BitShares Forum
Other => Graveyard => MemoryCoin => Topic started by: FreeTrade on January 14, 2014, 03:55:10 am
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Is anybody interested in managing a project to create a LiveCD (Bootable CD) that makes mining easy for everyone.
The idea is that anyone can put the CD into any computer, and it just boots up and starts pool mining with whatever hardware it finds. It should be zero-configuration if possible, although the user will probably need to enter an MMC address.
I guess it would be best
1. Linux
2. Didn't access the hard-disk or usb or network drives
3. Auto configured network access
4. Found the best hardware (GPUs and CPUs), looked at the memory available, and made some sensible decisions about which miners to launch, and started them
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Some discussion about this going on here -
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=414958.0
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There's a dead project over here, but it does what you want and can be easily updated:
http://live-miner.github.io/
I'm personally using similar solution and can help to tweak this out. However I don't have any NVidia GPU to test on, this version is built for AMD (fglrx driver etc..).
Variables for the miner can be delivered via boot options, it also boots from USB stick or over PXE so the configuration can be stored there. PM me if you have further questions.
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:P i have used minimal centOS to dig PTS until yesterday
and i began to dig MMC, because PTS's profit is too low
btw, i think it's sort of easy to install a linux into usb disk and wget a m7j miner~
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Oooh, I like the idea.
The zero-config is possible, but much more difficult with a no data storage requirement (i.e., LiveCD). Is the intent to make it easy for anyone to set-up a single machine for repeated mining, or to start mining an any machine one and only one time?
Easiest way is a LiveUSB and installing a new partition. MMC could maintain shell scripts to autoinstall / configure everything else. After first install, machine would auto-start into mining.
Or, you could actually install onto a USB instead of HD (and instead of just a LiveUSB). But an OS on a USB is sloooow...but, some minimal / custom distros like centOS or BAMT may fix that.
Would a LiveCD run into any memory / speed issues?
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The GPU setup seems not possible on LiveCD: proprietary AMD and Nvidia drivers cannot be bundled due to license restrictions, so they need to be downloaded/setup on each boot. But, they require reboot after setup, and this will be effectively restore the system to its virgin state without a persistent storage.
Besides, CD/DVD drives are becoming a rarity. LiveUSB seems to be a better option for such a distribution.
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Oooh, I like the idea.
The zero-config is possible, but much more difficult with a no data storage requirement (i.e., LiveCD). Is the intent to make it easy for anyone to set-up a single machine for repeated mining, or to start mining an any machine one and only one time?
This is for my grandmother. I want to have CD that I give her that she put in the computer, switch it on and have it start mining for her.
I think she'd be able to enter her MMC address the first time she starts it - she'd understand that . . . . but any other configuration would be completely impossible for her.
I'm thinking it shouldn't access any storage, so that we can add the latest and greatest miners to the distribution without worrying too much that the binaries might be malicious.
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The GPU setup seems not possible on LiveCD: proprietary AMD and Nvidia drivers cannot be bundled due to license restrictions, so they need to be downloaded/setup on each boot. But, they require reboot after setup, and this will be effectively restore the system to its virgin state without a persistent storage.
Besides, CD/DVD drives are becoming a rarity. LiveUSB seems to be a better option for such a distribution.
The GPU part will definitely be more challenging, but we can get started with CPU without too much trouble I hope. LiveUSB works too, but I think desktop machines will likely still have CD or DVD for some time. I think distribution of CDs is cheaper and lower config than USB so I like the CD option more.
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GPU can be done as well, but due to GPL restrictions as reorder mentioned, some magic has to be done. It works nicely for AMD, for Nvidia we can work it out. More challenging is that each pool has its own miner at the moment. But this may change in near future.
I will try to prepare CPU live miner as soon as possible. I plan to use yam only. If somebody has a decent hosting let me know. The iso file will be under 200MB.
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GPU can be done as well, but due to GPL restrictions as reorder mentioned, some magic has to be done. It works nicely for AMD, for Nvidia we can work it out. More challenging is that each pool has its own miner at the moment. But this may change in near future.
I will try to prepare CPU live miner as soon as possible. I plan to use yam only. If somebody has a decent hosting let me know. The iso file will be under 200MB.
Hey that's great. We just got new hosting setup for memorycoin.org and we can start with that - we'll probably want to get torrents set up for distribution though.
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GPU can be done as well, but due to GPL restrictions as reorder mentioned, some magic has to be done. It works nicely for AMD, for Nvidia we can work it out. More challenging is that each pool has its own miner at the moment. But this may change in near future.
I will try to prepare CPU live miner as soon as possible. I plan to use yam only. If somebody has a decent hosting let me know. The iso file will be under 200MB.
Thanks for this. yvg1900 indicates that he doesn't think choice of linux OS will be a particularly important factor.
Yam miner will be an excellent choice to start - it allows use of the two pools that don't require user/pass.
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Live miner is ready, check your PM.
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Cool thanks - I haven't had a chance to try it out yet. Emre, can you get an FTP login space setup for hog? If we get a download link and some instructions setup, people can start testing it out.
