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Bamt Quick Start Guide

This Guide will walk you through getting bamt up and running easily.

This guide assumes the following things
1. You have little if any linux knowledge
2. You want to setup a headless miner (Screen would be nice for first boot if available)
3. Your personal pc runs a version of windows
4. You have a lan network that both your pc and the miner will be connected to

Now that thats out of the way lets get started,

Download the following
1. Win32DiskImager (https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer/0.5/0.5/+download/win32diskimager-binary.zip)
2. Putty (windows ssh) (http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/x86/putty.exe)
3. BAMT (http://bamter.org/download.html) (slow download recommend using all mirrors through a download manager)

Ok Now you need a usb drive of atleast 2gb,
All data on this usb will be lost so dont use one with anythign you need to keep still on it.

Open Win32 Disk Imager and select the image file bamt_v0.5c.img
Next select your usb drive letter under the Device dropdown menu
Now click Write
Depending on the speed of your usb this could take upto a hour to complete.

Once the image has been wrote to the drive, plug the usb drive into the rig you want to run bamt on and boot it up,
its a good idea to know what ip the rig is going to use when it connects to your network, so if you dont know hook up a screen to the rig and it will be displayed on the desktop
Ok, now that we have the ip, we need to setup bamt to use the cards for mining and the pool + clock speeds

Open up putty
In the host name box put the ip address of your bamt box
click open,
A box should popup, Click yes
in the black window login as
User: "user"
Pass: "live"

Now we are going to set the root pw
Type "sudo passwd"
and set the pw to something not guessable

And the user pw
"passwd"
And set the pw to something DIFFERENT from the root pw
Now to login as root
type "su" and enter the pw

Now the following command is helpfull if you are running a box headless and for remote management
type in
"apt-get install xrdp"
This will install a remote desktop protocol wrapper on the box, and will allow you to remote desktop in from your personal pc to continue setup and check problems

ok now close the putty window.
Click the start menu and in the search box type "mstsc", hit enter
In the Computer box put the ip of the rig and hit connect
use the same login as above to login.

Configuring your cards
Click the thing down where the start menu normaly is, then configure bamt -> edit /etc/bamt/bamt.conf

Scroll down to "gpu0"
Change "disabled: 1" to "disabled: 0"

Now if you want to overclock the card remember that bamt drives it ALOT harder then the windows miners and you will need to ajust the clock speed acordinaly for this
for example i could have the core at 900 in windows, but in bamt i can only get it to 770 before it goes awol and crashs on every boot

--------------- NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FIRST TIME ---------------
If you do want to set the clock speeds then scroll down to you see
core_speed_0 : ####
etc and plug in your speeds and take of the "# "
--------------------------------------------------------------

I also recommend changing the fan speed from 100 down to 50-70 depending on the heat your card generates when mining

Now save and close this file

Now start menu button -> BAMT config -> edit /etc/bamt/pools
Go down to the end of the file and delete the pool line
Now put in your pool login in the form of
http://user:password@pooladdress:port/
and save and exit

--------------- RECOMMENDED ---------------
Run bamt fixer in the config menu and apply all patchs
-------------------------------------------

Now to see if it works,
Click the start button -> Bamt control -> Restart mining sessions

Open a webbrowser and go to the ip of the box bamt is running on
you should see something similar to this
http://screensnapr.com/v/qVFrqv.jpg

If you dont see that its accepting shares then post here and il see what i can do to help

NOTE:
You should use the "coldreboot" command from the root username and not just "reboot" or there might be problems

If this guide has helped you attall please send some btc my way (poor college student ;P)
BTC: 1325TrScK8jkiPuMEMxNf1VXHHfnR1QtgN


Usefull resources
http://bamter.org/redmine/projects/bamt/wiki/FAQ

The FAQ says never to use sudo.  You should be logging in as the root user.  You will need to set passwords for both root and user.

You should also mention using coldreboot instead of the normal reboot command.

Will update in a min Thanks for pointing that out

Stupid faq, says not to use sudo yet you need to sudo to get the root pw set :@

i've been working with ssh in console your method is much more graphic xD

hey, would you mind explaining how to configure bamt.conf to run cgminer instead of phoenix?

If you are logged in as root, you can just use 'passwd' to change the pass.

I ssh in as root, then 'passwd' and then 'passwd user'

Il look into it ;)

But if the root password is not set, how do you log in?  ;D

kinda chicken and egg eh?

bamt autologins as root

but if its a headless unit!

you are provided the password, otherwise you would be attached to another object by an inclined plane wrapped helically around an axis ;)

If the password is not set, when prompted for the password you just press enter...

That doesn't work.

As a security feature in linux if password is not set you intentionally can't remote login.  NULL == "".  You can have a passwd of "" but root's password is set to NULL

root password must be changed before logging in via ssh.  The easiest way to is to set root from direct connection (monitor & keyboard) before deploying.  Alternatively if BAMT has any other usernames configured (i.e. "user") with a non-NULL password you could login to that account "sudo su root" and then use "passwd" to set root's password.  Finally log out and login as root.  I am not sure if BAMT has any other accounts configured though.

