Bitcoin Forum

TLDR;

-Boot from pendrive, keep your windows intact.

-For the new BitcoinZ Zhash algo and other asic resistant Equihash 192,7, 144,5, 96,5 and 210,9 algos.

-For all NVIDIA cards GTX 9XX and 10XX series 2GB and up.

-Compact, download under 500MB. For 2GB+ USB Pendrives (USB 3.0 recommended).

-Just download, flash your 2GB+ USB flash drive with etcher (etcher.io (http://etcher.io)), plug the USB into your PC, Set your BIOS to boot the USB before the hardrive, Boot, Configure in 3 EZ steps and get to mining!.

- 0.5% Dev Fee + 0.5% BitcoinZ Community Fund Fee = 1% Total Fee.

-Please read the readme 1st pdf to understand the install & config process:
http://www.altcap.biz/ZhashOSdocs/1stReadMe1st.pdf

-Mega Download: https://mega.nz/#!G3oHEYJQ!zn8K5XtdjDZ-62o4pxaXYjmZtL_DdLpikiLh_EHRGvw (https://mega.nz/#!G3oHEYJQ!zn8K5XtdjDZ-62o4pxaXYjmZtL_DdLpikiLh_EHRGvw)

-Website: http://zhashos.altcap.biz

Full details:

Hey Fellow Miners,

I have been developing and mining a simple version of Micro Linux for my personal rigs over the last year now.

Here's a couple of screen shots of the eye candy erm....I mean desktop in operation. Hopefully this will put Windows Users at ease and maybe even intrigued enough to check it out.

Desktop:
http://www.altcap.biz/ZhashOSdocs/DesktopView.png (http://www.altcap.biz/ZhashOSdocs/DesktopView.png)

Desktop Mining:
http://www.altcap.biz/ZhashOSdocs/MiningZhashWithEWBF.png

I have built a custom version of it to handle the new harder equihash parameters that are hopefully more ASIC resistant.

So it can be used to mine coins that use the new equihash 192,7, 144,5, 96,5 and 210,9 parameters.

The idea of this came about as I am a fan of BitcoinZ which has done an algo change on June 16th,2018.

In the original testing on June 10th, the new algo was making 1060 3GB cards unusable in Win 10 for mining. Something about Win 10 using to much GPU memory for itself and not leaving enough for mining the new equihash or Zhash parameters.

So the only option at the time was to fall back to Win 7.

Knowing that Linux did not have that problem, and wanting them to not be left out or have to regress their windows, I decided to build this O/S as a work around for them.

But as I said, It will work with all newer NVIDIA cards.

Also, knowing most were Windows users are not Linux aware, My main goal was to make this as easy peasy as possible for them.

Just download, flash your 2GB or larger USB flash drive with etcher, pop the USB into your PC, Set your BIOS to boot the USB before the hardrive, Boot, Configure in 3 EZ steps and get to mining!

Then you can keep your Win10 intact. You can also use like I do and not even have a hardrive/SSD installed at all on your rig. Saves me few bucks on my rigs that way. And uses less power as well.

I think most Windows users think of Linux as not very user friendly and lots of command line  configuration stuff.

While that was true in the beginning(1994-2004), there has been a push to make things more user friendly over the years. I feel it has come a long way since then.

I very rarely have to config anything on the command line anymore.

So, I set about my task of putting together a easy to deploy and configure solution. And once set, it will be stable and just flat work.

While I was working on this, EWBF released his much faster miner two days ago. Kudos to him for his work.

Soooo, we stopped the printing presses and built a brand new version with updated drivers using his miner instead. What is this "sleep" you speak of? LOL!

So that's the history of how I/we made ZhashOS.

Since EWBF's release, some people are claiming success with 3GB cards in Win 10, others are not.


Please read the readme 1st pdf to understand the install & config process:
http://www.altcap.biz/ZhashOSdocs/1stReadMe1st.pdf

BTW, this is also a full featured O/S complete with Spreadsheet, Word Processor,Email,Chat, Paint,Web Browser, FTP etc.

I have been using this Micro Linux since it came out in 2006 and was an instant fan. Not bad for a 900 MB O/S. When was the last time you heard of O/S install measure in MB's?

