Geth does not start in --dev mod with empty blockchain and custom genesis block

[DimaStebaev]

System information

Geth version: 1.10.16
OS & Version: Ubuntu 21.10 Implish

Expected behaviour

If run

geth --datadir /tmp/blockchain/ init genesis.json
geth --datadir /tmp/blockchain --dev

geth starts in develop mode.

Actual behaviour

geth fails with an error:

Fatal: Could not open database: open /tmp/blockchain/geth/chaindata/ancient/headers.cidx: no such file or directory

Steps to reproduce the behaviour

1. Create valid genesis block and write in to genesis.json file
2. Run geth --datadir /tmp/blockchain/ init genesis.json
3. Run geth --datadir /tmp/blockchain --dev

Backtrace

INFO [02-22|17:03:03.930] Starting Geth in ephemeral dev mode... 
INFO [02-22|17:03:03.931] Maximum peer count                       ETH=50 LES=0 total=50
INFO [02-22|17:03:03.931] Smartcard socket not found, disabling    err="stat /run/pcscd/pcscd.comm: no such file or directory"
INFO [02-22|17:03:03.931] Set global gas cap                       cap=50,000,000
INFO [02-22|17:03:04.078] Using developer account                  address=0x426b4b03F4d92Fc4c45dC9858B9D62BC9625C853
INFO [02-22|17:03:04.078] Allocated cache and file handles         database=/tmp/blockchain/geth/chaindata cache=512.00MiB handles=524,288 readonly=true
Fatal: Could not open database: open /tmp/blockchain/geth/chaindata/ancient/headers.cidx: no such file or directory

[MariusVanDerWijden]

We discussed this issue a bit internally and all agreed that this should not be done.
The --dev mode should be ephemeral and you should rather use a custom chain for your testing.
We should fix the error message and investigate why this error is thrown though

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[s1na]

This has surfaced since #24298. The error is thrown because init doesn't open the freezer and hence create the empty table index files. On starting --dev we first open the freezer db in readonly mode and that fails because no freezer files exist.

One easy fix is this:

diff --git a/cmd/geth/chaincmd.go b/cmd/geth/chaincmd.go
index 6077c43cc..1698ce5db 100644
--- a/cmd/geth/chaincmd.go
+++ b/cmd/geth/chaincmd.go
@@ -206,7 +206,7 @@ func initGenesis(ctx *cli.Context) error {
        defer stack.Close()

        for _, name := range []string{"chaindata", "lightchaindata"} {
-               chaindb, err := stack.OpenDatabase(name, 0, 0, "", false)
+               chaindb, err := stack.OpenDatabaseWithFreezer(name, 0, 0, "", "", false)
                if err != nil {
                        utils.Fatalf("Failed to open database: %v", err)
                }

With this patch it's business as usual and dev mode starts fine. Or do we want to actively prevent this practice and only display a better error for it? I'm not sure how best to do that yet.