Installation Instructions for FreeBSD

Building from source

Installing binary package

Binary packages tend not to be up to date (1.8.9 at the time of writing) with the latest version (1.8.16 at the time of writing). It is recommended that you use ports or compile it yourself.

pkg install go-ethereum

The geth command is then available on your system in /usr/local/bin/geth, you can start it e.g. on the testnet by typing:

geth -rinkeby

Using ports

Go to the net-p2p/go-ethereum ports directory:

cd /usr/ports/net-p2p/go-ethereum

Then build it the standard way (as root):

make install

Building Geth (command line client)

Ports are slightly more up to date (1.8.14 at the time of writing)

Clone the repository to a directory of your choosing:

git clone https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum

Building geth requires the Go compiler:

pkg install go

If your golang version is >= 1.5, build the geth program using the following command.

cd go-ethereum
make geth

If your golang version is < 1.5 (quarterly packages, for example), use the following command instead.

cd go-ethereum
CC=clang make geth

You can now run build/bin/geth to start your node.