@wrapper said in New to FTC mining; issues with miners (in general):
Hi and welcome to Feathercoin.
Ghostlander has written NSGminer specifically for FTC // Neoscrypt for some of the reasons you describe. Certainly, doesn’t Blocks factory have their own miner / support?
Although miners use the FTC code to mine, they are not now part of the core development, like when there was a CPU miner in the wallet.
Although I think there is a chance of cross compatibility of GPU types mined by the same miner, AMD and nVidia use different Graphics programming, Cuda and OpenCL, so that might not be optimal. In particular nVidia has chosen to be none standard and proprietary.
I’ll look into NSGminer; as to Blocks factory having their own miner - if they do, I certainly haven’t found it.
And I’m aware of Nvidia being arch-enemy #1 of open-source (we all know they received the Linus Torvalds middle finger), but I’m running myself on the constraint that I have to use the hardware I’ve got. If it makes me a healthy-enough ROI, I got an additional x16 bay on this workstation motherboard that I can use for an AMD card. But, first things first.
As to CUDA vs. OpenCL, I’d certainly be using native CUDA runtimes and things built for it if I could find a way to install the runtimes properly. Nvidia binary drivers don’t like X and every time I kill X (service lightdm stop the screen just goes black and I have no way of configuring the driver.
@bluebox said in New to FTC mining; issues with miners (in general):
@doomtower said in New to FTC mining; issues with miners (in general):
If I’m to install new software, I’d need it to meet three criteria:
- Be compatible with Ubuntu 16.04. At the very least, the software has to have a Linux-capable variety or be cross-platform if developed for another platform. I’m not going to extend the goose chase to installing a different operating system ($/FTC isn’t that high yet!).
- Be compatible with Nvidia GPUs, or at least the subset of functionality involving OpenCL. I’ve tried setting up cudaminer; the CUDA runtime is so nefarious that it’s damn near impossible to install from any angle I’ve tried so far.
- Be relatively painless to install. I’ve dealt with enough frustration trying to get a miner to work and don’t want to fight the Hydra again if I don’t have to.
[…]
And if I have to fall back on the second option, what software would you recommend that meets the above criteria (compatible with my system and easy to install)? Back in the BTC days the nicer pools would often release their own GUI-based Java miners that worked without a hitch or any fuss at the slight expense of hash rate. I haven’t found anything like that yet, and what I wouldn’t do to find that option.
Once again, thanks for bearing with me.
In light of what @wrapper said, I still find CUDA-based miners simple to compile and use compared to AMD/opencl, so long as the code is kept tidy, and even in some cases is easily fixed (missing include statements, etc). There are pitfalls and trip-ups galore in compiling and using each, most of which can only be avoided by experience.
Specifically for neoscrypt and nvidia gpu’s, I run djm34’s fork of tpruvot’s ccminer-sp. Very stable, fastest hashrate you can get, and still coded with CUDA6.5 and 7.5 to cover a broad range of gpu’s. You simply do not want to run opencl-based miners on nvidia gpu’s if you can help it.
(Why CentOS? Stability, pure and simple; it’s my natural preference since I work in a data center. ELRepo repository has kmod-nvidia, so driver maintenance is dead simple; no more init 3 installs unless you absolutely need the latest-greatest.)
On Ubuntu you should be able to easily install the CUDA 6.5/7.5 toolkit (or both versions if your card(s) are suported, switching between them with the /usr/local/cuda symlink and an ldconfig). There are local runfiles or .deb installers available from nvidia, though Ubuntu 16.x isn’t supported yet the 15.x install should still work. Compiling ccminer just requires apt-installing a few deps (you may already have most already) and configure/make.
Regarding your hash not showing on the pool, sometimes it’s a mismatch between the pool config and the miner. I’d just try another couple of pools like coinotron or give-me-coins and see if they work (always have for me).
Since you’re running linux, you should know nothing is exactly “painless”, it’s just a different variety of pain compared to Windows. :) And, at last check, FTC mining on nvidia is >50% more profitable than the next best coin (ethereum).
I’ve considered using CentOS or other Red Hat-children in the past as I have experience with Scientific Linux, but I have a generalized dislike of yum (haha). I’m too familiar with apt-get for my own good.
Tell you what, if this crosses into tomorrow (or later tonight) I’ll scrap the Ubuntu install and slap on CentOS or Fedora to give it a whirl. This disk is still new enough to the point where a 1GB flash stick is still a good backup strategy.
I’m thinking of giving ccminer-sp-neoscrypt a shot. Now, in the readme it specifies:
./configure has an option named --with-cuda that allows you to specify
where your CUDA 6.5 toolkit is installed (usually /usr/local/cuda,
but some distros may have a different default location)
How do I find where the CUDA toolkit is installed (and if it’s the proper version)? I’ve tried the usual, i.e. sudo find /usr/ -name "*cuda*", but that brings up every damn file and I’m not sure I know what to look for.
And, if I were to scrap the Ubuntu install and run Fedora or CentOS (I’m pulling both x86-64 ISOs right now, slight preference towards Fedora because I’ve used it before but it’s up in the air), how would I install the CUDA drivers/runtimes/toolkits/black magic properly using either one?
Is it as simple as yum install or would I need to work manually with RPMs?
All that said, I really really need to post a how-to for nvidia mining… “time… not enough…” :/
You’re telling me. I’m currently trying to write a Unix kernel as a learning exercise - my time and life force are measured in negative numbers.