My experience installing on windows.

spraff

Hi, everyone.

This is to document my experience installing Frontier on Windows. If you've gone through this and can add some insight, please do. I am technically proficient under Linux, but I'm having unrelated technical problems there so I'm trying this out on a Windows machine. I've encountered a few confusing issues which I'd like to record here to help the developers see it from this angle.

(I'm not here to bitch, by the way. Great work, guys. Just informing you of what happened.)

1) "Installation instructions for Windows" begins with "Installing from Chocolatey". What is chocolatey? Installation instructions for chocolatey were not that easy to find, and requires pasting a choice of text commands into a choice of shells.

2) Running "choco install geth-stable" seemed to work but the obvious next command, "geth", is "not recognised as an internal or external command." You have to cd to where chocolatey installed it (not an obvious location, not even within Program Files).

3) Before I tried hunting down the installation, I tried installing alethzero. This fails because it depends on 7zip yet does not install 7zip as a dependency. When running, it complains that libcurl is missing.

4) Back to the original plan, I am now in the middle of multiple sets of instructions for various things and have to go back to the blog post to get my bearings.

5) mk_genesis_block.py could and should be included in the chocolatey package

6) "You now need to install the pybitcointools" but the instructions after that appear to be for installing "bitcoin". After running "pip install bitcoin", have I installed pybitcointools? "pybitcointools is not recognised as an internal or external command."

7) Wait, I have to build from git now? Didn't I install geth in step 2?

8) These instructions seem to have drifted into a linux-only mode. Where are all these directories under Windows?

9) I'm waiting for the hash of block #1028201but http://ether.fund/explorer seems to be saying we're at block 1507 at the moment.

10) Well, I may as well do a dry run... python mk_genesis_block.py --extradata 12345
File "mk_genesis_block.py", line 293
print json.dumps(evaluate(), ident=4)
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

-------------------------------------------------------

Has anyone here actually managed to get all this working on Windows? The instructions seem incomplete, I'd appreciate any help filling out the gaps. Am I expected to change my PATH, for example? If I open a brand new command prompt after installing everything, what should I be doing to run these programs? Does my working directory matter?

Thanks for reading.

Spidey3000

Ya im lost also. I tried all the different ways they suggested to install on windows. Multiple levels of confusion and seems like not enough detail for people inexperienced with all these different software sytems and commands. I might even have it installed correctly now but not sure or how to even confirm. Not sure next steps even when I get it installed.

Spidey3000

I tried what appears to be the easiest option to install it here:
Installing cpp-ethereum on Windows
Using the chocolatey package
- https://github.com/ethereum/cpp-ethereum/wiki/Installing-clients

Not sure what to do after following those instructions either.

geekhaven

There are simply no instructions for windows. The instructions that are there omit so much they are worse than no instructions.

I cannot generate the genesis block.

Spidey3000

Just saw the new instructions page for the frontier launch - https://www.ethereum.org/cli
I did the ETH for Windows command line install instructions and it downloaded, asked if I wanted to create paths, and offered to add an icon on my desktop. It completed...Then Nothing. I did a search on my entire computer and all I see is old files from previously working on getting this going and there is NO ICON. Any ideas?

geekhaven

Spidey3000 said:

Just saw the new instructions page for the frontier launch - https://www.ethereum.org/cli
I did the ETH for Windows command line install instructions and it downloaded, asked if I wanted to create paths, and offered to add an icon on my desktop. It completed...Then Nothing. I did a search on my entire computer and all I see is old files from previously working on getting this going and there is NO ICON. Any ideas?

Sorry mate. i use choco to install Geth. look https://chocolatey.org/packages/geth-stable there for choco.

Spidey3000

I ran that previously. Tried choco again, says already installed. What do you do after that?

geekhaven

you have to call for the geth

"choco install geth-stable -version 1.0.0.0" into elevated command will do it

I'm using win 7 and the files are here

C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\geth-stable

you run a command line and you can interact with geth from there

currently I cant do anything though because I'm stuck at the python script to generate the genesis. Ive gone over the text so many times and I can only conclude there are no windows instructions regarding that process. The only instructions is to install python and that pip is built into it so don't worry.

