possible reason for insufficient funds for gas * price + value

Question

I have been researching this whole day, but I have a web3 instance, (the Web3 is version 1.0.0)

const web3 = new Web3(new Web3.providers.HttpProvider('https://ropsten.infura.io/<myKey>'));

Later I used it to sign a transaction (which is a call to a contract). I have

const contract = new web3.eth.Contract(abiArray, contractAddr);
var func = contract.methods.myMethod('foo', 'bar')

var encodedFunc = func.encodeABI();

var tx = {
    from: ownerWallet,
    to: contractAddr,
    gas: web3.utils.toHex(1000000), //1m, also tried string '1000000'
    gasPrice: web3.utils.toHex(20000000000), //20gwei, also tried string '20000000000'
    data: encodedFunc
}

//might just be unnecessary three lines
const account = web3.eth.accounts.privateKeyToAccount(ownerPrivate)
console.log(account)
web3.eth.getBalance(ownerWallet).then(console.log)

const signed = await web3.eth.accounts.signTransaction(tx, ownerPrivate)
var trans = web3.eth.sendSignedTransaction(signed.rawTransaction)

Error is like,

Error: Returned error: insufficient funds for gas * price + value

Everything seems quite normal. What could be the issue?

Answer 1

So... I figured out. The reason is Web3 takes the private key in 0xa0b1c2... format. I used to use ethereumjs-tx package, which takes a private key in const privateKey = new Buffer('a0b1c2...') without 0x

I changed to const privateKey = '0xa0b1c2...' and it worked.

Hope this helps whoever visits this page.