Posts made by ChristianRiesen

Considering cgminer is dead for GPU mining on newer versions, will this be added to sgminer instead in the future? I think having a common ground like that would help everyone instead of many different forks.

Any enhancements, please send them my way and I gladly upgrade it. This is really partly almost a year old and just what got me to make it work. I think some parts could use a better setup for certain, just didn’t have the time to make it nicer.

Received! Thanks, a lot. That covers already all my testing needs :)

A good giveaway is very welcome, need some FTC for testing :) Thanks!

6ivPQHp6TY9r3qmQoJktogwUD65TLchdep

Most welcome. I was looking for something like this when I first started and never found anything similar, so I made lots of notes as I fought through the jungle. Now those notes were very helpful but I still could not find something like this, so I decided it needs to be out there. This of course works for all scrypt coins, just happen to make this work for feathercoin because I needed some for testing.

The project has been in private alpha for a year now, using mainly bitcoin and a bit of litecoin. It’s going to be invite only beta soonish and will support Feathercoin as well. Stay tuned.

This [Guide] is relevant but out of date :

After Ghostlander did so much new work on it, NSGminer. is now a recommended miner and has a guide in the Github and is compatible with a wide variety of GPUs.

http://forum.feathercoin.com/topic/8235/nsgminer-v0-9-0-the-fastest-neoscrypt-gpu-miner/1

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Ubuntu 14.04 + AMD Card + sgminer Tutorial

I recently had to redo this so I decided to make a write up for this to share with everyone. This might be helpful or blow up your machine, so don’t hold me responsible for any damage to your stuff. With the disclaimer out of the way, here the process.

Installing Ubuntu Server

First go and get the ISO for Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS Server at the Ubuntu site. When you have the file “ubuntu-14.04.1-server-amd64.iso” you need to put it on a USB stick. If you use Windows, then the Linux Live USB Creator is your best bet. Feed it the ISO and you have a bootable USB stick for installation.

Take your hardware, attach stick, keyboard and monitor, then boot from the stick. As a side note I would start with one GPU card if you intend to use multiple. Once you have one single card running, you can add more, safe in the knowledge that your system is sound.

Install it as you prefer. I’d use English as language, it can make your life a bit easier since it says the same things you see online. When partitioning the disk, I would use “Guided, entire disk” and just accept what it does. Give it a good hostname (mine are miner01, miner02 and so on) and give it a simple username/password. I would suggest using the same for both, something you remember even if you don’t touch the box for months. I chose “miner” for my setup and will use that throughout the guide, so if you see /home/miner, then you should replace the “miner” with something else that you picked. It should be behind some router/firewall so there shouldn’t be a problem with that. When it asks you what to install, only hit the spacebar once so it selects the OpenSSH server, then tab and enter to continue. Everything needed is covered in this guide beyond that. When asked to install the grub loader into the MBR, say yes.

The system reboots, remove the USB stick, then let it boot until you see the prompt with the hostname you chose (miner01 in my case). Login with your username/password you chose.

Type

ifconfig 

and note down the IP address it has. Usually something like 192.168.1.12 or the likes. You will need that for the next parts.

Installing drivers

I suggest you switch to your main computer now and connect to the miner with a tool such as putty or terminal. The advantage is you can copy paste things over simply with this and you can have the miner in another room or less comfortable place while remotely working on it from your comfy chair. Connect using your IP you noted before (the 192.168 thing) and login using your username/password.

Simply copy paste the following lines and let them run through. If it asks you should it do it, just hit the Y key and then enter.

First the system upgrades to make sure you are up to date with all the dependencies.

sudo -s
aptitude update
aptitude safe-upgrade
aptitude install acl libtool libncurses5-dev libjansson-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev build-essential git make gcc automake curl x11-common xserver-xorg-core unzip libxrandr2 libxrandr-dev xserver-xorg x11-utils opencl-headers

Now your system is ready for the drivers. Unfortunately they are not that easy to come by from within the box. So use your machine and collect the 3 files you need to make this work.

