Unable to deploy smart contract on private blockchain

Question

I'm trying to setup a private blockchain and deploy some contracts to it. I have the blockchain running but I am running into issues when I'm trying to deploy a contract to it.

This is my genesis block:

{
   "config": {
      "chainId": 1994,
      "homesteadBlock": 0,
      "eip150Block": 0,
      "eip155Block": 0,
      "eip158Block": 0,
      "byzantiumBlock": 0
   },
   "difficulty": "1",
   "gasLimit": "900000000",
   "alloc": {
      "0xE9cA452f53C9541eDf0461A4160D348d6953C230": { 
          "balance": "9999999999999999" 
      }
   }
}

And I'm running it with this:

./geth/build/bin/geth --datadir ./geth/data --networkid 1994 --rpc --rpcport 8543 --rpcaddr 127.0.0.1 --rpccorsdomain "*" --rpcapi "eth,net,web3,personal,miner" --allow-insecure-unlock --unlock "0xe9ca452f53c9541edf0461a4160d348d6953c230" console 2>>eth_log.log

I am trying to deploy the following smart contract:

pragma solidity >=0.5.16;
contract helloWorld {
    function render() public pure returns (string memory) {
        return 'Hello World!';
    }
}

However truffle is giving me the following error when I do:

======================

   Deploying 'Migrations'
   ----------------------
   > transaction hash:    0xbd2e3abaf89fe79f3942270847bb981c0f3bb3c0113a758a41baf42d9dfa855f
   > Blocks: 0            Seconds: 0
   > contract address:    0x63BaB74Bf18c73c3E38D85fc3c04CCd53d2C5AE0
   > block number:        489
   > block timestamp:     1615140207
   > account:             0xE9cA452f53C9541eDf0461A4160D348d6953C230
   > balance:             1467.009999999999999999
   > gas used:            221555 (0x36173)
   > gas price:           0.000000001 gwei
   > value sent:          0 ETH
   > total cost:          0.000000000000221555 ETH


   ⠴ Saving migration to chain.
Transaction: 0x530d80bd2fff3265cdbc94d5bf6cf41d5c937e4be4b84789a4110224cf8babf2 exited with an error (status 0) after consuming all gas.
     Please check that the transaction:
     - satisfies all conditions set by Solidity `assert` statements.
     - has enough gas to execute the full transaction.
     - does not trigger an invalid opcode by other means (ex: accessing an array out of bounds).
Truffle v5.2.3 (core: 5.2.3)
Node v10.19.0

I'm obviously missing something but I can't spot it. Can someone let me know how to get this contract deployed? Thanks

EDIT: It seems to be happening during the "Saving migration to chain" of the 1_initial_migration.js file. These are my settings of my truffle config file:

development: {
      host: "127.0.0.1",     // Localhost (default: none)
      port: 8545,            // Standard Ethereum port (default: none)
      network_id: "*",       // Any network (default: none)
      from: "0x....",
    },

Answer 1

I finally figured this out, it was a silly error in my genesis file. I'm answering here in case anyone has the same problem in the future.

I ran truffle using the --verbose-rpc

truffle migrate --network development --verbose-rpc

It showed me this error: "message": "invalid opcode: SHR"

After doing some googling it seems the newer solidity versions require some features enabled in Constantine and Petersburg. So I needed to add that to my genesis file.

{

   "config": {

      "chainId": 1994,

      "homesteadBlock": 0,

      "eip150Block": 0,

      "eip155Block": 0,

      "eip158Block": 0,

      "byzantiumBlock": 0,
      "constantinopleBlock": 0,
      "petersburgBlock": 0

   },

   "difficulty": "20",

   "gasLimit": "99999999",

   "alloc": {

      "0x1C9A64389D98DB6A5a57553c85fB48a98ab24FcC": { 

          "balance": "900000000000000000000000" 

      }

   }

}

Presumably this would all have been avoided if I had used something like puppeth to generate my genesis file, which is what I will be looking into now...