Asic bitcoin mining!

Here we are, the asic mining is bringing up the difficulty, and GPU mining is no longer valuable.

My first butterfly labs little single is in route ! Finally ! but stuck at the border ...

I am waiting for the preorder of a few single sc.  Few guys are asking if the value of these box is as great as is was 1 year ago when we placed our order.  It is true that the difficulty level has raised a lot and with butterfly labs that promise 600 GH/S cards their first asic hardware will be deprecated very fast.

I don't know how to think about that. I've paid my asic miner with money from bitcoins, so it is a good investment, but for people having to pay with "real" money is this a good investment ? I would like to hear your opinion on this.

Also, I would like to know how you manage your gains in bitcoin ? Are you keeping everything in your wallet, or you cash few % and reinvest another % ?  Me, when the value of the bitcoin was around 300$ I sold everything I've had and sold all of my gpu (my electricity bill dropped from 300$/Month to 80$ :-). With that new hardware, I guess I will reinvest 50%, cash 25% (to pay electricity bill) and keep 25% for the future. Do you think it is a good plan ?

Anyway, when I will be able to put my hand on this package I will update this blog to explain how to configure your hardware to be up and running as fast as possible and, hopefully, get rich !

If you think this blog helped you out to configure your system, consider sending me a contribution to say thank you ! Even more, if you are from canada, INGdirect offer you 25$ (and I will also get 25$) if you open an account (with a minimum deposit of 100$).  My main account is at INGdirect and I like this bank. When I transfer money to my account in another bank it is very fast, and for the credit card billing, the payment is done in less than 24h. Also, they offer interest in their chequing account ! and there is no fee !  You can use the automatic ATM from other bank most of the transaction are free ! Yesterday I have seen a TV ad explaining they now offer online chequing deposit ! Yes, you take a picture of the cheque and it will be depositted in your account ! If you do open an account, use my orange key : 14927138S1 !

update: ubuntu 11.04/12.04/12.10/13.04 x86_64 dedicated crypto currency (bitcoin, i0coins, solidcoins, namecoins, ixcoins) mining rig using ATI RADEON GPU and CGMINER

I decided to create a cleaner look post. Also, this tutorial is for the latest *buntu releases and will target only cgminer as mining software.

If this tutorial helps you to start mining, please consider giving a small % of your gains to my wallet : 13sRUwHbmv5ewLjQkKabDTsyPQEDD4v6mx . You know, this blog has over 90 000 page views, and no one ever said thank you for my time.  At least, press on one adsense publicity to help me maintaining this blog.  Thank you

1. To mine you will need :
1. A computer with a very good power supply (850W to 1200W) 80+ gold is a plus..
2. You don't need a case, the graphics cards will become very hot, they need a very good air flow around them to cool down, be creative :-)..
3. If you think to use more than 2 cards in your computer, be sure to use external power on the riser cards, else your motherboard connector could melt (I know, it happend to me on a 3 GPU cards computer)
4. Linux *buntu CD version 13.04 ( I like kubuntu more than the other )
5. AMD Catalyst driver ( from AMD ) : version 13.04
6. AMD APP, open cl driver ( from AMD ) : version 2.8 
7. If you want CGMINER to control the GPU/MEM/FAN speed and other hardware parameter, you will need ADL_SDK : version 5.0  



2. Here is some advice on the choice of your computer :
1. Don't put more memory than needed, 1GB is more than needed
2. Try to use a USB KEY or 2.5" hard disk drive to use less energy
3. Use the smallest CPU possible, try to get old 60W CPU or less, mining does not require a lot of CPU power to run well
4. Remove the CD/DVD player, this computer is not a desktop, it is only used to mine
5. The computer will produce heat, a lot of heat will be produced and will be probably noisy, very noisy. 



