Ethereum smart contract developers sometimes need to set up their own private blockchain network. In this article, we will try to give you a step by step instructions on how to set up an Ethereum Geth client on the Linux (Ubuntu) platform, which is used to create your own blockchain network.
What is Geth in ethereum?
geth is a command-line interface for running a full ethereum node implemented in the programming language Go. What we can do with Geth client? Well, a couple of things, including:
- mine real ether
- transfer funds between addresses
- create smart contracts
- send transactions
- explore block history
- etc
geth client is available for most popular operating systems, so you can install it on Linux, OsX or Windows.
How do you run Geth?
Installation guide
We decided to install geth client via the built-in Launchpad PPAs. Ethereum team provided a single PPA repository that contains both their stable and develop release for Ubuntu.
To enable launchpad repository, open terminal and execute this command:
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ethereum/ethereum
When you are done with that, you have to decide which release you would like to install. It can be stable or unstable. We will choose a stable version.
Now execute a command to update everything.
sudo apt-get update
When updating is done, run apt-get command that will install ethereum on your os.
sudo apt-get install ethereum
You will be asked about additional disk space, which you should allow by typing Y, otherwise, you won’t be able to install ethereum. If you continue installing, it will install everything you need for running Ethereum blockchain node, including geth client that we want to install.
When it’s done, you should see something like this:
And we are done!
Now you have installed EVM (ethereum virtual machine), puppeth, geth, etc…
To check if everything is installed correctly, try to run geth. If the Ethereum peer to peer node starts turning on, you are good.
This tutorial is a part of a series of tutorials about Ethereum smart contract development. If you want to create your own Ethereum blockchain network, the next step would be to create your own genesis file.