2

I started messing around with the Ethereum geth client when the Ethereum main network was just launched. I remember I bought some ether for maybe €30 and then I kinda lost sight of the whole thing. With ether now being worth so much, that would mean it's worth a lot more than it was.

So I just went to look if I could find the keys on my Mac. According to this answer they should be in the ~/.ethereum/keystore/ folder So I checked the ~/.ethereum/ folder, which unfortunately doesn't contain a keystore/ folder:

$ ls -la
total 16
drwx------    7 kramer65  staff   238 Aug  8  2016 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 145 kramer65  staff  4930 Jul 13 10:25 ..
drwxr-xr-x    4 kramer65  staff   136 Jun 29  2016 d4e56740
drwxr-xr-x    7 kramer65  staff   238 Aug  8  2016 devchain
-rw-------    1 kramer65  staff   165 Jun 29  2016 keys.info
-rw-------    1 kramer65  staff    32 Jun 29  2016 keys.info.salt
drwxr-xr-x    7 kramer65  staff   238 Jun 29  2016 natspec

I checked keys.info, but that only contains some binary data.

I messed around with private ethereum networks using geth, so it could be that I somehow overwrote or deleted the keys. But it would be cool if I could find them. Does anybody know where I can find my keys? All tips are welcome!

kramer65
  • 655
  • 1
  • 6
  • 11

1 Answers1

2

Ok, a search (sudo find / -name *thereu*) brought up the folder /Users/kramer65/Library/Ethereum/keystore, which revealed some key files:

$ ls -l /Users/kramer65/Library/Ethereum/keystore
total 32
-rw-------  1 kramer65  staff  491 Jun 29  2016 UTC--2016-06-29T10-17-40.754278243Z--3929ff4fbbabb68568f73f7db747aef19900b3b2
-rw-------  1 kramer65  staff  491 Jun 29  2016 UTC--2016-06-29T10-18-04.083038161Z--1338856d68140d84c80ebeeecc276a54e1746716
-rw-------  1 kramer65  staff  491 Aug  8  2016 UTC--2016-08-08T15-29-17.417410239Z--1be9fee967c3b2e219f95d5ecc113e03ead963e4
-rw-------  1 kramer65  staff  491 Aug 19  2016 UTC--2016-08-19T10-59-34.554145094Z--a4eb12fda0fed1aa2cb282516f2b9fe94c4c78cf

And in one of them I found indeed one ether. It's not that I'm rich now, but I can buy a couple more beers this weekend.. :-)

kramer65
  • 655
  • 1
  • 6
  • 11