Deploying smart contract using truffle on private blockchain node on docker

Question

I am facing problems deploying a smart contract on my private blockchain network. I created my blockchain network on three VMs (miners) using puppeth on a fourth VM (controller) by following the steps in this blog: https://medium.com/@collin.cusce/using-puppeth-to-manually-create-an-ethereum-proof-of-authority-clique-network-on-aws-ae0d7c906cce

Afterwards, I installed truffle on one of the miners VMs and i initialized truffle using the command:

truffle init

Then I wrote a simple hello world smart contract, compiled it and deployed it on truffle development blockchain and it worked. However, I tried to deploy it on my private blockchain but I can't connect to the network.

The admin.nodeInfo command in geth console returns the folowing output:

docker exec -it 954cd3955065 geth attach ipc:/root/.ethereum/geth.ipc
Welcome to the Geth JavaScript console!

instance: Geth/v1.9.25-unstable-ead81461-20201123/linux-amd64/go1.15.5
coinbase: 0xe8cc4bea2cfdfd14cddefe1141bedd109576b9a9
at block: 78558 (Tue Dec 01 2020 22:01:02 GMT+0000 (UTC))
 datadir: /root/.ethereum
 modules: admin:1.0 clique:1.0 debug:1.0 eth:1.0 miner:1.0 net:1.0 personal:1.0 rpc:1.0 txpool:1.0 web3:1.0

To exit, press ctrl-d
> admin.nodeInfo
{
  enode: "enode://7206ca3c62f6db47e1230dcf14a765d4c9b4870a66470dbb21fcc5ed2fab2167d6bcc47eec8044c42037b3e6e0017aeb8ddfc3580471da54a6c7274a0c1fe46b@10.100.2.32:30303",
  enr: "enr:-Je4QGXlVAESp8r2s1uHBJxoDLWQo8IvZsbe5sX2YRBb0un9Gdlt8nfDKQBR_j0lDPtaoCCuis4cJJlqtEHfa4tLO2EIg2V0aMfGhG5b-B6AgmlkgnY0gmlwhApkAiCJc2VjcDI1NmsxoQNyBso8YvbbR-EjDc8Up2XUybSHCmZHDbsh_MXtL6shZ4N0Y3CCdl-DdWRwgnZf",
  id: "027a351994ac1b127df56180b6210310cc0164f17f1b12c167cb167c4ffaa122",
  ip: "10.100.2.32",
  listenAddr: "[::]:30303",
  name: "Geth/v1.9.25-unstable-ead81461-20201123/linux-amd64/go1.15.5",
  ports: {
    discovery: 30303,
    listener: 30303
  },
  protocols: {
    eth: {
      config: {
        byzantiumBlock: 0,
        chainId: 1515,
        clique: {...},
        constantinopleBlock: 0,
        eip150Block: 0,
        eip150Hash: "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
        eip155Block: 0,
        eip158Block: 0,
        homesteadBlock: 0,
        istanbulBlock: 0,
        petersburgBlock: 0
      },
      difficulty: 98201,
      genesis: "0x17f752387c901db617cf0594ecd2cb9811dfcd666318c2e0e7cb0239471da979",
      head: "0xf8a37d0390558746901faa55463c127c553f02cf2d23ce0cb469fcd470c810f9",
      network: 1515
    }
  }
}

I tried adding the network configuration in truffle-config.js like this:

devnet2: {
    host: "localhost", 
    port: "30303", //port where the node is 
    network_id: "*",   
    from: 0x91cd7b879fefff34259d577a56d290b3315bf9b3    // Treats this network as if it was a public net. (default: false)
    }

then, when deploying using the command truffle deploy --network devnet2 i always get this error:

Compiling your contracts...
===========================
> Everything is up to date, there is nothing to compile.


/usr/local/lib/node_modules/truffle/build/webpack:/packages/provider/index.js:56
        throw new Error(errorMessage);
^
Error: There was a timeout while attempting to connect to the network.
       Check to see that your provider is valid.
       If you have a slow internet connection, try configuring a longer timeout in your Truffle config. Use the networks[networkName].networkCheckTimeout property to do this.
    at Timeout.setTimeout (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/truffle/build/webpack:/packages/provider/index.js:56:1)
    at ontimeout (timers.js:436:11)
    at tryOnTimeout (timers.js:300:5)
    at listOnTimeout (timers.js:263:5)
    at Timer.processTimers (timers.js:223:10)

I tried extending the timeout limit but it didn't work. I also tried using Web3 Providers (HTTPProvider and IPCProvider) but without any luck (i can give more details, if needed).

Any help is well appreciated because i spent a lot of time on it without getting anywhere. Unfortunately, i couldn't find anything on deploying smart contracts to a node that is running on docker. If needed, i can gladly give more details about what i did.

Answer 1

I managed to run smart contracts on a private network, not using docker however. Some things come to mind. did you run a miner on your network? you will need to run a miner so that the contract gets migrated. Did you make sure that the gaslimit is met when running the contract? the miners will wait for the max gas limit to be reached before processing any request. Did you already deploy the contract? in the migration scripts you either create a new migration script by bumping the version or use the reset flag to run all migration scripts again.