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Download link is in PM, just use the latest version. Instructions are in the archive.
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Emre, can you get an FTP login space setup for hog? If we get a download link and some instructions setup, people can start testing it out.
done! pm'ed the releated information to hog.
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thanks to h0g0f0g0, first test release of livecd is ready.
http://memorycoin.org/downloads/livecd/releases/yam-live-1.1-M7j.zip
it includes:
- hdd -binary.img that can be transferred to usb stick. Configuration is in /live/yam-live.cfg or can be added at boot time via boot options
- iso - contains an iso file that has to be remastered to contain custom config or boot options can be used
- netboot - archive for network deployment via PXE/TFTP
please test it and give feedback. for the usage instructions just read the readme.html file in the archive.
@freetrade, @seraphim can we have a support thread for livecd project?
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Thanks,
I've been testing this out today - great start on the project - 1000MMC on its way to you.
My thoughts are -
LiveCD works, but difficult to configure - as others recommend, I now think better to focus on liveUSB, and when that is more settled, make a liveCD variant.
LiveUSB -
I used the windows program recommended to create the USB stick, then altered the config and now have a bootable OS that starts mining on the network PC. It found the right chipset to use too. Love the miner pic on boot up too!
Problems:
1. It starts out trying to mine 8 threads on an 8GB machine - not finding enough memory and crashing, so I have to set the config to 7 threads. That makes the USB stick specific to machines that use 7 threads (and config is tough for my grandmother). I found with the windows-qt client that it was quite easy to find the amount of physical memory available on the machine and set the number of threads accordingly. I think this probably belongs in YAM autoconfiguration, along with auto-detection of AES-NI.
2. Config is a hassle - need some way to set mining address after boot-up, maybe from keyboard entry (possibly just first 6 chars, grab addresses from an address autocomplete api), or use a hardware signature(and/or ip address) to lookup a mining address from a web service.
Overall though, great start - any thoughts for a name?
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Thanks for a feedback as well as for the coins.
Now I focused on making things simple and target audience is your grandma ;)
The file is located at http://memorycoin.org/downloads/livecd/releases/yam-live-1.2-M7j.zip (http://memorycoin.org/downloads/livecd/releases/yam-live-1.2-M7j.zip) and contains only USB image.
Use Disk Imager (http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/files/ (http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/files/)) to save it onto a USB stick or in Linux:
dd if=binary.img of=/dev/sdx
where x is the correct dsk.
The only thing that needs to be changed is the wallet address in /live/yam-live.cfg.
All is set to auto and should work out of the box.
LiveCD and netboot image available as well but I wasn't uploading it this time. I have the toolchain ready for the future, but at the moment I think the most people will use USB miner only.
Let me know if it works for you and if there's anything to add/change.
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I haven't tried it out yet, so pardon my ignorance. I have a question/request:
Is it possible to create a "stealth USB stick" ? I'm thinking of a room mate who has a Windows PC. So he is away, and his/her PC is idling. I insert a "stealth USB stick", it creates a virtual machine and starts mining MMC. Then, when he/she needs the PC back, just pull out the stealth USB stick.
Possible to do? The advantage, as I understand, would be that it required no reboot, so the room mate can carry on with their work on the PC as soon as they come back.
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I haven't tried it out yet, so pardon my ignorance. I have a question/request:
Is it possible to create a "stealth USB stick" ? I'm thinking of a room mate who has a Windows PC. So he is away, and his/her PC is idling. I insert a "stealth USB stick", it creates a virtual machine and starts mining MMC. Then, when he/she needs the PC back, just pull out the stealth USB stick.
Possible to do? The advantage, as I understand, would be that it required no reboot, so the room mate can carry on with their work on the PC as soon as they come back.
You may want to just hack his windows pw with ophcrack ( if it is locked)
Play around with task scheduler.
Make the miner run after 15 minutes of inactivity. (ALWAYS run low priority)
Otherwise, put the files on the USB disk and run the .bat from it.
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Yam Live USB miner updated to M7k.
Download at http://memorycoin.org/downloads/livecd/releases/yam-live-1.3-M7k.zip (http://memorycoin.org/downloads/livecd/releases/yam-live-1.3-M7k.zip)
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added to http://memorycoin.org/files/
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Cool - is it able to autodetect AES-NI . . . or how does it deal with that config setting?
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It auto-detects AES support and sets number of threads according to available memory.
The only thing that has to be done manually in auto mode is to set MMC wallet address. With auto off all parameters are configurable.
See yam-live.cfg for further details.
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The approach I'm using for the zero-config GUI is to use 1GB and threads set to 0 (same as number of cores).
I think these are better defaults . . . say if you have an 8 core machine with 4GB . . . you might only be running with 3 threads with your approach. The user would see better results with 8 threads and 1GB.
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How can you use 1GB for 8 threads? On my box 1024 MB is minimum amount per thread.
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Hmm strange on another box i can run 8 threads with 1gig of memory. So I'm going to tweak the auto mode to take care of the cpu threads at maxed memory size.