Spidey3000

Ya i saw that info about pip and python also. Ill try and find these files as you suggested. Elevated command i assume you mean in an admin view of cmd?

pangolin1231

geekhaven, I also got the same issue with the python script on windows. I fixed the json.dumps and decode hex issue but now I got another error 'API not returning data. Retrying\n'.

geekhaven

Yeah. I think i'm missing pybitcointools but searching for that and windows returns discussion unrelated. Tech snobbery will kill cryptos at this rate.

Spidey3000

I found the C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\geth-stable. I have command prompt up in admin access. I accessed that directory and see the files but still not sure how to call or interact after that point.

geekhaven

You need to download python and then just search pip.exe in your menu. From that type

install bitcoin

i think thi'l be the issue. Will report if I have success or otherwise.

Spidey3000

I got python 3.5 32bit for windows from earlier attempts. I did a search pip.exe in the start menu and in python interpreter and did not see anything. I also am not sure how to search in python but i tried.

geekhaven

oh its all command line
no gui

ill find the command lists for you.

geekhaven

https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/wiki/Command-Line-Options

so for example you might try

geth version

to get the version info

geekhaven

no luck with the genesis block yet still getting syntax errors

k_day

roypun can you comment on how you fixed the erros in mk_genesis_block.py?

As for the api errors, I've seen eslwhere that others have fixed this by running it using the --insight switch which will use the private Ethereum servers instead of Blockchain.info.

Spidey3000

I have the command prompt up, I typed geth version, and it says not a recognized command.

geekhaven

C:\>python mk_genesis_block.py > genesis_block.json
File "mk_genesis_block.py", line 293
print json.dumps(evaluate(), indent=4)
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

geekhaven

Spidey3000 said:

I got python 3.5 32bit for windows from earlier attempts. I did a search pip.exe in the start menu and in python interpreter and did not see anything. I also am not sure how to search in python but i tried.

Hi spidey you can just type pip.exe into a command window and it'll run command line interfdace
then you can install bitcoin though I don't know if its relevant r not since it changed nothing for me.

Spidey3000

ya i tried that too, its saying not a recognized command still. Thanks for you help so far. I understand your frustration. Been working on this off and on for 8 hours.

geekhaven

I knew it was gonna be a late night but watching everyone else work and reading those awfully written tut snippets is making me furious. Can't even curse at the screen cause kids are sleeping.

pangolin1231

no problem k_day,

The first one

File "mk_genesis_block.py", line 293
print json.dumps(evaluate(), ident=4)
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
------------------------------

Instead of print the json.dumps directly, I rewrote it in 2 lines:
jsonStr = json.dumps(evaluate(), indent=4)
print(jsonStr)


Second one is the hex decode of the block hash:

EXTRADATA = (d[2:] if d[:2] == '0x' else d).decode('hex')
AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'decode'
-------------------------------------------

The solution is sneaky. I decode the hash by myself and replace the code:
EXTRADATA = decoded_hash_block

I will try to use insight. seems the script can't connect to blockchain.info

Spidey3000

was there a specific python version that works best? They have many options on that page of windows versions.

nchabra

I installed Python 2.7 and now the script seems to work.
https://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.10/python-2.7.10.msi

geekhaven

Spidey3000 said:

I found the C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\geth-stable. I have command prompt up in admin access. I accessed that directory and see the files but still not sure how to call or interact after that point.

Im gonna take a guiess that running in admin has dropped you back to its default directory and youll need to navigate via command line to your geth directory again.

Spidey3000

ok gonna try 2.7 thx

geekhaven

nchabra said:

I installed Python 2.7 and now the script seems to work.
https://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.10/python-2.7.10.msi

can you give us the actuall command line you used to run the script the on on ethereum is pooched.

geekhaven

Also I get an was unexpected at this time error.

Spidey3000

I installed Python 2.7 as suggested. Added pip.exe in terminal for python and got NameError 'pip' is not defined