<\/span><\/pre>\nand then run miner.start() and miner.stop(). If you watch MetaMask you’ll see the balance jump up in real time!<\/p>\n
Genesis file sample<\/h3>\n{\r\n \"config<\/span>\": {\r\n \"chainId<\/span>\": 1994<\/span>,\r\n \"homesteadBlock<\/span>\": 0<\/span>,\r\n \"eip155Block<\/span>\": 0<\/span>,\r\n \"eip158Block<\/span>\": 0<\/span>,\r\n \"byzantiumBlock<\/span>\": 0<\/span>\r\n }<\/span>,\r\n \"difficulty<\/span>\": \"400\"<\/span><\/span>,\r\n \"gasLimit<\/span>\": \"2000000\"<\/span><\/span>,\r\n \"alloc<\/span>\": {\r\n \"7b684d27167d208c66584ece7f09d8bc8f86ffff<\/span>\": { \r\n \"balance<\/span>\": \"100000000000000000000000\"<\/span> \r\n }\r\n }\r\n<\/span>}<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you have geth, the Go Ethereum client running and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethereum"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/geth.jpg",300,203,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/geth-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/geth-300x203.jpg",300,203,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/geth.jpg",300,203,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/geth.jpg",300,203,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/geth.jpg",300,203,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/geth.jpg",300,203,false],"chromenews-featured":["https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/geth.jpg",300,203,false],"chromenews-large":["https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/geth.jpg",300,203,false],"chromenews-medium":["https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/geth.jpg",300,203,false]},"author_info":{"info":["seandotau"]},"category_info":"Ethereum<\/a>","tag_info":"Ethereum","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1824"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1850,"href":"https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824\/revisions\/1850"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talkcrypto.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}