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I'm trying to start Geth from an offline machine. An answer in a related question seems to indicate this is possible.

However, running the command $ geth hangs at Starting Server. Trying to attach an IPC console via geth attach fails, complaining about a missing geth.ipc file. Attempting to pass in one-off commands via console hangs as well.

I'm getting the feeling a network connection is needed for Geth to complete its bootstrapping process. Has this been the case for others, or should Geth be able to start offline?

I'm running Ubuntu 14.04 and Geth 1.4.0-unstable.

J-B
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StuffAndThings
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  • Also tried Geth v1.3.4. Same result. – StuffAndThings Mar 03 '16 at 03:31
  • I'm not really sure why you would want to do this, but if you just want to experiment with the software and simulate a network locally maybe something like the https://github.com/ethereumjs/testrpc is what you need? – MrChico Mar 04 '16 at 01:22
  • The intention was to use geth as a means to sign transactions on a cold storage machine that wouldn't have access to the internet. Just browsing quickly through the advertised methods on testrpc, it doesn't look to be capable of this. – StuffAndThings Mar 04 '16 at 01:40
  • I see. Then testrpc is of no use as it would not give you access to your private keys. But it sounds like https://github.com/ethereumjs/ethereumjs-tx is what you need, if you are not able to get geth working offline – MrChico Mar 04 '16 at 02:08
  • Out of curiosity, could you try --nat=none? – Péter Szilágyi Mar 04 '16 at 09:28
  • @PéterSzilágyi That did the trick! Thanks a ton! Would you mind submitting a formal answer to this question so I can accept? – StuffAndThings Mar 05 '16 at 07:12
  • Do you mean using you own version of ethereum blockchain online? if so it's possible. But it's usually for development and can't be used to received coin from the main net – jayD Mar 06 '16 at 08:38
  • @jayD No, my intention was to use geth as a means to sign transactions on an offline machine. Also, I'm almost certain any accounts you generate on a private chain will also be valid on a public chain. Of course, you cannot send transactions across chains. – StuffAndThings Mar 06 '16 at 15:23

2 Answers2

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In theory using geth offline should be fine.

In practice we've heard some rare reports that geth gets stuck on starting the "server" and it seems that the UPnP lookup is to be blamed, that for some reason neither succeeds, neither fails, neither times out. You could try to disable Network Address Translation (--nat=none) that relies on UPnP to see if it solves the issue while we're fixing it.

Hopefully we can figure out what goes wrong and have it patched up in Geth 1.4. Here's the issue on our tracker: https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/issues/2291

Péter Szilágyi
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  • The bug I wanted to use is fixed. I am unable to start geth in offline mode by using --nat=none in Version: 1.8.13-stable – Ayushya Aug 06 '18 at 21:25
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If geth is not connected to any peers, it will not download the chain. Geth can be run in offline mode by using --maxpeers 0 option.

Ayushya
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