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Managing your accounts

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Taylor Gerring edited this page May 1, 2015 · 34 revisions

WARNING Remember your password.

If you lose the password you use to encrypt your account, you will not be able to access that account. Repeat: It is NOT possible to access your account without a password and there is no forgot my password option here. Do not forget it.

Note: Accounts can also be managed with the interactive console.

Account management

The ethereum CLI geth provides account management via the account subcommand:

account command [arguments...]

Manage accounts lets you create new accounts, list all existing accounts, import a private key into a new account.

It supports interactive mode, when you are prompted for password as well as non-interactive mode where passwords are supplied via a given password file. Non-interactive mode is only meant for scripted use on test networks or known safe environments.

Make sure you remember the password you gave when creating a new account (with either new or import). Without it you are not able to unlock your account.

Note that exporting your key in unencrypted format is NOT supported.

Keys are stored under <DATADIR>/keys. Make sure you backup your keys regularly! It is safe to transfer the entire directory or the individual keys therein between ethereum nodes.

And finally. DO NOT FORGET YOUR PASSWORD

SUBCOMMANDS:

        list    print account addresses
        new     create a new account
        import  import a private key into a new account

You can get info about further subcommands by geth account help <subcommand>

Creating a new account

 new [arguments...]


    geth account new

Creates a new account. Prints the address.

On the console, use:

admin.newAccount()

The account is saved in encrypted format, you are prompted for a passphrase. You must remember this passphrase to unlock your account in the future.

For non-interactive use the passphrase can be specified with the --password flag:

geth --password <passwordfile> account new

Note, this is meant to be used for testing only, it is a bad idea to save your password to file or expose in any other way.

Listing your current accounts

From the command line, call the CLI with:

geth account list

when using the console:

eth.accounts

Creating an account by importing an EC private key (binary)

import [arguments...]


    geth account import <keyfile>

Imports an unencrypted private key from and creates a new account. Prints the address.

The keyfile is assumed to contain an unencrypted private key in canonical EC raw bytes format.

The account is saved in encrypted format, you are prompted for a passphrase.

You must remember this passphrase to unlock your account in the future.

For non-interactive use the passphrase can be specified with the -password flag:

geth --password <passwordfile> account import <keyfile>

Note: As you can directly copy your encrypted accounts to another ethereum instance, this import mechanism is not needed when you transfer an account between nodes.

Note: Since you can directly copy your encrypted accounts to another ethereum instance, this import/export mechanism is not needed when you transfer an account between nodes.

Warning: If you use the password flag with a password file, best to make sure the file is not readable or even listable for anyone but you. You achieve this with:

touch /path/to/password 
chmod 700 /path/to/password
cat > /path/to/password
>I type my pass here^D

Examples

Interactive use

$ geth -datadir /tmp/eth  account new
The new account will be encrypted with a passphrase.
Please enter a passphrase now.
Passphrase:
Repeat Passphrase:
Address: {7f444580bfef4b9bc7e14eb7fb2a029336b07c9d}

$ geth -datadir /tmp/eth  account list
Address: {7f444580bfef4b9bc7e14eb7fb2a029336b07c9d}

$ geth -datadir /tmp/eth.0  account import ./key.prv
The new account will be encrypted with a passphrase.
Please enter a passphrase now.
Passphrase:
Repeat Passphrase:
Address: {7f444580bfef4b9bc7e14eb7fb2a029336b07c9d}

Non-interactive use

You supply a plaintext password file as argument to the -password flag.

Note: Supplying the password directly as part of the command line is not encouraged, but you can always use shell trickery to get round this restriction.

$ geth -datadir /tmp/eth -password /path/to/password account new
Address: b0047c606f3af7392e073ed13253f8f4710b08b6

$ geth -datadir /tmp/eth account list
Address: {b0047c606f3af7392e073ed13253f8f4710b08b6}

$ geth -datadir /tmp/eth1 -password /path/to/anotherpassword account import ./key.prv
Address: b0047c606f3af7392e073ed13253f8f4710b08b6
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