3. Little note, in this tutorial, when you see " $ " it means you have to write something in the terminal prompt. If you have comment or suggestions, please be free to leave a comment, it is always a pleasure to update this tutorial.
4. Here we start! You will need to add the following packages
1. open a terminal and type :
2. $ sudo apt-get install vim subversion git-core libcurl4-openssl-dev libncurses5-dev pkg-config automake yasm openssh-server openssh-client build-essential



5. Install AMD Catalyst
1. Here, be carefull, there is 2 way to do it, from my experience, up to version 12.04 (no update applied) you can install the driver, but for earlier version, you have to create and then install the package 
2. open a terminal and type:
3. $ cd ~/Downloads
4. $ mkdir amd-driver-13.04
5. $ cd amd-driver-13.04
6. $ unzip ../amd-driver-installer-13.04-x86_64.zip
7. $ chmod +x amd-driver-installer-13.04-x86_64.run
8. $ sudo ./amd-driver-installer-13.04-x86_64.run
1. Select install driver (< 12.04) or create a package (>=12.04)
2. say yes to the licence and choose automatic
9. If you used the package, you will have to install the driver, with the file explorer double click on the created package and install. Hopefully it will work (it worked nicely for me)
10. If you have more than one card :
1. $ echo 'export display=:0' >> ~/.bashrc
11. Initialize the driver
1. $ sudo aticonfig --initial --adapter=all
12. reboot the computer
1. $ aticonfig --odgc --adapter=all
1. you should see the clocking of your GPU
2.  



6. Install AMD_APP (OpenCL Driver)
1. $ cd ~/Downloads
2. $ mkdir AMD_APP_2.8
3. $ cd AMD_APP_2.8
4. $ tar -zxvf ../AMD-APP-SDK-v2.8-lnx64.tgz
5. $ sudo ./Install-AMD-APP.sh
6. reboot



7. cgminer installation !
1. $ mkdir ~/bitcoin/
2. $ cd ~/bitcoin
3. $ git git://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer.git cgminer
4. $ cd cgminer
5. $ cd ~/Downloads
6. $ mkdir ADL_SDK_5
7. $ cd ADL_SDK_5
8. $ unzip ../ADL_SDK_5.0.zip
9. $ cp include/* ~/bitcoin/cgminer/ADL_SDK
10. $ cd ~/bitcoin/cgminer
11. $ ./autogen.sh
12. $ CFLAGS="-O2 -Wall -march=native -I /opt/AMDAPP/include/" LDFLAGS="-L/opt/AMDAPP/lib/x86_64" ./configure
13. $  make
14. The following command should tell you the number of gpu core present on your computer
1. $ ./cgminer -n



8. Now you need to find a good mining pool. I like deepbit and bitcoinpool, but there is a lot of other pool, you will have to select one that fit your needs.

Good luck mining :-)

pub...

PUB!

Today I've got a new workstation, I wanted to use a radeon 5770 (on which I will connect 3 screens) and add an 5850 to mine ...

Something very strange happen here ...  impossible to see 2 gpu on this computer.  I struggled a lot then saw something very bad ...  When I install the catalyst driver, I can see 2 GPU, but when I setup my screens with catalyst control center, the second gpu disapear ... 

This is confirmed by fglrxinfo at first, I see 2 gpu, after I see 1 gpu but 3 screens, as if it was impossible to get both working....

I'm on the case, if somebody has some suggestions, I would like to hear them! Edit : Thinking about the dummy plugs needed for windows, I added a 4th screen (yes I could plug 1 of my 3 screen) on the the second card. Then I configured catalyst control center (CCC) to enable this display. YES! I can see the 2nd GPU !!! Enabled Xinerama (remember, this is a workstation) ... lose the GPU... So I understood that the driver is crappy and won't let me doing what I want so ... I will plug this card on another rig. I purchased a 2 pcie-16x slots mainboard for that usage ... too bad, my home office will be less hot this summer !

