Following this webpage  and this one (beware, some steps are deprecated), I’ve been able to create my own ethereum private blockchain. I document it here for those who would like to do the same.

Create a new user, group and home directory, for example privateeth1 and install geth for this user

sudo su
useradd privateeth1
groupadd privateeth
mkdir /home/privateeth1
chown privateeth1:privateeth /home/privateeth1
apt-get install -y build-essential libgmp3-dev golang
sudo su privateeth1
mkdir /home/privateeth1/ethereum
cd /home/privateeth1/ethereum
git clone https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum
cd go-ethereum/
make geth

create the genesis block and initialise the blockchain

cd /home/privateeth1/ethereum/
cat > genesisBlock.json
{
“nonce”: “0x0000000000000042”,
“mixhash”: “0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000”,
“difficulty”: “0x4000”,
“alloc”: {},
“coinbase”: “0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000”,
“timestamp”: “0x00”,
“parentHash”: “0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000”,
“extraData”: “Custom Ethereum Genesis Block”,
“gasLimit”: “0xffffffff”
}
^C
go-ethereum/build/bin/geth init genesisBlock.json

start up geth in a customised port and network Id

go-ethereum/build/bin/geth –networkid 9999

open a new terminal and attach a geth console

go-ethereum/build/bin/geth attach

from within the geth console create an account and write down the address. We will initialise the amount of Ether to this account.

> personal.newAccount()

Edit the genesis block to add your account’s initial balance, afterwards initialise the blockchain again

cd /home/privateeth1/ethereum/
cat > genesisBlock.json
{
“nonce”: “0x0000000000000042”,
“mixhash”: “0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000”,
“difficulty”: “0x4000”,
“alloc”: {

“write here the account address that you received from personal.newAccount(), for example 0x55a0040fd8ac1177d598e8880cee248c7c9ac1b9”:

{ “balance”:”10000000000000000000000″ }

},
“coinbase”: “0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000”,
“timestamp”: “0x00”,
“parentHash”: “0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000”,
“extraData”: “Custom Ethereum Genesis Block”,
“gasLimit”: “0xffffffff”
}
^C
go-ethereum/build/bin/geth init genesisBlock.json

Now you can run geth again and you will see the balance in your account to have been updated.

go-ethereum/build/bin/geth –networkid 1234 console
> web3.fromWei(eth.getBalance(eth.coinbase),”ether”)

next step is to install geth on another computer and have them communicate. I leave that for the next post 🙂