can't get my ethereum out of my geth coinbase, why?

Question

So I have 5 ETH stuck in my geth coinbase. Can't seem to get them out anyway I try (my ethereum wallet is not fully syncronized, and at around 80% and it went back again to 0%). I'm afraid to close my geth rpc window because I lost my first 5 eth when I did this a month ago. I tried updating my account,I tried export, and other things, but it does not seem to work anyway. How can i get those ethereums out of there? Do I have to fully sync to the blockchain? Here's an error message I get when I tell geth to send the Transaction: Error: exceeds block gas limit at web3.js:3104:20 at web3.js:6191:15 at web3.js:5004:36 at :1:1

Please help and Thank you in advanced.

Answer 1

The coinbase, is just the public wallet address where mining rewards are sent. As long as you have the private key for the wallet address you do not risk losing any Ether.

Do note, that if your mining node indicates a reward for mined blocks. It can happen that your reward is revoked if the block gets rejected by the network later. This can happen over a span of few minutes or sometimes hours.

You can use etherscan.io to check the Ether in your wallet to be very sure.

Answer 2

If you want to get the ETH out without syncing, I can recommend using the website, myetherwallet.com, it will take your .json file (with the encrypted private key) and password as input.

The .json file is located in the keystore directory.