4GB RAM recommended, 2GB Minimum. If you have at least 4GB ram, You do not need *any* swapfile(Virtual Memory).  The whole thing loads into a ram drive and is lightening fast.  If you look at the CPU utilization screen when it was mining you will see Total CPU was running at 8%. Basically  idling.

Old download link removed see new version down below

Be sure and read the readme completely before starting.

First formal release  with: New Nvidia 387 driver, EWBF Miner, Basic miner crash recovery, Dev(0.5%) and BTCZ Fund(0.5%) fee sharing engaged, More icons set on the desktop for user ease of access, updated readme to help new installations. etc.

We are going to handle the fee arrangement a little differently.

I set it up to 50% share mining on it for about 15 minutes a day. You and I would split mining shares for the 15 minutes.  The other 23hours 45 minutes are all yours of coarse.  

I guess we would kind of call it a dev fee. That would work out to be roughly a 0.5% fee.

I would rather do it this way because most pools are PPLNS.

Being a miner myself, I'm thinking if you stop mining on your pool account completely like most Dev fees work, it would be more harmful to your daily earnings.

Rather, if you slow down for a period of time while sharing with me would be less harmful as the pool will see you haven't stopped completely.

I will use the fee to further feature enhancement going forward.

Some of the thoughts I have are self-monitoring and repair of mining crashing i e watchdog, automatic fan and power control to keep the card safe when it gets warm, have the "option" to activate being able to remote into a PC via remote desktop, keeping up with new releases, adding other btcz miners as they are developed Etc. Things like that.

We have also set up another 15 minutes for the bitcoinZ Community Fund. So they would get a 0.5% fee donation as well.

So your total donation would be roughly 1%.

So check it out. Linux has come a long way since its beginning. It has a pretty good proven track record of just flat working which is why most servers are using it. If it is good enough for them than it probably is good enough for us as well. eh?

Update: June 19th 2018
Release 2 of ZhashOS is now availible.

Updated to EWBF 0.2 cuda 8 which allows us to use a more mature nvidia driver.

Added a icon for editing GPUoverclock.sh plus a dialog box reminder/instructions to activate it after editing. Be sure and restart the miner after you activate it.

Added "Take a Shot" screen shot program.

Have shrunk the download size to under 500MB. Will fit on to a 2GB USB Flash Drive now. USB 3.0 drives are still highly recommended. It is 6x-10x faster. Makes boot times measured in seconds.


Update July 4th 2018
Release 2.01 of ZhashOS is now available

-Updated to EWBF 0.3 for up to 10% faster hashrate depending on the card.

-Revised the 1streadme1st document to give further guidance

-added FAQ.PDf to instruct on setting up Power/Fan Speed/Overclock settings on GPU. Very Important!

-Made password change function (passwd) operational. All users setting up Remote Desktop are highly recomended to set thier own password for the rig.

-Shrunk the download even further. Now ~475MB.


Update July 17th 2018
ZhashOS Release 2.02 is now available.

-Updated to EWBF 0.4

Improved performance for algo 144_5 and maxwell gpus,

Allows launching over 9 gpus in a single instance


Update August 1st 2018

ZhashOS Release 2.03 is now available.

-Updated to EWBF 0.5 Improved performance for algo 144_5 and maxwell gpus,
I am seeing 14-15% increase on 1070ti's

-Updated Faq.pdf with more questions answered.

-Modified StopZhash.sh to work better with certain high power CPU's

-Added more information pertaining to P106-100 type GPU's in EditGPUoverclock.sh

-Fixed a small formatting bug in EditGPUoverclock.sh reminder dialog box.

Update October 28 2018

ZhashOS Release 3 rc2 is now available

-HUGE improvement in setup time and ease with our new SetupWiz. One "new" user reported he was mining in 2 minutes after boot.

-Now includes a enhanced software watchdog that monitors "multiple" GPU parameters for crashes and will reset the miner or restart the desktop depending on what is needed.

-Also now has "SmartFan", a option to run the fans at the "minimum" speed needed to maintain your target GPU temperature. If set correctly, this may extend fan life.

-Updated EWBF to 0.6, added MiniZ 1.0c, gminer 1.05 and bminer 10.2.

