Deploying custom code to private network results in “instrinsic gas too low” or “check your gas” errors

Question

TL:DR My first contract fails to deploy reporting variously:

• Error: intrinsic gas too low undefined
• Error: The contract code couldn't be stored, please check your gas amount. undefined

Having just investigated Hyperledger Fabric, I thought I'd try my hand at converting it's fabcar example to Ethereum.

I'm running an Ethereum private network with:

geth --dev --ipcpath ${HOME}/Library/Ethereum/geth.ipc

and then attaching to this with:

geth attach ipc://${HOME}/Library/Ethereum/geth.ipc

I wrote fabcarSource.sol using an example (link) and taking some feedback from solc. The original uses an associative array (JavaScript object here) but the sample I followed uses a regular array and so I am here at least to get this deployed. [Feedback welcome.]

pragma solidity ^0.4.9;

contract Fabcar {

    struct Car {
        string colour;
        string make;
        string model;
        string owner;
    }

    Car[] cars;

    function changeCarOwner (uint k, string newOwner)
        public
    {
        if (k<cars.length) {
            cars[k].owner = newOwner;
            return true;
        } else {
            return false;
        }
    }
    function createCar(string colour, string make, string model, string owner)
        public
        returns (uint)
    {
        return cars.push(Car(colour,make,model,owner));
    }
    function initLedger() {
        cars.push(Car("Dark Gray","Ford","Escape","Daz"));
        cars.push(Car("Blue","Audi","A5","Karo"));
    }
    function queryCar(uint k)
        public
        view
        returns (Car)
    {
        if (k<cars.length) {
            return cars[k];
        }
    }
    function queryAllCars()
        public
        view
        returns (Car[])
    {
        return cars;
    }


}

Per my guide (link):

echo var fabcarSource = > fabcarSource.js && \
solc --combined-json abi,bin,interface fabcarSource.sol >> fabcarSource.js

and then:

personal.unlockAccount(eth.accounts[0]);
loadScript("fabcarSource.js");
var fabcarContract = web3.eth.contract(
  JSON.parse(fabcarSource.contracts["fabcarSource.sol:Fabcar"].abi));
var gasValue = eth.estimateGas({
  date:"0x"+fabcarSource.contracts["fabcarSource.sol:Fabcar"].bin
});

and a check:

> gasValue
53000

and, after more Googling:

> eth.getBlock("latest").gasLimit
4712388
> eth.getBalance(eth.coinbase)
4.875e+21

BUT:

var fabcar=fabcarContract.new(
  {
    from:eth.accounts[0],
    data:"0x"+fabcarSource.contracts["fabcarSource.sol:Fabcar"].bin,
    gas:400000
  },
  function(e,contract){
    console.log(e,contract);
    if (typeof contract.address !== "undefined") {
      console.log(
        "Contract mined! Address: " + contract.address + 
        " transactionHash: " + contract.transactionHash
      );
    }
  }
);

and using gasValue, gasValue+50000, 300000 (tutorial), 500000 results in the errors up-top.

Any help would be much appreciated!

As others have pointed out, the getting started instructions are frustratingly out-of-date and increase abandonment. Please fix!

https://ethereum.org/greeter

I found several very helpful links: one on StackExchange for using a private network (link) and another that got me a sample deployed (link) and I was able to get greeter deployed thanks to them. But this took time and I remain close to giving up.

Answer 1

I believe my deployment errors were solely related to an incorrect gas value.

It remains unclear to me how to determine the gas value for deployments when eth.estimateGas was so far from the value I needed.

Setting the gas value to 4.7m (in this case) works, reliably.

The value is approximately eth.getBlock("latest").gasLimit (4,712,388) and I assume that's relevant.