Parity PoA chain not receiving transactions

Question

I'm trying to set up a single node proof-of-authority chain. I am using Parity v1.7.7 and have the following config file:

{
  "name": "LocalPoA_7545",
  "engine": {
    "instantSeal": {
      "params": {}
    }
  },
  "params": {
    "gasLimitBoundDivisor": "0x400",
    "maximumExtraDataSize": "0x20",
    "minGasLimit": "0x1388",
    "networkID": "0x1d79"
  },
  "genesis": {
    "seal": {
      "ethereum": {
        "nonce": "0x00006d6f7264656e",
        "mixHash": "0x00000000000000000000000000000000000000647572616c65787365646c6578"
      }
    },
    "difficulty": "0x20000",
    "author": "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
    "timestamp": "0x00",
    "parentHash": "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
    "extraData": "0x",
    "gasLimit": "0x1312d00"
  },
  "account": {
    "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000001": { "balance": "1", "builtin": { "name": "ecrecover", "pricing": { "linear": { "base": 3000, "word": 0 } } } },
    "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000002": { "balance": "1", "builtin": { "name": "sha256", "pricing": { "linear": { "base": 60, "word": 12 } } } },
    "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000003": { "balance": "1", "builtin": { "name": "ripemd160", "pricing": { "linear": { "base": 600, "word": 120 } } } },
    "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000004": { "balance": "1", "builtin": { "name": "identity", "pricing": { "linear": { "base": 15, "word": 3 } } } }
    "0xc66eef4851b436dea3fd6492efac8784fc061612": { "balance": "1000000000000000000000" }
  }
}

I am able to boot the node without problems, and I can connect to it with geth attach. However, the node won't pick up any transactions either in the geth console or through truffle migrate, i.e. I am sending transactions to the correct port but my log file looks like this:

2017-12-12 14:17:25  Public node URL: enode://6c6797154a0781b45a4a93ff97c7e4cf69d465910039c09d1be5a5f5e6afd4880426ca267da93a73b96b4bbd99ed3799ce3c2d5aba72e57c16a88fbfb7d827b4@192.168.1.65:7547
2017-12-12 14:17:50     0/25 peers      8 KiB chain    8 KiB db  0 bytes queue 448 bytes sync  RPC:  0 conn,  7 req/s, 784 µs
2017-12-12 14:18:20     0/25 peers      8 KiB chain    8 KiB db  0 bytes queue 448 bytes sync  RPC:  0 conn,  0 req/s,  68 µs
2017-12-12 14:18:50     0/25 peers      8 KiB chain    8 KiB db  0 bytes queue 448 bytes sync  RPC:  0 conn,  0 req/s,  78 µs

Note that it is not picking up any transactions.

Am I missing something in my config file?

Edit: May or may not be relevant, but my geth console does not show anything for eth.accounts (there should be at least one per the config).

Answer 1

I have figured this out. I was not using an --engine-signer, so no one was sealing the transactions. Once I specified this flag, I got an error saying the account was not associated with the specified chain. Although I seeded accounts on the chain with ether in the genesis, this is not the same as having accounts on Parity itself. Thus, I needed to set a --keys-path and have keystore files in there to generate accounts.

With the --engine-signer account unlocked, my chain is now sealing transactions.