Update November 06 2018

ZhashOS Release 3 is now available

-Added extra support features.

-Turned off unneeded ports in firewall when Remote Desktop is not activated.

-Updated MiniZ 1.0e and gminer 1.07.

# MD5
b5b97643338b55156b773a2fc43a6bcf  ZhashOS_r3.img.zip

Mega Download: https://mega.nz/#!G3oHEYJQ!zn8K5XtdjDZ-62o4pxaXYjmZtL_DdLpikiLh_EHRGvw (https://mega.nz/#!G3oHEYJQ!zn8K5XtdjDZ-62o4pxaXYjmZtL_DdLpikiLh_EHRGvw)

Nice job man!

here is a torrent for faster download, please dont forget to seed

ZhashOS1
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c6kUkN6R4Js-d78vPqYkmsvEqEQAyQ9Z/view?usp=sharing

Dude!! You are awesome! I'll get right on it!

Cool, glad to see you here!

Hey Chancefx, Yep, finally got the formal release done.

Thanks again for your beta testing! It was very helpful.

Made the USB key with unetbootin from Ubuntu.
I have an error message of not enough memory space at boot with a 8 and 16 GB key (and 16 GB RAM).

Hello,

If you are using Linux for flashing, Just unzip and use dd

dd if=/<Directory Of File>/ZhashOS_r1.img.zip of=/dev/XXX

XXX being the location of your usb flash drive. Make sure it is not currently mounted.

I forgot dd :-).
Made the USB key with etcher, as you wrote in your pdf and all work fine.
Will you make an upgrade with the new EWBF version (0.2) ?
Thank you for your excellent job (less 4 GO).

I have been working on release 2 with the new EWBF 0.2 cuda 8 version and taking to the rigs to test. If all is well I will upload in a few hours.

Using NVIDIA driver 348.111 my "works everywhere" driver.

my release 2 will have a easier to setup Power/Fan Speed/Overclock function to activate on boot.

Also, what is (less 4 GO)?

Also, the download size is now under 500MB.

Shrunk the partition to under 2GB.

O/S is only 900MB so it still has plenty of room to live in.

Also, besides "screeny", I added "Take a shot" a screen capture program.

http://www.altcap.biz/ZhashOSdocs/DesktopView.png (http://www.altcap.biz/ZhashOSdocs/DesktopView.png)

Release 2 of ZhashOS is now availible.

Updated to EWBF 0.2 cuda 8 which allows us to use a more mature nvidia driver.

Added a icon for editing GPUoverclock.sh plus a dialog box reminder/instructions to activate it after editing. Be sure and restart the miner after you activate it.

Added "Take a Shot" screen shot program.

Have shrunk the download size to under 500MB. Will fit on to a 2GB USB Flash Drive now. USB 3.0 drives are still highly recommended. It is 6x-10x faster. Makes boot times measured in seconds.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4481713.msg40261859#msg40261859

I am a windows user but I don't understand how does that fee work, I mean, if we start the image from the pen, won't we be able to mine anything and any way we want?

Yes, You will be able to mine any coin EWBF 0.2 supports.

Our hope is you would mine BTCZ

But that is not a requirement.

And you will not penalized for mining other coins.

But to be clear, The fee will still be intact.

Good job Bro! Keep it up! ;)
I will stick with your platform as soon as AMD Zhash miner is out!

How does the fee work?

We are going to handle the fee arrangement a little differently.

Being a miner myself, I'm thinking if you stop mining on your pool account completely like most Dev fees work, it would be more harmful to your daily earnings.

Rather, if you slow down for a period of time while sharing with me would be less harmful as the pool will see you haven't stopped completely.

I will use the fee to further feature enhancement going forward.

Some of the thoughts I have are self-monitoring and repair of mining crashing i e watchdog, automatic fan and power control to keep the card safe when it gets warm, have the "option" to activate being able to remote into a PC via remote desktop, keeping up with new releases, adding other btcz miners as they are developed Etc. Things like that.

Maybe I have to try booting from your image because I don't understand how you will get any fee from a linux os.
If I want to use your OS a fee will always apply even if I try another miner?