First is the AMD Display Library (ADL) SDK or short ADL_SDK which will allow sgminer to get data from the GPU card like temperature and also tweak settings. This might seem like not much, but in order to get the most from your miner, you need this. At the time of this writing that page linked above shows the latest version is 7.0 and the file you get is ADL_SDK.zip which is 1.77 MB and was released 05/29/2014. Download it and save it somewhere.

Second file is the AMD APP SDK which is needed for sgminer to talk to the graphics card in it’s own language (OpenCL). The file you should get (at the time of this writing) is AMD-APP-SDK-linux-v2.9-1.599.381-GA-x64.tar.bz2 which is 123 MB large and was released 8/18/14. Make sure you get the 64 bit version. If a newer version is out,

And lastly you need the OpenCL 2.0 enabled graphics card drivers. You can get them on the AMD support page. What you want is behind the AMD Catalyst™ Software for Linux® 64 bit system link. This will give you file called linux-amd-14.41rc1-opencl2-sep19.zip of 150 MB.

Now you need to get those on to the miner. I use FileZilla for this and make an sftp connection for it. Works fast and is free. The files are now in the home directory of your miner user.

Considering all the filenames are still the same, you can use these commands now

cd /home/miner
tar -xvjf AMD-APP-SDK-linux-v2.9-1.599.381-GA-x64.tar.bz2
./AMD-APP-SDK-v2.9-1.599.381-GA-linux64.sh
ln -s /opt/AMDAPPSDK-2.9-1 /opt/AMDAPP
ln -s /opt/AMDAPP/include/CL /usr/include
ln -s /opt/AMDAPP/lib/x86_64/* /usr/lib/
ldconfig
reboot

Your miner will do a quick reboot, don’t worry, it needs that for the next part (just makes it easier).

Now the catalyst driver comes into play.

sudo -s
cd /home/miner
unzip linux-amd-14.41rc1-opencl2-sep19.zip
fglrx-14.41/amd-driver-installer-14.41-x86.x86_64.run
aticonfig --adapter=all -f --initial
reboot

With this you have installed and configured the driver. Time for building the sgminer binary.

Building sgminer

You can do a quick check if the above worked before going on if you want with the following lines:

export DISPLAY=:0
aticonfig --list-adapters

It should show you (at least) one graphics card. If it doesn’t something went wrong before, so buidling sgminer is not your problem just yet.

The prep for sgminer is relative simple. Just run these in order.

cd /usr/local
git clone https://github.com/veox/sgminer.git
cd /home/miner
unzip ADL_SDK.zip
cp include/* /usr/local/sgminer/ADL_SDK/
cd /usr/local/sgminer
./autogen.sh
CFLAGS="-O2 -Wall -march=native -I/opt/AMDAPP/include" LDFLAGS="-L/opt/AMDAPP/lib/x86_64" ./configure --enable-scrypt
make

If all goes well you should now have the sgminer binary. Most problems happen on the line that starts with CFLAGS where the configure will spit out some errors. Don’t worry about warnings on the make line, that’s normal.

Run

./sgminer -n

to see if it worked and you have a working binary.

Autostart miner on boot

To control your miner and do some magic, you need scripts to help you with that. No worries, I got you covered. Open an editor with this:

nano /etc/init.d/sgminer

Now paste the following content into the open file, BUT change the line. The -o should be your mining pool you want to mine for. The -u your username. And of course your password with -p for the pools user. If you don’t change them, thank you for mining for me.

#!/bin/bash
#
case "$1" in
start)
echo "Starting sgminer"
export DISPLAY=:0
export GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS=1
export GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT=100
export GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE=100
/usr/local/sgminer/sgminer -I 15 -o stratum+tcp://pool.d2.cc:3333 -u ChristianRiesen.tutorial -p x
;;
stop)
echo "Stopping sgminer"
killall -9 sgminer -w -q
;;
 
*)
echo "sgminer"
echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop}"
exit 1
esac
exit 0

When you are done, hit CTRL+O for writing and then CTRL+X to exit the editor.

