Can't unlock account while deploying contract with truffle

Question

I am trying to set up a private blockchain with geth, using truffle to deploy a smart contract to it. My goal is to get a private blockchain running with several accounts, deploy some contracts to it and connect some peers. It is supposed to be learning exercise.

I am running:

• geth 1.9.15
• truffle 5.1.30
• Ubuntu 18.04

Here are the steps I took to set up the private blockchain:

1. Create 5 accounts: geth account new --datadir private-chain --password pw.txt
2. Initialize blockchain: geth --datadir private-chain init private-chain/genesis-block.json
3. Start the console: geth --datadir private-chain --http --http.addr 127.0.0.1 --http.port 8545 --http.api eth,net,web3,personal --networkid 3456 console 2> private-chain/private-chain.log

My genesis-block.json file funded the new accounts with 120 ethers each.

When I try to deploy the contract with truffle, this is what I get:

Starting migrations...
======================
> Network name:    'geth'
> Network id:      3456
> Block gas limit: 2000000 (0x1e8480)


1_initial_migration.js
======================

   Deploying 'Migrations'
   ----------------------

Error:  *** Deployment Failed ***

"Migrations" -- Returned error: authentication needed: password or unlock.

So I tried to unlock the account by changing 1_initial_migration.js to the following:

const web3_lib = require ("web3");
const Migrations = artifacts.require ("Migrations.sol");

module.exports = function (deployer, network, addresses)
{
    const web3 = new web3_lib (new web3_lib.providers.HttpProvider ('http://127.0.0.1:8545'));
    console.log ('>>>>> Attempting to unlock account');
    console.log ('>>>>> Using password ' + process.env.GETH_PW);
    web3.eth.personal.unlockAccount ('0x1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef12345678', 'my-pw', 36000).then (console.log ('Account unlocked!'));

    console.log ('>>>>> Deploying migration');
    deployer.deploy (Migrations);
};

The "Account unlocked!" message was printed to the screen, but I got the same error as before.

Then I went to the geth console and tried to unlock the account from there and this was the result:

> web3.personal.unlockAccount ("0x1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef12345678", "my-pw", 36000)
GoError: Error: account unlock with HTTP access is forbidden at web3.js:6347:37(47)
    at native
    at <eval>:1:91(6)

Is this even possible? Is there something I am forgetting, or not understanding about how this is supposed to work? What would be the correct way to do what I am trying to do?

Answer 1

As said by MajdTL unlocking an account is not a good idea from a security perpective.

Usually the approach is to create a mnemonic account and use @truffle/hdwallet-provider to sign transactions without having to unlock it.

If you are just practicing the you will have to launch geth with an extra parameter --allow-insecure-unlock to indicate that you will use the unlock function. To get more geth's parameters look at their documentation.