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I'm running a local Parity node for the testnet (Ropsten) on Debian (Jessie). I'm using web3.py to connect to this node and create transactions.

I've created a new account:

parity account new --chain ropsten

I'm running my parity node with the following options

/usr/bin/parity --chain ropsten --no-ui --rpcapi 'eth,web3,personal' --jsonrpc-interface 127.0.0.1 --bootnodes 'enode://20c9ad97c081d63397d7b685a412227a40e23c8bdc6688c6f37e97cfbc22d2b4d1db1510d8f61e6a8866ad7f0e17c02b14182d37ea7c3c8b9c2683aeb6b733a1@52.169.14.227:30303,enode://6ce05930c72abc632c58e2e4324f7c7ea478cec0ed4fa2528982cf34483094e9cbc9216e7aa34969124257[email protected]:30303'

When I test this node, it's running fine, see the following python shell:

Python 3.4.2 (default, Oct  8 2014, 10:45:20) 
[GCC 4.9.1] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from web3 import Web3, KeepAliveRPCProvider, IPCProvider
>>> web3 = Web3(KeepAliveRPCProvider(host='localhost', port='8545'))
>>> web3.eth.blockNumber
1012932

However, when I try to unlock my account it returns False (with a proper account hash and password ofcourse)

>>> web3.personal.unlockAccount('my-account-hash', 'some-password')
False

When I check if it's actually in my list of accounts, I get the following:

>>> web3.personal.listAccounts
[]

Any ideas would be kindly appreciated.

Improve this question
3
  • The account you want to unlock is not available, list accounts returns an empty array. You can not unlock an account that is not available. See this answer.
    – q9f
    Jun 2, 2017 at 11:59
  • Can you explain what you mean with available? I made the account in parity and I am 100% sure the passphrase is correct.
    – Niels Van Diermen
    Jun 2, 2017 at 18:40
  • >>> web3.personal.listAccounts returns []. Can you find out why? Are you using a different datadir or keypath?
    – q9f
    Jun 2, 2017 at 18:45

2 Answers 2

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The RPC methods under personal_* are not exposed by default. The question set it up correctly. (although today, the correct arg is --jsonrpc-apis 'eth,web3,personal').

If you are still failing to connect, and you are using IPC, note that the argument above only sets up calls over HTTP. If you are using IPC, you need to use --ipc-apis 'eth,web3,personal' instead.

If you would rather not expose the personal APIs, for security reasons, you can use the eth_accounts RPC call.

>>> web3.eth.accounts
['0x...']
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3
  • How would you use this to unlock an account, rather than just list it?
    – blockchaindotsol
    Sep 25, 2017 at 22:24
  • Parity does expose it, but my test failed when hitting the endpoint. I updated the answer to include the pitfall I ran into (The personal API is not exposed by default)
    – carver
    Sep 26, 2017 at 0:33
  • Worked with @blockchaindotsol offline to make sure they are using the right json-rpc-over-http port (rather than the ui port default).
    – carver
    Sep 26, 2017 at 0:39
-1

We found the issue, we did not define the key directory properly. Thanks for the help!

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1
  • 1
    Hi there - can you add a few more specific details about how the directory wasn't defined? (e.g. A typo in the name, or something like that?) It might help others in future. And get more upvotes :-)
    – Richard Horrocks
    Jun 3, 2017 at 10:07

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