Ethereum Node Connection – How to Connect to Geth by IPC in Node.js

personal.unlockAccount does not take a file path, it takes a password. See: https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/wiki/JavaScript-Console#personalunlockaccount

On the command line, try using this:

geth --unlock 0 --password "fullpathtofile" - the unlock argument takes an index. You can see the indexes by running geth account list.

If you want to make sure that it's not a problem with the file, you can also do this:

geth --unlock 0 --password <(echo "PASSWORD_HERE")

The <(command) form executes the command inside the parenthesis and creates a named pipe that it passes to the program, acting as a file with the contents of that output. You can use this as a test for non-sensitive test accounts.

You cannot do a init again if you have already done a init on datadir. In order to achive what you want you need to first create simply create account .... once account is created use that for pre-funding, by putting it in the genesis file, now go for the init of datadir.

so steps are
1) Creation of account in datadir

geth --datadir <path_of_data_directory> account new ( I have used command line method for account creation, which does not require invocation of geth console)

2) use the account created as pre-funded account, add entry in genesis file.

3) Init of the datadirectory with the genesis file.

geth --datadir <path_of_data_directory> init <path_of_genesis_file>

I have used bare minimum parameters, it should also work fine with the parameter you are using. Main point to note you cannot re-initialize your data directory once it is initialized.