Ive had it with this fucking os lol
It randomly stopped hashing on my card last night, card is fine just bamt being a bastard
guess back to windows i go

sorry to hear that.  0.5 added a "feature" called mother which when a card locks up it reboots the server and disables OC on that card.  It is posisble that it what happened.

I use cgminer and really just use BAMT for the OS.  I find it more stable and easier to configure that way. 

Still I am considering offering a bounty for a cgminer only OS as BAMT doesn't support x64 and thus is limited to 6 or 7 GPUs per rig.

i was looking into it, but itd have to be a installable os, as you cant upgrade drivers with persistance the normal way
not too sure how bamt is allowing it but meh :/

??? You can upgrade drivers with persistence.  Although driver changes are so rare it would simply make more sense to release a new version of the OS as needed.

Are you lurking on irc anywhere?

Doesn't Kano have a cgminer simple OS developed?  I could swear he has something like that in his sig.

EDIT: here is the link: https://github.com/kanoi/linux-usb-cgminer/blob/master/linux-usb-cgminer

im just setting up my one now :3

I was thinking more like a maintained optimized iso.  Burn and boot.  Like LinuxCoin (except updated sometime in the last year) or like BAMT but based on x64 and focused on cgminer.

BTW I use kano guide for my rigs (and used BAMT before I needed 8 GPU support).  Kano guide works and is invaluable but it is 30 something steps the first of which involves burning a CD to make the linux environment to make the USB key.  Not exactly "plug and play".

I see now D&T. 

So is BAMT not working out for your rigs with cgminer?  I thought it was included so it is pretty much plug and play.  ???

BAMT is x86 only.  That means no 8 GPU rigs (at least I have never gotten it to work).  I am converting all my rigs to 8 GPU rigs for improved efficiency.   The other minor annoyance is you need to build cgminer from source if you want to upgrade.  There are no x86 binaries for cgminer so it isn't as easy a "wget" and decompress.

If you only want to use 6 ( not sure about 7) GPU per rig then I found BAMT very "plug and play".  
Download the img, use the writer to write it to a USB stick.  BAMT includes a "fixer" daemon which downloads and installs hotfixes.  Very nice "setup" it just doesn't work w/ 8 GPUs. :(  I held out hope because developer said he was testing x64 version but "it didn't work".  I guess it was a closed beta so I was never able to try it out.

I have the x64 0.5 BAMT image if you want to try it out. PM me.

I believe lodcrappo said stability issues were the biggest problem he was having with it.  Also that he didn't have an 8 gpu rig for proper testing (solely beta testers).

no, no, no

A number of people have been locking up their cards this way lately.  Silly me to think miners would know what the ATI profiles are for.

*Do* *not* change  anything except profile 2, except in very specific situations.  If you don't know why you need to change profile 1 or 0 (rare) then *do* *not* change them!  You will lock up your rig or cause it to be unstable at a much lower clock rate than is normal.


They are commented out (disabled) in the config for a reason.  Don't uncomment anything, ever, unless you know why.

I'm LodCrappo, and I appove of this message.

7 GPUs works fine. 

8 does not work.

There will be an x64 bamt once:

a) more people whine about not being 64 than whine about not being 32

or

b) i can afford to put in the time to maintain 2 images

I believe lowering mem clocks, which is incredibly common, requires setting all 3 profile levels.  You will have problems if you try and have your memory at 1000, 1000, and 280.

Some GPUs will not let you set a value in profile X that is lower than profile X-1.  Others don't care.

AFAIK there is never any reason to adjust profiles 0 and 1 unless you want to lower things in profile 2 and the card won't let you.  A number of people lately seem to be just setting all 3 profiles to their o/c settings, which pretty much guarantees their rig will lock up often and hard.

Stick to profile 2 unless you know why you need to change something else.

I edited all three fields to.... *drumroll please*  all the default values provided in AMDOvrdrivectrl with the exception of profile 2 which are the settings that I've found my cards to be stable at.  Of all the options in the conf file, I found this to be the most intuitive...  Strange people are having issues with this.

I can't get w32di to work on my win7x64 machine. the drop-down drive selector just stays blank.

+1000 for this guide...was able to setup bamt and finally get more then one card to work...although the setup fought me every step of the way, i was able to figure it out...and alittle help from tech1 on IRC...Thanks!!! keep up the good work

Yes, the guide worked great.  Now I'm trying to use a Wireless PCI card and can't figure out where to start.

I can see wlan0 in 'iwconfig', but I don't see any GUI in the System Tray or Menu to set the SSID/key.  I can change /etc/network/interfaces, but that gets overwritten each boot because this is a live USB.

Any suggestions?

--E

Bamt works great... Except for 1 thing... It will never go to auto boot, it freezes when it says "running bamt" i have to use the fail safe every time.... Any clues?

I would guess that some driver and/or piece of hardware that doesn't run in fail safe mode is causing an error, so when you run normal, it tries to start but hangs instead.

Eh, figured it was something beyond my control. Failsafe works fine tho, i only restart the rig like once a week or even less... But was just trying to have backup when power goes down or something...  Thanks tho!

i have this bamt problem - anybody can help?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=493395.msg5438366#msg5438366

Hi. I have newest BAMT but I have problem with power off..

After some time of mining (~30min) X11, bamt just going off.

I have power lost [ON] on motherboard and bamt is coming back to desktop.

Any ideas?