How to allocate some ether to ethereum testnet accounts?

Question

Question: How can I get some ether in Ethereum testnet/dev or even private blockchain?

I'm totally confused. If I use a customized genesis block like this:

{
"config": {
    "chainId":123 ,
    "homesteadBlock": 0,
    "eip155Block": 0,
    "eip158Block": 0
  },

"nonce": "0x0000000000000042",     "timestamp": "0x0",
"parentHash": 
"0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
"extraData": "0x00",     "gasLimit": "0x8000000",     "difficulty": 
 "0x400",
 "mixhash": 
 "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
 "coinbase": "0x3333333333333333333333333333333333333333",
 "alloc":{"0x17e6672b3a917b7543d44e07846358aaa22a4379":{
 "balance":"8000000000000000000"

 }}

 }

Then if I do

geth --datadir ~/.ethereum_private init ~/CustomGenesis.json 

this error appears:

   Fatal: Failed to write genesis block: database already contains an 
   incompatible genesis block (have 6650a0ac6c5e8054, new 
   644f9b97e5f57df7)

If I leave the "alloc" field empty the error would not show up anymore (but I don't have any ether).

The other option to get some ether is to mine:

 miner.start(1)

But if I do that, null appears. So, I cannot get any ether again.

We don't have this kind of problems when we're using truffle + testrpc. As it allocates ether to all the accounts we create.

So I don't know how I can get some ether in Ethereum testnet/dev or even private blockchain.

Answer 1

You cannot change the genesis parameters from already initialized the private blockchain.

You have to reset the blockchain eliminating any previous transaction.

geth --datadir <your_data_directory> removedb

And then you can execute

geth --datadir <your_data_directory> init <your_genesis_file>

Answer 2

To create a private blockchain with balance ether.

Save the below code in genesis.json

{
"config": {
    "chainId": 15,
    "homesteadBlock": 0,
    "eip155Block": 0,
    "eip158Block": 0
},
"nonce": "0x0000000000000042",
"difficulty": "0x40",
"gasLimit": "21000000000000000",
"alloc": {
    "0x95490e50a8b43348fa198bad08d4de211fb2b887": { "balance": "100000000000000000000000000" },
    "0xa4f6f95b6cb36025dd09c9f5fe068e401951e963": { "balance": "10000000000000000000" }
}

}

Initialise the node us

geth --datadir "node1" init "/path/to/genesis.json"

Then get into the java console using

geth --datadir "node1" --rpc console

In java console create the coinbase account using

personal.newAccount("Password")

Method 1:

Then start the mining process using

miner.start(1)

Now you can check the balance using

eth.getBalance(eth.accounts[0])

You can able to find the balance

Method 2:

After creating the account copy the account address and close the java console. Then delete the keystore file under node1 folder using

rm -rf `ls | grep -v keystore`

Then replace the account address with the copied one and balances as you wish in the genesis.json file. Then again initialise the node1 using

geth --datadir "node1" init "/path/to/genesis.json"

Connect to the java console and query the balance, now you will have the balance as you mentioned in genesis.json