eth-scaffolder

Setup your private Ethereum network with a single config file.

Sometimes you want to test your Ethereum smart contract before you deploy it to Ethereum mainnet.
Now you can use eth-scaffolder to setup this private network on your local machine and test any process.

eth-scaffolder is a commandline tool with the following usage:

Flags	Description
-c, --configfile string	path to yaml ethereum private network config file w/o extension (default "config/config")
-i, --installroot string	root location of installation (default "/home/<user>")
-h, --help	prints this message

The only prerequisite is that you have a recent geth running on your local machine. It must be on your PATH.
You can download geth here: https://geth.ethereum.org/downloads/index.html

You clone the eth-scaffolder sources by git clone git@github.com:threehook/eth-scaffolder.git and build it by running make from the root directory.

Configuration

Configuration of the private network is defined in a yaml file.
Default the builtin config file is used (config/config.yaml). It is placed in the dist directory when building.
It looks like this:

Network:
  ChainId: 17
  Difficulty: "1"
  GasLimit: "0"
  GenesisNode:
    Dir: "testdata1"
    ListenAddr: 30301
    HttpPort: 8081
      # Only one node can have the genesis accounts
    accounts:
      - PasswordFile: "./password.txt"
        # Balance in Wei
        Balance: 300000000000000000000
      - PasswordFile: "./password.txt"
        Balance: 400000000000000000000
      - PasswordFile: "./password.txt"
        Balance: 500000000000000000000
  otherNodes:
    - Dir: "testdata2"
      ListenAddr: 30302
      HttpPort: 8082
      accounts:
        - PasswordFile: "./password.txt"
    - Dir: "testdata3"
      ListenAddr: 30303
      HttpPort: 8083
      accounts:
        - PasswordFile: "./password.txt"

If you want to define a different network you place it anywhere on your filesystem and use the -c flag to point to it.

Password files

Every account defined in the config file needs a password file.
A password file is a text file with on the first line your chosen password.
During testing you need this password to send ether or to deploy a smart contract.
A default password.txt file is placed in the dist direcory.
The password in this default password file is: *`secret`*

If you want to use your own password file(s) you can place them anywhere and point to them from the config file:

- PasswordFile: "./password.txt"

Running a node

You can run a node like this:
`geth --config /path/to/your_config.toml console 2>> ~/node1.log`
If you want to read more about using geth in a private ethereum network try googling with similar searches like `ethereum private network`

Note

Scaffolding a new network can **not** be done when a config file's `ListenAddr` is in use during the scaffolding. It will show an error message when you do!