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Hmm strange on another box i can run 8 threads with 1gig of memory. So I'm going to tweak the auto mode to take care of the cpu threads at maxed memory size.
Sounds like a good plan - the new 'm' parameter is the max amount of memory to use, btw, not per thread.
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Hmm strange on another box i can run 8 threads with 1gig of memory. So I'm going to tweak the auto mode to take care of the cpu threads at maxed memory size.
Sounds like a good plan - the new 'm' parameter is the max amount of memory to use, btw, not per thread.
Sure, but it was crashing on test VM yesterday. I will have a look at this again. Auto mode will max out the machine resources, threads and available memory.
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New version of YAM Live USB miner is uploaded here:
http://memorycoin.org/downloads/livecd/releases/yam-live-1.4-M7k.zip (http://memorycoin.org/downloads/livecd/releases/yam-live-1.4-M7k.zip)
It fixes the issue with auto detection of a memory size. Miner is now using the maximum possible CPU threads as well as the amount of memory.
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Exiting because of faulty parameters for me - seems like memory size is being sent as 6912 . . . not divisible by 1024 and YAM rejects it.
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Exiting because of faulty parameters for me - seems like memory size is being sent as 6912 . . . not divisible by 1024 and YAM rejects it.
What is the total amount of memory?
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Exiting because of faulty parameters for me - seems like memory size is being sent as 6912 . . . not divisible by 1024 and YAM rejects it.
What is the total amount of memory?
8 GB total on the machine.
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I've reuploaded fixed v1.4. It calculates memory size correctly on multiple configurations for me. Download again and check please.
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Okay - latest test
Uses correct chipset YAM (ivy-bridge)
Uses correct memory amount 7GB
Uses correct threads (0)
Fails to detect AES-NI (i get 0.2 HPM rather than 10HPM!)
Uses AV=1 . . . shouldn't it be AV=0 for fine tuning?
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AV=1 is taken from config file, just change it to 0 for auto-tuning. I will make it default in next release.
For AES-NI part, I don't get it. Script is looking for aes flags in /proc/cpuinfo. Can you check this file if it contains 'aes' flag?
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AV=1 is taken from config file, just change it to 0 for auto-tuning. I will make it default in next release.
Thanks - the ideal would be to have it start with AV=0, then write the results to the config so that next time it starts with the best config.
For AES-NI part, I don't get it. Script is looking for aes flags in /proc/cpuinfo. Can you check this file if it contains 'aes' flag?
Not sure how to do that. Looks like we need a more reliable way to find out about AES support - or maybe start with AES-NI switched on, and if that process fails, switch to AES-NI off.
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Ok, here's a fixed release. AES-NI detection should work properly and av=0 is used by default:
http://memorycoin.org/downloads/livecd/releases/yam-live-1.5-M7k.zip
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Thanks! 500MMC tip on its way to you.
I think its fully functional and useful enough now to recommend to our users.
Thinking of some future potential improvements -
1. Advising user if MMC address not configured and refusing to start mining.
2. Prompting for Wifi network selection / password (I guess difficult to auto configure wifi hardware)
3. GPU mining (I guess difficult to auto configure gpu drivers)
4. Not sure if it's safe to remove the USB after starting mining - seems to work ok on one machine, not on another. Would be useful for booting up a room full of PCs from a single USB drive. Maybe copying OS to RAM disk or similar.
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Thanks! 500MMC tip on its way to you.
I think its fully functional and useful enough now to recommend to our users.
Thinking of some future potential improvements -
1. Advising user if MMC address not configured and refusing to start mining.
2. Prompting for Wifi network selection / password (I guess difficult to auto configure wifi hardware)
3. GPU mining (I guess difficult to auto configure gpu drivers)
4. Not sure if it's safe to remove the USB after starting mining - seems to work ok on one machine, not on another. Would be useful for booting up a room full of PCs from a single USB drive. Maybe copying OS to RAM disk or similar.
Thanks for the coins, much appreciated.
1. Miner can be distributed without preconfigured address and verify if address field is empty. If it is, it can display a warning. I guess nobody wants to type address in a console. But as I said in other thread, config can be generated from wallet. Even the whole USB can be written from there.
2. Wifi hw support is not built in as there are simply so many vendors and configuration options. I guess nobody wants to run miner over wifi, but I can have a look into this as well. Can be feature added once the full desktop is part of the miner (3).
3. GPU miners are "per pool" so I'd like to wait for this to be part of yam. At some point this will be integrated. The problem with onstart compilation of drivers to prevent GNU violation can be solved, it's just not worth the hassle at this point.
4. Removing USB is not possible by default. I can add "toram" boot option as default that will copy entire live media to memory. Means less free memory (200MB) but very fast system. This option can be also entered manually, just press tab at the boot screen and add toram as last option, hit enter..
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Awesome project, thanks :)!
Adding on to what FreeTrade said on wifi, would it be possible to include a config file in the meantime for users to specify the SSID and password to connect to for wifi? :)