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Backup & restore

Viktor Trón edited this page Jun 6, 2015 · 17 revisions

Data directory

Everything geth persists gets written inside its data directory (except for the PoW Ethash DAG, see note below). The default data directory locations are platform specific:

  • Mac: ~/Library/Ethereum
  • Linux: ~/.ethereum
  • Windows: ~/AppData/Roaming/Ethereum"

Accounts are stored in the keystore subdirectory. The contents of this directories should be transportable between platforms, but is specific to the Go implementation.

To configure the location of Geth's files, the --datadir parameter can be specified. See CLI Options for more details.

Note: The Ethash DAG is stored at ~/.ethash (Mac/Linux) or ~/AppData/Ethash (Windows) so that it can be reused by all clients. You can store this in a different location by using a symbolic link.

Upgrades

Sometimes the internal database formats need updating (for example, when upgrade from before 0.9.20). This can be run with the following command (geth should not be otherwise running):

geth upgradedb

Cleanup

Geth's blockchain and state databases can be removed with:

geth removedb

This is useful for deleting an old chain and sync'ing to a new one.

Blockchain import/export

Export the blockchain in binary format with:

geth --first 314150 --last 400000 export <filename>

Import binary-format blockchain exports with:

geth import <filename>

See https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Blockchain-import-export for more info

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