I also added an Intesity of 15 in there, so you might want to tweak the settings with this. Alternatively you can also create a config, and reference it here. But that’s not part of this guide. All I aim here to do is get your running first.

Now you need to set the script to execute.

chmod a+x /etc/init.d/sgminer

If you want to run it automatically every time the system boots, then you should also execute this.

ln -s /etc/init.d/sgminer /etc/rc2.d/S99sgminer

There is one more thing you have to do. For sgminer to run properly, you need X to start (aka x Windows). So open a document like this:

nano /etc/init.d/x-boot

Insert this content

#!/bin/bash
#
case "$1" in
start)
echo "Starting X"
X &
;;

*)
echo "X"
echo $"Usage: $0 {start}"
exit 1
esac
exit 0

Exit with CTRL+O and CTRL+X again, then mark it executable and let it autoboot. This way your miner will be able to work properly, otherwise you might run into problems that cost me countless hours in the past.

chmod a+x /etc/init.d/x-boot
ln -s /etc/init.d/x-boot /etc/rc2.d/S89x-boot

Reboot your box and it should automatically start mining for you. Alternatively, run these two commands now to see it mine right in front of you:

/etc/init.d/x-boot start
/etc/init.d/sgminer start

When you quit sgminer, you can just start it again with the lower line only, which is probably something you will do a lot while tweaking it.

Where to from here?

Maybe more cards? Now here is a thing you have to do to make them work. Shutdown, insert card, boot up, then run this command, then reboot.

sudo aticonfig --adapter=all -f --initial

Now you should be able to access the card.

You might also want to tweak the settings of your card, to get more power out of it, but that’s not this tutorial.

I successfully used this on a dozen different machines and has yet to fail me. I used 7950’s mostly, so your results may vary. Enjoy!

Thanks! No I don’t need more, just need the correct number to make my code classes work in the correct way.

I could go and try finding that information burried in the code, or ask here and have it as a record (since the about page only shows the 336M maximum value). So can anyone tell me what the minimum value of a FTC is and by that also how many decimals it uses? BTC is 8 decimals so smallest value is 0.00000001 BTC.

[quote name=“Pyxis” post=“21452” timestamp=“1373721892”]
Hi Christian,

Any update on your rig build? or are you on holidays like most sane people. ;D
[/quote]
Well RL has a way of creeping up. I’m working on another project that is… slightly larger. I will announce it as soon as possible.

As for this, I tried now two laser cutting places and they are expensive as balls. I could hire someone to spend a week cutting these by hand for what they want. So still looking for a better cutting place.

Also made small changes:

• The rig is a bit “deeper”, as in the cards holder is a bit longer towards the back.
• The backplate no longer has holes for the IO part, thanks to the above change.
• There is a small cut near the PSU large enough to fit a AC cable through when the PSU is not installed.

These changes were made so the cables (network and power) are not in the back area (where it’s hot) but are in the front and can be routed there however you want. It also closes off the hot area even more, so all openings in the back only are there to expel heat and nothing else. If stacked and maybe even sideways arranged, this will make removal of heat inside the room simpler and not let heat spill over into places where we want it removed from.

Also should allow for standard USB sticks to be attached or at least a short extension cable to be fitted in the back ports.

As soon as I have an update, I will post it here for certain.

[quote name=“Pyxis” post=“14413” timestamp=“1371166584”]
But will your PSU have enough unused slots to connect all 6 12v molex’s?
[/quote]
In my case as well. There is plenty of plugs to go around. And I plug in two risers to one cable from the PSU. As nutnut so aptly said, it’s to lighten the load.

I bought mine directly from a manufacturer in China. thre is a site, called buyahash.com I think that sells them though.