Maybe it is all evident for you but for me and I guess for many people more it isn't and that's probably one of the reasons there aren't many posts here.

Try it, It is built to give windows users a Graphical Desktop instead of a cold hard command line for setup. You will make a few edits into a windows notepad like program to setup your mining pool info. That text file is heavily commented to explain which line to edit.

Yes, Even if you try another miner, the fee will still apply. We will just won't sharing the same miner, that's all. Are you not interested in using EWBF?

AcharyOne, I added to the description to hopefully clarify the fee share process. I made bold the additions. Hope this helps.

We are going to handle the fee arrangement a little differently.

I set it up to 50% share mining on it for about 15 minutes a day. You and I would split mining shares for the 15 minutes.  The other 23hours 45 minutes are all yours of coarse. 

I guess we would kind of call it a dev fee. That would work out to be roughly a 0.5% fee.

I would rather do it this way because most pools are PPLNS.

Being a miner myself, I'm thinking if you stop mining on your pool account completely like most Dev fees work, it would be more harmful to your daily earnings.

Rather, if you slow down for a period of time while sharing with me would be less harmful as the pool will see you haven't stopped completely.

I will use the fee to further feature enhancement going forward.

Some of the thoughts I have are self-monitoring and repair of mining crashing i e watchdog, automatic fan and power control to keep the card safe when it gets warm, have the "option" to activate being able to remote into a PC via remote desktop, keeping up with new releases, adding other btcz miners as they are developed Etc. Things like that.

We have also set up another 15 minutes for the bitcoinZ Community Fund. So they would get a 0.5% fee donation as well.

So your total donation would be roughly 1%.
 

New Website:

http://zhashos.altcap.biz

Also has FAQ now.

Another Happy ZhashOS Customer!

Thanks firstminingrig for the tweet!

https://twitter.com/firstminingrig/status/1010449787802484736?s=19

What kind of result to expect per GTX 1080 on Zhash for BTCZ if I use ZhashOS??? Thanks in advance

Not really sure, I use 1070ti's.

They are similar but not exactly the same.

Your 1080 should do slightly better than this as a 1070ti is a 1080 with a small portion of the chip disabled.

I get:

37-42 Sol/s @ 240cc 1290mc @ 135 Watts

or

35-37 Sol/s @ 170cc 1290mc @ 118 Watts

Actual power usage is less on both settings. I usually see .28-.34 Sol/watt

You will be able to set these settings in ZhashOS.

If I hear of any other reports, I will post them on this thread

With a Pascal NVidia GPU, you can be able to have 0.31 to 0.34 sol/W.
It is the best goal for sol/W, usually at 70% of the normal power usage (an average of 52.5 W for 1050Ti, 90/100 W for 1070 and 170 W for 1080Ti).

ZhashOS Release 2.01 is now available.

-Updated to EWBF 0.3 for up to 10% faster hashrate depending on the card.

-Revised the 1streadme1st document to give further guidance

-added FAQ.PDf to instruct on setting up Power/Fan Speed/Overclock settings on GPU. Very Important!

-Made password change function (passwd) operational. All users setting up Remote Desktop are highly recomended to set thier own password for the rig.

-Shrunk the download even further. Now ~475MB.

Download link in 1st post:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4481713.msg40261859#msg40261859

@Overdrive5 Dziękuję bardzo za pomoc, on bardzo mi pomógł. Od kilku dni nie potrafiłem zmniejszyć napięcia na kartach, ale dzięki jego pomocy udało się to zrobić w chwilę. Gdybyście mieli jakiekolwiek problemy to polecam bardzo Overdrive5 :)


@Overdrive5 Thank you so much for help, he has helped me a lot. Since a few days I couldn't lower the tension on the cards but thanks to his help I managed to do it in a minute. If you'd had any problems, I recommend Overdrive5 :)

@cryptorocker, Yes that was fun using google translate to assist us in lowering your power consumption from 120w to 68w per card. That should really help when the next power bill comes in. Yes? Plus it should help the rig last longer as well. Glad I could help!

