Part two of my hands on tutorial series on Ethereum. In the first video we installed Geth - in this one we actually get our hands dirty and start using it.

We are just creating a private local ethereal network - with two nodes - I show how to initialise a new blockchain from a sample genesis block, how to start the javascript console and some basic commands to get you started.

I start a miner, show the block height increasing and that the blockchain is being communicated across both separate nodes.

This is intended to be a very hands on tutorial so please follow along.

______________________________________________________________

Here is the script from the session.

NOTE angle brackets i.e. the GREATER THAN SYMBOL are not allowed in the description so I've replaced with &gt - you need to replace with the GREATER THAN symbol when running the command

0. Set up the environment

cd ~
mkdir ethereum

echo 'export ethereum_home=/Users/mattthomas/ethereum' (double right arrow) ~/.bash_profile ~/.bash_profile

cd ethereum
vi $ethereum_home/genesis.json
(pasre this with cmd v in edit mode)

{
"nonce": "0x0000000000000042",
"timestamp": "0x0",
"parentHash": "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
"extraData": "0x0",
"gasLimit": "0x8000000",
"difficulty": "0x400",
"mixhash": "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
"coinbase": "0x3333333333333333333333333333333333333333",
"alloc": {
}
}

Save with esc !wq

1. initialise the block
geth --datadir "$ethereum_home/youtube1" init "$ethereum_home/genesis.json"

2. start the console
geth --datadir "$ethereum_home/chain5" console 2 &gt console.log

3.create a 2nd node
geth --datadir "$ethereum_home/youtube1-a" init "$ethereum_home/genesis.json"

4. Start on a different port and specify networkid
geth --datadir "$ethereum_home/youtube1-a" --port 30304 --nodiscover --networkid 1234 console 2 &gt console.log

5. get the admin.nodeInfo enode from the second instance and copy it into admin.addPeer in the first node

6. Restart specifying IPC path
geth --datadir "$ethereum_home/youtube1-a" --port 30304 --nodiscover --ipcpath "$ethereum_home/youtube1-a/geth.ipc" --networkid 1234 console 2 &gt console.log

7 run get attach to attach another window to the node using the pic file
geth attach ipc:$ethereum_home/youtube1-a/geth.ipc

8 Key commands from the javascript console
Personal.newAccount()
(add password)
Miner.start(1) - start mining
eth.blockNumber - current block height
eth.getBlock(number).miner - miner of block at that number
eth.getBalance(account address) - current balance of that account