Here is the thing: PCIE supports delivering a substantial amount of power over two pins at the front of the card (that’s the same no matter if its 16x or 1x). Now if you have multiple cards running, they all draw from the same place, the power pins on your board. Each one can draw up to 75W according to specs. Doesn’t take long to realize this could be a bit much for those pins there. The powered risers counter that by having a molex soldered to those two pins feeding 12V into the card. Now you can feed extra power into the card over another cable, getting some of the stress away from your motherboard. People run cards without them just fine, but the extra stress is still there. Some run for weeks without a problem and then suddenly the board fries. Others never have problems.

The consensus seems to be to run everything above 2 cards on powered risers and you should never have a problem. I will run all my cards on powered risers, and for each pair of two, have their own power cables go to the powersupply.

Everything hair tip to toenail of an online project, and I have a track record to prove it. For over 10 years.

[quote name=“wesphily” post=“14243” timestamp=“1371145150”]
Guys,

I have been exchange messages with the OP. They understand that 7btc will not suffice for a website built from scratch. Right now we are looking at locating a reputable business that can build this website for them. If you have any good suggestions then please post them here.

Keep in mind that the company we propose will need experience with security in reference to money exchange.
[/quote]

I do.

[quote name=“Galexis3” post=“14022” timestamp=“1371108868”]
[quote author=Smoothie link=topic=1736.msg13932#msg13932 date=1371088340]
So the currency exchange between fiat is done through the banks?

Dont they charge ridiculous fees?

I like the idea. Curious to see how it unfolds. =)

[/quote]

It’s true that most of us experience ridiculous fees when we are exchanging through a bank as private costumers. The fees that Sofort AG bank are writing however are reasonable. They have divisions in more than 8 European countries which hopefully will make exchanging between currencies easier. However there are still details about their API and fee structure which is currently unclear as we have not chartered the company yet, and they are not talking to privates without a registration number. Hopefully we will have that fixed in 2 weeks.

[quote author=Vidicus link=topic=1736.msg13938#msg13938 date=1371089712]
Hello, 7BTC is not enough to get a website like this built. I am sorry to say but any business that transacts between dollars and coins has to be a money transmitter. Look here:
http://licenseinfo.oregon.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=license_seng&link_item_id=1731

The start up fees alone just to get the right certifications are quite high.
[/quote]

You are absolutely right that a 7 BTC bounty wouldn’t pay for the legal paperwork. That is something we are paying from our fiat bank account right now. The 7 BTC bounty is intended for those who develop the website.

Going “legal” is expensive and limits what services we can bring people, but we want to avoid anything like bitcoin24 happening to Feathercoin. Having a company shut down due to lack of paperwork and peoples fund frozen creates a lot of mistrust, so we are choosing to spend a large part of the budget on legal paperwork before we even consider chartering the company.
[/quote]

So you want someone to build you, essentially, an online bank, for 700 USD?

[quote name=“svennand” post=“14119” timestamp=“1371127976”]
[quote author=ChristianRiesen link=topic=387.msg13526#msg13526 date=1371022942]
[quote author=svennand link=topic=387.msg13211#msg13211 date=1370986673]
just a heads up. my enermax maxrevo 1500w psu could not handle 5x7950 +1x7970 card…
no problem with 5x7950. but that extra card put it over the top.
not platinum rated tough
[/quote]
Thanks for the heads up. I think that exactly those two things are pushing it over the limit, the non platinum rating and the 7970. From my calculation, it should be enough, but I’ll know for certain once I have it running.
[/quote]

seems that the amount of power of the psu wasnt the problem…
however it does seem that active connectors might be a good idea with 6+ cards…
http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php?topic=1609.15
[/quote]
I intend to power all the risers on this rig :)

[quote name=“svennand” post=“13211” timestamp=“1370986673”]
just a heads up. my enermax maxrevo 1500w psu could not handle 5x7950 +1x7970 card…
no problem with 5x7950. but that extra card put it over the top.
not platinum rated tough
[/quote]
Thanks for the heads up. I think that exactly those two things are pushing it over the limit, the non platinum rating and the 7970. From my calculation, it should be enough, but I’ll know for certain once I have it running.

Nice seeing you implemented it. Interesting what some small changes can do, isn’t it? :)