Brad Lucas

Programming, Clojure and other interests
October 15, 2017

Upgrading Ethereum Geth On Linux

If you've found this post and are rushing to upgrade a previously installed version of geth on Linux before the hard fork on October 16th here are a quick set of instructions.

The instructions assume you've built your geth from source. If that is the case the following should be helpful.

Stopping Geth

Make sure to stop your current geth instance. I used the following command:

$ kill -INT $(pgrep geth)

Rebuilding From Source

Find where you cloned the go-ethereum repo. It will be a directory called "go-ethereum".

Enter the following commands:

$ cd go-ethereum
$ git fetch
$ git pull
$ make geth

Once in the directory the "git fetch" command fetches the new branches from the git repository. The "git pull" command updates your "master branch". The "make geth" builds your new version.

I've just upgraded a geth instance running on an EC2 box using the above instructions and had no issues.

Version Verification

Run "geth version" to verify that you have the latest version.

For example:

$ ./build/bin/geth version
Geth
Version: 1.7.3-unstable
Git Commit: e9295163aa25479e817efee4aac23eaeb7554bba
Architecture: amd64
Protocol Versions: [63 62]
Network Id: 1
Go Version: go1.7.5
Operating System: linux
GOPATH=
GOROOT=/usr/lib/golang
Tags: geth ethereum