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Geth IPC-Server

IPC is normally available for use in local environments where the node and the console exist on the same machine. Geth creates a pipe in the computers local file system (at ipcpath) that configures a connection between node and console. The geth.ipc file can also be used by other processes on the same machine to interact with Geth.

On UNIX-based systems (Linux, OSX) the IPC is a UNIX domain socket. On Windows IPC is provided using named pipes. The IPC server is enabled by default and has access to all JSON-RPC namespaces.

HTTP based JSON-RPC API options - Ipc:

  • -ipcapi : API's offered over the IPC-RPC interface (default: admin,debug,eth,miner,net,personal,txpool,web3)
  • -ipcpath : Filename for IPC socket/pipe within the datadir (explicit paths escape it)
  • -ipcdiable : Disable the IPC-RPC server

The listening socket is placed into the data directory by default. On Linux and macOS, the default location of the geth socket is

~/.ethereum/geth.ipc

On Windows, IPC is provided via named pipes. The default location of the geth pipe is:

\\.\pipe\geth.ipc

The location of the socket can be customized using the --ipcpath flag. IPC can be disabled using the --ipcdisable flag.