It has been processed now and should be in your email. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you!

-j

Your miner is showing the “November” build I guess. Use the sdcard recovery steps (google it) and then install a non locked firmware of your choice, mine from my signature or someone else's, as the last step (step #10 - unnumbered on the page below).

documentation: https://support.bitmain.com/hc/en-us/articles/360006020914-Z9-V9-Z9-Mini-Control-Board-Program-Recovery



-j

Ummm... creating an account, sending a PM and making a post about it all in the matter of a hour or so? Right.

I’ll respond to your PM as I can.

Thank you for your patience.

-j

This is yet another thread by HashAltCoin to market the miner. Just scanning through the first page as I make this response, I see at least 4 threads started by him, all about the same product.

hey @HashAltCoin, why so many shilling threads?

-j

LOL... OR, just follow the standard bitmain recovery instructions, but load the firmware of your choice instead of theirs as the last step.

I've already gone though and checked the various bitmain loader images a couple of days ago to make sure they do not have signature checking in them instead of making one-off images for a bunch of things.

-j

Welp, these malware authors are getting paid.

https://www.nicehash.com/miner/3CJgXokLQrRCQcEoftS7MbPDSXhXpX6P55

They have this running on equihash, sha256 and scrypts.... it's designed to infiltrate, identify miner type (guesses) and then modify the config and mine for them. Based on the addresses payout of $780usd/day at the time of this writing, I'd say it is working for them. :/

net-net, don't install random firmware.

-j

WARNING: There are version of the Z9 Mini that pretend to be "batch1" but are actually malware floating around! I don't care where you get your batch1 firmware, but please make sure the md5sum matches this:

0682b350dd8b53d62a11231d16d133a7  Antminer-Z9-Mini-201805262047-500M.tar.gz

Any other variant is *NOT* factory. I do provide this at the bottom of my webpage at https://releases.broked.net

If you have a ".antminers" in /config, you have bad firmware...


This firmware copies /config/.antminers to /usr/bin/ntpd and starts it up .... a fake ntpd.

What it does past that point, I do not yet know.

The short story:

I just spent the last couple of hours working with a user who purchased 3 minis from ebay that came with what looked like batch1 firmware but actually was not. Attempts to replace the firmware resulted in some very crazy situations... and the inability to actually replace the firmware anymore... it would pretend to update, but not actually update.

I do not have a copy of the full "malware" firmware, but I did collect forensics data from the machines and will analyze it as I can.

It pretends to be "ntp" but is actually /config/.antminers which is started upon boot.

Removing it was kind of a pain in the rear, but can be done.

I will update this with more information as I have some time.

Thank you,

Jason

awesomeminer.

LOL.

good luck.

-j

That edit you just made to your response to add what I left quoted is a perfect example of why you are hopeless... I *LITERALLY* told you that in my response when I said "... ASIC count being off by 12 per chain". ... and that is NOT the reason why fan/temp won't work properly.

... on first start up, it will retry 3 times, not have the proper count, but continue on anyway (factory behaviour). I said this when I said "... after a couple of retry conditions...".

The problem is *PAST* that case, after things are running, even if fan/temp are not presenting properly, there are additional failure conditions that will terminate cgminer and restart the whole process in a longer loop.

There are very good reasons why I did not "unify" the firmware so one could run on both models...

*sigh*.

"Honey, I can't go to bed yet, someone is wrong on the Internet!"

-j

lol.

You are hopeless sir, completely hopeless.

Here's a bone for you; the version you have will actually run on a Mini, however it will try to initialize as a large. After a couple of retry conditions it will successfully bring a mini up, but data outputs such as fan speed and temperature will either be unreliable or not respond at all. Second, there are certain error conditions where the Z9 firmware running on a Mini will fail completely even after a successful start due to the ASIC count being off by 12 per chain.

Good luck with your endeavors.

-j

Sometimes, a business fires a customer, too.

Just. Sad.

-j

Oh, he is waiting for Google’s default DMCA process handling to “prove” he is correct. See, google actually disavows itself of Copyright claim. It will respond to an initial complaint by removing the content. However, if a counter claim is filed, regardless of the legitimacy, google will notify the original filer (me) of that action and provide 10 days during which time a court order, intention to file, etc. must be handed to google otherwise they will default to reenabling the link.

Remember that and think back to his posts saying “google has agreed with me and the link is active”, which it was not. Then remember he said google contacted him and told him it would be reinstated in 72 hours, which they did not and it did not go live again.

Etc..

so in a couple more days his link will go live again I expect, but only due to timing. Google does not appear to be willing to work with me on their “10 days”, despite the filings actually being in process.

What he also does not understand is that IF I was in violation of the GPL the limitation of my liability is, per the GPL website, that “the community may look down on me”.