@cryptorocker, Tak, to było zabawne, używając google translate, aby pomóc nam obniżyć zużycie energii z 120 do 68 w kartach. To powinno naprawdę pomóc, kiedy pojawi się następny rachunek za energię. Tak? Poza tym powinno to również pomóc urządzeniu dłużej przetrwać. Cieszę się, że mogłem pomóc!

ZhashOS Release 2.02 is now available.

-Updated to EWBF 0.4

Improved performance for algo 144_5 and maxwell gpus,

Allows launching over 9 gpus in a single instance


Download link in 1st post:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4481713.msg40261859#msg40261859

I have received a few reports EWBF 0.4 is working better on some GPU's and not as well on others.

If for some reason you are unhappy with EWBF 0.4, I did leave a previous copy of 0.3 on ZhashOS.

All you have to do is edit line 70 of Zhash.sh from "miner" to "miner0.3" then save and exit and then close the miner window and it will reload with 0.3 from then on.

ZhashOS users:

You can configure your sidebar to display GPU temps.

Hover the mouse pointer over the sidebar and right click then left click configuration then left click Builtin / Sensors / Temperatures and you should see the other GPU's.

Then click each enable checkbox.

You can also drag each line up or down into order of your preference.

I will post some pics of the sidebar display shortly

Here is a pic of the sidebar

http://www.altcap.biz/ZhashOSdocs/gkrellm.png

Here is a zoom of the sidebar after GPU's are enabled in it.


http://www.altcap.biz/ZhashOSdocs/GkrellmGPUs.png

Good day! Is it possible in your OS to use the algorithm Equihash 96_5? How can I do overclocking cards?

Yes EWBF can use 96_5 with modern Nvidia cards.

Please see the FAQ.pdf about overclocking.

http://zhashos.altcap.biz

Great! Thank you for the information

Update August 1st 2018

ZhashOS Release 2.03 is now available.

-Updated to EWBF 0.5 Improved performance for algo 144_5 and maxwell gpus,
I am seeing 14-15% increase on 1070ti's

-Updated Faq.pdf with more questions answered.

-Modified StopZhash.sh to work better with certain high power CPU's

-Added more information pertaining to P106-100 type GPU's in EditGPUoverclock.sh

-Fixed a small formatting bug in EditGPUoverclock.sh reminder dialog box.

Download link in 1st post:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4481713.msg40261859#msg40261859

Here is a preview of the new desktop from our upcoming release 3 of ZhashOS.

http://www.altcap.biz/ZhashOSdocs/smpl13a.png (http://www.altcap.biz/ZhashOSdocs/smpl13a.png)

More info to come shortly.

A really nice tweet from one of the ZhashOS Release 3 beta testers:

https://twitter.com/FollowWings8/status/1054699213043494912?s=19 (https://twitter.com/FollowWings8/status/1054699213043494912?s=19)

We have pulled the previous ZhashOS r203 Mega link.  

Release 3 will be out within the next few days.

FYI, we have reports of ex-windows users seeing 10-20% less power usage at the wall with ZhashOS.

Here is a tweet showing a user amazed at how easy it was to activate remote desktop and even using it on his phone.

https://twitter.com/FollowWings8/status/1056207465388351493

We are getting ready to provide release 3 (release candidate is out now) which will be a HUGE improvement in setup time and ease. We have received a #zhashos discord post that one first time user was mining in around 2 minutes after initial boot.

I just posted a extensive reply showing where ZhashOS is more power efficient than the OP's setup by over 80 watts. Has a lot of pictures detailing the test and results.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5057989.msg47505668#msg47505668 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5057989.msg47505668#msg47505668)

FollowWings thought he was going to have to stop mining in ZhashOS and switch to windows in order to watch a youtube video.

I told him it would very likely work with ZhashOS.

So he eventually tried it in ZhashOS and he was amazed that it was able to display the 4k video with only about a 10% reduction in mining speed.

He was not able to do that in windows because it would crash the miner with his rig. Not so with ZhashOS.

https://twitter.com/FollowWings8/status/1058767214923407367?s=19 (https://twitter.com/FollowWings8/status/1058767214923407367?s=19)

PS: He took the pic with his phone, so it came out sideways. But you get the idea.

Good job!

Great to see that miniZ miner is implemented in the new ZhashOS release.

