Building an Ethereum Validator Node for Medalla Testnet
Error while formatting outputs from RPC
Error Outline
I’ve been itching to learn more about Blockchain, Smart Contracts, and a little more into Cryptocurrency. I ended up buying the book Mastering Ethereum from Amazon. I dove into it the second it arrived. Around page 26, the book begins to walk through the process of opening your own Ethereum Wallet. While testing out transactions on the Ropsten Test Network, I ran into a peculiar error:
{"error":"[ethjs-query] while formatting outputs from RPC '{\"value\":{\"message\":\"Internal error\",\"code\":-32603}}'"}
I received this error when requesting Ether from the faucet. I couldn’t find much when I tried to research the error, but I did stumble upon a GitHub with only a few comments and only one contributor stating they “got it working. Was an issue with my web3 provider”, which didn’t shed much light on how I could solve this.
Troubleshooting / Solution
Though the comment I came across on GitHub was cryptic at first, it did get me thinking about my network traffic. For example, when I made my first Ether deposit from the Ropsten Test Network I did it on my Chromebook which was using our ‘home’ network.
But then I tried to deposit another 1 ETH via the Ropsten Test Network on my Asus Laptop. This laptop is on an entirely different network which goes through a Raspberry Pi, set up as a Pi-Hole. I thought I would start there.
The first thing I did was log into my Pi-Hole and added https://faucet.metamask.io/ to my ‘Whitelist’.
I again tried to get some Ether from the Ropsten Test Network, and…success!
Conclusion
When troubleshooting issues, even if learning something brand new, always resort to your ISO layers. Think about what it is that’s trying to happen and follow the string to where the problem is.
