For the past 7 days I've been trying to make the greeter contract, I've been through 4 different physical computers in 2 different locations and have tried multiple different ways on 3 different operating systems.
I've attempted all the tries above with both the geth and c++ eth client, I've also made attempts with the online web compiler and mix.
After 7 days, I have not been able to create any contract yet, I'm attempting to follow the https://www.ethereum.org/greeter page so I can move onto the other tutorial exercises to complete the exercises on the ethereum.org page.
I'm following the page instructions verbatim line-by-line and directly copying what it tells me to copy, and I've managed to get as far as compiling the contract and telling it to deploy. It asks me for my account password and I enter it which it then completes. My account does have ethereum in it.
But the problem is the instructions say the greeter variable is suppose to contain an address you can track on the network as its being mined or completed and it does contain an address but the address is undefined, it remains undefined indefinitely. Also my account is never deducted any currency, the account value remains the same. Of course this means
eth.getCode(greeter.address)
Also errors out as it can't get a code to an undefined address. This baffles me and so far I haven't been able to find any help anywhere on this. I just assumed it was a software bug and that probably not very many people have created contracts but then I saw a ethereum youtube video saying there were like 500,000 contracts and it seems the community is very vibrant with contract design so what could I possibly be missing thats causing this error.
In case your wondering, my latest attempt is on Mac OSX with the geth client but I have access to Windows and Linux as well as the c++ eth client if need be.
web3.fromWei(eth.getBalance(eth.accounts[0]))
should return more than 0.002 or so.