How to connect geth client ( runing Ropsten testnet) with Mist on top of that without it's own geth node?

Question

Running Ubuntu as OS via Virtual Box and have finished my dapp with truffle.Now instead of using testrpc, I want to test the dapp in the live testnet.The actual one is Ropsten as I have found out.

So I installed the geth client and downloaded the Ropsten testnet blockchain. Then I also installed Mist wallet 0.8.7 latest version. However when I run the geth client first, connectetd to Ropsten testnet, I can not launch Mist wallet.Connecting to node geth, testnet, is failing is the message I' getting!

Any possibilities to make this work? Haven't found something really helpful so far.

And how long does it take to mine some ether on the new testnet? geth --testnet --mine seems to be the right command I suppose.

Some help is much appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

Mist starts its own geth process, which uses the same default chaindata database location as the geth client you run manually. When you start the geth client first, it acquires a lock on the database files and prevents Mist from accessing them.

If you need to run both of them simultaneously, use a separate data directory for geth by starting it with --datadir option.