However, if my claim is correct, then outside of the GPL, his posting for free of a paid work would be subject to remuneration of my loss of income by his actions if such a thing to go to court and my claims be proven correct.

To summarize, if I’m wrong, “oops”. If he is wrong, he would be subject to fines and repayment of my losses. ... and since I had this happen before and can actually define the losses by practical example, it would not be pretty.

... and the last response I provided some of the implementation details hoping to provide him some wisdom that he should share with his “lawyer friends” before continuing. If any of them actually specialize in IP law and copyright, they should advise him similarly and of the “costs” of him being wrong.

But hey, what do I know. I am not a lawyer. Just someone with the clue enough to not violate GPL in the implementation of my work specifically to ensure it was defendable.

-j

Folk,

I've had a number of requests to purchase licenses recently, so I am making licenses available again. Please PM me for details with the count of units for Z9 and Mini you are looking for if this applies to you.

Thank you,

-j

Mattaero, thank you for your question. That was originally in plan, but never worked out as I did not have a loaner machine to work with. I had a couple of offers that ultimately fell through.

That said, if you will join the discord chat in my signature and check in the a9 channel, some folk claim to be able to do some overclocking with some configuration changes. It might be worth your time to investigate.

Thank you,

-j

(Arg, I can't seem to not respond to this freaking stupidity...)

You are a blithering idiot.

Zero code in cgminer was changed, even at runtime. The only thing that has "changed" is allowing the user to specify a frequency which is not a change in the code, but rather a change in the argument provided to a function/API.

That function is "set_frequency_chain()".

$ strings cgminer|grep set_frequency
set_frequency_chain

_LITERALLY_ the only thing "changed" is that the user has the ability to specify a frequency to that function. That function was not re-written in any way and is used exactly as bitmain provided (I don't have the source, bitmain doesn't release it).

That's it.

So, to make your own firmware, follow these easy steps:

The rest is simple: hook the function and call the _original_ function with the frequencies specified by the user. "Ta-Da!".

Then go modify the web interfaces, the configuration handling, the startup files, etc. to support the new frequency options and presentation to the end user. *THAT* *IS* GPL and you *HAVE* the source code by proxy of actually having the firmware itself. The modifications I made to say, 'minerStatus.html' *IS* GPL, but the changes I made, I own the copyright on. YOU by proxy have a LICENSE to re-use that GPL'd content, even the portion of my changes that are mine.

Also, learn how this stuff actually works so you can _help_ users.

Ask your "lawyer friend" about copyright vs. license.

Oh, and none of the above is what I am claiming a violation of my copyright on. The code which handles licensing and enforcement, as well as dev-fee handling, and handling of the user choice of frequency (not counting the web pages which are GPL) before it is passed to the _default_ cgminer function is not GPL and is proprietary and *THAT* is what you should not redistribute or modify.

-j

A filename does not equate to the contents... so report away.... since the contents of the file named 'libnss_mdns_minimal.so.2' shipped in my firmware has absolutely nothing to do with the the GNU 'libnss-mdns'. You are unfortunately incapable of grokking the semantic.

This will be my last response to you, so enjoy your freedom to make more crap up.

-j

Just because you don’t know how does not mean it can’t. Try contacting a technical resource to give you clue.

Kill lcgm, stop the auto restart by renaming it, run cgminer. Voila, factory firmware.

-j

chipless,

Sadly, you are still wrong. As the basis of your argument is that the whole distribution ("firmware package") is GPL, when it is not. Further, Communication between lcgm and its associated library and cgminer  do not occur by "exchanging complex internal data structures" for example. They are in fact, not interlinked in that manner. They can, actually, run completely standalone from cgminer, and vice versa. The fact that they are two separate processes is another example of this.

So yeah. Here are some other examples that you will likelyfind reason to ignore.

A linux distribution (which is all this firmware is), is not by itself GPL'd. The individual components within may be, or may have other licenses associated with it. One example is while the kernel is GPL, cgminer is GPL, other components have different licenses. The packaging in that scenario is not "all GPL" as you are continuing to misunderstand.

A linux distribution that ships with apache, will have a combination of GPL and Apache License depending on the content within. nginx, another common webserver/swiss army knife is under a BSD type license, but yet included in many distributions. OpenSSH, another common component distributed in linux distributions, is specifically not GPL, but rather a BSD type license.

You see, a given OS distribution can have unique components within it that have differing licenses. This is part of why I have stated that my claim is on 'lcgm' and the contents that are named 'libnss_mdsn_minimal.so.2' for obfuscation purposes.

If your argument were true, RedHat, SUSE, Caldera, Gentoo, and any other common linux distribution would all be in violation for having "GPL" and "non-GPL" code running on the same computer, from the same distribution.

It really is sad if you cannot see the differences here.

-j

Go fish.

-j