Because of the fast pace of new releases from miners, it would be nice to implement a friendly way for users to update them to the latest release. This would help ZhashOS to always have the best mining performance.

Latest release miniZ v1.0e available @ https://miniz.ch/download/ (https://miniz.ch/download/)

Yes, Thank you for your suggestion! I agree. However, we are still advancing development of this OS.

Plenty of new features are in the works still. So releases will be coming out fairly regularly.

Once that slows down, we will start releasing packages for updates.

Update November 06 2018

ZhashOS Release 3 is now available

-Added extra support features.

-Turned off unneeded ports in firewall when Remote Desktop is not activated.

-Updated MiniZ 1.0e and gminer 1.07.

Download link in 1st post:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4481713.msg40261859#msg40261859

is there a benchmarked benefit to mine on this instead of win10?

Nothing Benchmarked.

I just recently posted a extensive reply showing where ZhashOS is more power efficient than the OP's setup by over 80 watts. Has a lot of pictures detailing the test and results.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5057989.msg47505668#msg47505668  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5057989.msg47505668#msg47505668)

Which as a side note, I'm currently researching reducing power consumption even further.

In regards to Win10, AFAIK, Win10 requires a hard or SSD drive and virtual memory in order to run.

ZhashOS requires neither.

A OS with a running hard/SSD drive with virtual memory on it being accessed IS going to consume more power than a OS without one. It is as simple as that.

I also have several reports where new "first time" users have been able to get mining on ZhashOS within minutes of first boot.

So you have to ask yourself...what is your time worth to you?

For most people of mining caliber, it is pretty darn expensive.

I want my pc & rigs to be a appliance that just flat works.

I haven't had a OS update in years and I've NEVER had a virus.

I turn my appliance on and it JUST...FLAT...WORKS!

My time is to precious to me to allow it to do anything else....

According to wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Public_servers_on_the_Internet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Public_servers_on_the_Internet)

The 2015 W3COOK top 1 million Web Servers Survey, Shows Linux owns 96.6% of the market share.

There is a reason why Linux is the top choice of web server sysadmins....reliability!

And I view mining to be of a similar reliability need.

Exactly how much money are you making when the rig is down?

Not to say Linux is perfect, Nothing is perfect that is human made.

But having sysadmin'd both OS's, I have chosen Linux for it's reliability.

And I have enjoyed the extra time that choice has afforded me.

i have miner setup already working perfect. in order for me to take the time to use zhashos and pay 1% fee. i'd probably need 5x the 1% fee, in savings, to justify taking the time to switch, no matter how long it takes to start.

if i was making a new rig and didnt need to buy ssd, this would be a clear choice.

Fair enough, I can understand your position.

But please remember this conversation the next time you have to "administrate" your OS.

Not the hardware or the miner app or the coin/pool setup. Just the OS.

And then please calculate all the "costs" of your time for doing it.

That 1% fee will become a real bargain.

IMHO, If you have to spend more than 60 seconds extra a month, then this is the better deal.

Here is a little more detail about our watchdog function we built into ZhashOS.

When ever a GPU crashes, we log the details in our zhash.log file including "which" GPU had the problem and what it was.

This makes much easier to diagnose the problem GPU and address it precisely.

Here is one such entry in our log file to explain.


As you can see here, when a GPU makes multiple "problem" log entries within a 2 minute time frame, we know it is/has crashed and we take appropriate action to restart it.

Working on a new release of ZhashOS with new Nvidia drivers that will support RTX 20XX GPU's.

Will include Gminer 1.08 and a few bug fixes as well.

Should be out within 48 hours.

We are going to release miniZ 1.0f in a few hours! Hopefully it will be on time for the new ZHashOS release  :)

Hey miniZ!

Thanks for the heads up!

Sure! We can wait a little bit.

Looking forward to your release!

Hi Overdrive5,

Thank you!

miniZ v1.0g v1.0h is out!

We decided to make an extra version for Linux, compiled with cuda 10, for compatibility with new RTX 20XX GPUs. Since we do not have one of these we could not test it.
It would be great to have some feedback on this. :)

For download and more information check the website:
https://miniz.ch

Looking forward for the new ZhashOS release!