from a newbie to newbies
I believe that a development environment is one of the access key in learning new technologies. I didn't find on the internet a simple and common path to make the Ropsten network, the Ethereum public testnet, work.
So I'm writing down a couple of command lines and links that can be useful to achieve it.
- Ethereum project
- Wiki
- Geth
is the the command line interface for running a full ethereum node implemented in Go - Mist
is the tool of choice to browse and use Ðapps.
All the libs etc. has been installed on a Macbook pro with:
- 2,7 GHz Intel Core i5
- 16 GB 1867 MHz DDR3
- 256GB SSD.
A good machine.
Launch the geth node only for blocks sync:
$ geth --testnet --fast --bootnodes "enode://20c9ad97c081d63397d7b685a412227a40e23c8bdc6688c6f37e97cfbc22d2b4d1db1510d8f61e6a8866ad7f0e17c02b14182d37ea7c3c8b9c2683aeb6b733a1@52.169.14.227:30303,enode://6ce05930c72abc632c58e2e4324f7c7ea478cec0ed4fa2528982cf34483094e9cbc9216e7aa349691242576d552a2a56aaeae426c5303ded677ce455ba1acd9d@13.84.180.240:30303"
When you see the node synching logs, you should be ready to launch Mist from your Application folder. Here is where I found my first difficulties. Mist wouldn't start and was reporting errors. In order to solve them, I launched Mist using the command line.
You can easily do it by opening a new terminal tab and by typing the following command:
$ /Applications/Mist.app/Contents/MacOS/Mist --rpc ~/Library/Ethereum/testnet/geth.ipc
As soon as Mist is launched, it recognizes the geth node running in the background and starts showing the download progress. Once the testnet blockchain download is finished, Mist will return the GUI which can be used to create your first address/wallet.
Create it now, you'll need that address in a second!
In order to start playing with smart contracts or trying simple transactions you'll need some ether. I read on the web that ether can be collected using a faucet which wasn't working; so I tried to mine some ether. Several guides on the internet report a Mist functionality allowing you to mine ether. However this only works when running a private network.
Since we are using the public network, we need to mine some ether using geth mining functionalities. To archive this:
- close the geth process you previously launched
- copy from Mist the address you previously created
- to be safe, close the Mist process you previously launched using the command line
Then:
- launch a new geth process and enable mining functionality and set the address to receive mined token as follows:
$ geth --testnet --fast --bootnodes "enode://20c9ad97c081d63397d7b685a412227a40e23c8bdc6688c6f37e97cfbc22d2b4d1db1510d8f61e6a8866ad7f0e17c02b14182d37ea7c3c8b9c2683aeb6b733a1@52.169.14.227:30303,enode://6ce05930c72abc632c58e2e4324f7c7ea478cec0ed4fa2528982cf34483094e9cbc9216e7aa349691242576d552a2a56aaeae426c5303ded677ce455ba1acd9d@13.84.180.240:30303" --etherbase 'YOUR_ADDRESS' --mine - launch Mist from the command line one more time
Now the chance to mine a block depends on your hardware. I've been able to mine 3.6 ETH in a couple of hours.