Finally, cgminer install tutorial

I think that cgminer is the most advanced miner to date.  It doesn't push the hardware as far as I would like (it doesn't use 100% of the GPU) but it can manage multiple pool and use the longpoll from the fastest pool, so you will have a better mining uptime with this miner than with the other! I never experienced any "queue empty, miner is idle" with this miner.  Today the bitcoin value is 5$ so you need to get every hash as possible! The little drawback is that I was not yet successfull to make cgminer to use 99% of each gpu.

But, cgminer can set the fan, the clock and even overclock your GPU.  This is very nice!

So let's begin!

1. To manage your gpu fanspeed and clocking, you will need the ADL SDK (AMD Display Library)
- http://developer.amd.com/sdks/adlsdk/pages/default.aspx


2. Install missing softwares
$ sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev libncurses5-dev pkg-config automake yasm libtool

3. get the latest cgminer sourcecode :
$ git clone git://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer.git cgminer

4. enable ADL (control of the inner functions of the gpu like clocking, voltage, fan speed...)
$ mkdir ADL_SDK
$ cd ADL_SDK
$ mv ../ADL_SDK_3.0.zip .
$ unzip ADL_SDK_3.0.zip
$ cp include/* ../cgminer/ADL_SDK

5. Compilation
$ cd cgminer

$ ./autogen.sh
$ CFLAGS="-O2 -Wall -march=native -I /opt/AMDAPP/include/" LDFLAGS="-L/opt/AMDAPP/lib/x86_64" ./configure

if you get the following error :
/usr/bin/ld: cgminer-adl.o: undefined reference to symbol 'dlclose@@GLIBC_2.2.5'
/usr/bin/ld: note: 'dlclose@@GLIBC_2.2.5' is defined in DSO /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.6.1/../../../x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so so try adding it to the linker command line
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.6.1/../../../x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so: could not read symbols: Invalid operation

remove the ADL directory, you must disable ADL.


! be sure the GPU and ADL are enabled !

$ make

6. Testing (to see the number of gpu the software sees)
$ export DISPLAY=:0   #(use this command only if you have more than one card)
$ ./cgminer -n


If the number does not represent the number of gpu you own, there is a problem, you should have miss a step.  Or the git repository could be broken.  Try an older tag here : https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/tags

7. be up to date!
$ stop the miner
$ cd ~/cgminer
$ git pull
and then recompile (follow the step 5)


There is a lot of commands for this software.  The best way to learn is to read the documentation from the git repository, it is one of the best documentation I've read!

the server hang very often. SSH server ok, but no screen

On one of my rig, I experienced failure and a lot of hang.

Everytime, running top on the computer showed me that xorg was taking 100% cpu.

After seeking on the web, I've found a workaround :-) and it fixed the case :

edit the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf

$ sudo /etc/X11/xorg.conf

in the section device of all of your adapters add the line :


Option "UseEvents" "on"
this solved my problem :-)

update : this helped my system to be more reliable, but hanged each two to three days. 
update:  as the 1st of december 2011, my three rigs have 15, 15, 35 days of uptime (one is ups backed).  The problem was the cpu clocking... I would advice to start low and increase until you get unreliability, then decrease to get reliability!

tried a new miner (cgminer) one word to describe, WOW!

Today, I tried another miner, I liked the phoenix-miner, but this miner is way better!  This miner test different algorithms to see which is better for your hardware, the miner supports multiple card (in the same instance!) is able to wake up an hanged thread, uses multi pool ( round robin, %, fail over ) ...  the only thing I can say is WOW!  The software is written in C and asm and does not need python-pyopencl ! Good new!

The miner is built from the same guy that did the linux scheduler.  cgminer is my new main miner!

Today, following an ubuntu update, one of my mining rig died (xorg hanged 10 times) I will do some manipulation tomorrow to correct this.  I don't know if I will have to reinstall ubuntu (probably not but I don't know!)  Keep that in mind if you plan to start mining...  You will encounter bugs, and each bugs mean downtime and less bitcoin in your wallet!

Tomorrow I will write a small tutorial to install cgminer from the git directory.

Stay tuned :-)