I agree that the 5830 are awesome.  I was going to get a couple 5850 but couldn't find any, then newegg had their sale on 5830...

Hard to beat 300+MH for $100-110.

Hmm perhaps a Bitcoin generation client could be written that works like those screen saver programs that do things like calculate protein folding while the computer is idle.  So basically the client is only blasting away at the CPU when it's not being used by something else.  Seems like a good solution for shared hosting space to me.  Just let the company know ahead of time how your program is going to behave.

I'm not sure what the problem is.  I'm a huge fan of Bitcoin (obviously), but I side with the provider on this one.  CPU in a VM hosting environment is a shared resource, if I'm running a VM hosting facility, no customer has the right to max out my CPU unless they are paying me for the privilege, like, they better be selling lots of alpaca socks or something to help pay the fees I'm going to charge for the excessive usage.  And you would have to be kidding me if you'd expect me to let a free trial account to monopolize CPU.  Most legitimate free trials in the ordinary course of business should use an average of well under 1% of a single CPU core, because the typical usage scenario for a free trial is a website still under development with no or minimal real traffic that's not testing.

CPU increases power load by a significant factor, and power in a data center costs a lot.  There's the power, and then there's the air conditioning to take out the heat, and then there's capacity on the UPS's to keep that power reliable, and there's capacity on the generators to keep the power safe from outages, and then the air conditioning needs redundant power too so the whole place doesn't melt down in a power failure.  Way more than the cost of mining at home.  All this so someone can generate tiny fractions of a cent?  I don't think so.

Think of what Vladimir charges for his mining contracts.  That's a fair estimation of the resource cost being imposed upon this provider, without the benefit of GPU-scale mining output.

The reason this account got booted, in my estimation, has little to do with money laundering or their fear of alternate currency, and really everything to do with excessive resource consumption.

Been meaning to write this up for a little while now so here it is (assuming the box is all built with ATI card(s) installed):

1. Install Ubuntu (10.10)
2. Remove the drivers it will automatically install that will conflict:

sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx*
sudo apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-radeon

3. Re-install some prerequisites (not sure if they are needed but it doesn't hurt - java is definitely needed for Diablo):

sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-dri xserver-xorg-core
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre

4. Install the proprietary ATI driver you can find here by:

chmod +x <file_you_just_downloaded.run>
sudo ./<file_you_just_downloaded.run>

When it asks you if you want to build a package for your distribution or just install the defaults, go with the defaults.

5. Open a terminal and enter:

sudo aticonfig --initial --adapter=all

This will create a working xorg.conf file. If this doesn't work you will have to re-boot first. In any event re-boot after you have created this file so that you will be running using the proprietary ATI Catalyst driver.
 
6. Download and install the OpenCL dev and runtime packages (i386 or AMD64).

7. Log out and then back in to initialize the OpenCL libraries. If you have more than one GPU you will have to issue:

export DISPLAY=:0

in order for all your GPUs to be seen by your mining software.

8. Download and untar Bitcoin. Look in bin/<your_arch>/ to find bitcoind. Start it. Use ./bitcoind getinfo to confirm you have the blockchain and some connections to the network. If it's your first time running it you will need to set an RPC user and password that your GPU miner will need to authorize with. To do this create a 2 line file at ~/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf that contains rpcuser=<your_RPC_username> for the first line and rpcpassword=<your_RPC_password> for the second.

9. Download your mining software. I only have experience with Diablo. Start it up by running:

./Diablominer-Linux.sh -w128 -u <your_RPC_username> -p <your_RPC_password>

You can also throw an "f" value in there to control the interactivity of your desktop.

If you wish to try m0mchil's Python-based miner hit this thread and follow the instructions beginning at the line that says "Download PyOpenCL".

You should see your miner start showing you a hash value!

PROFIT ;-)

If you wish you may want to overclock your card. I pushed my clock speed to max and left the memory at stock.

Please let me know if this sequence doesn't work as this is all from memory. I'm happy to troubleshoot your setup, such as I am able, and revise these notes. I get about 343Mh/s (w/ Diablominer and -f1) from a 5870 using this.

edited with feedback from users of this guide

Dear xxxxx,

Our technical team noticed some unusual behaviour coming from your trial such as maxing out CPUs contently, and odd traffic profiles under further investigation. We found the severs to be running virtual money software which has linked with money laundering.

We therefore we deem your usages to be in breach of our AUP and have suspended you trial.

xxxxx xxxxx

Technical Director

StratoGen :: Hosting for Business
T: 0845 544 0465
M: 0773 606 2097
E: xxxxx@stratogen.net:: http://www.stratogen.net  

Yes, I've run some hashing programs on there to determine CPU processing power. It's actually completely legal though (http://bitcoin.org/). I'd suggest you look into it rather than just accusing me of illegal activities. The CPU's were maxed for a while but I've got no idea what you mean by odd traffic profiles. Aside from using nearly 100% CPU for a few days, I've done absolutely nothing wrong and nothing that'd be against your AUP or TOS.

Dear xxxx,

The account was suspended because our engineers saw the bitcoin application running which is considered a highly suspicious, offers no real benchmarking capability and is seen as a tool to utilise CPU to generate virtual currency which can be currency exchanged into legitimate currency.

The Bitcoin project is currently under investigation from many governments including UK serious fraud office. Several other similar projects have been closed down in recent years for money laundering offences.

Please can you give us a little more information about your company including company telephone and email addresses as the platform has been designed as an enterprise hosting environment and therefore is best suited to this, we need to ensure the service we offer is best suited to your requirements.

Kind regards

xxxx xxxxx

Technical Director

StratoGen :: Hosting for Business
T: 0845 544 0465
M: 0773 606 2097
E: xxxxxx@stratogen.net:: http://www.stratogen.net  

It's fine. I do own a hosting company that's hosted in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm not a huge company yet but I do have a few racks. Honestly, I don't really care much about StratoGen. Cool service but I'm not impressed by how you manage clients. I would have preferred you email me to discuss the high CPU rather than suspending it. God knows what would have happened had I tested a file hosting site that used up 1Tb of information per day. I'm sure that would have been seen as illegal file sharing and your "Unlimited Internet Bandwidth" would have meant nothing.

I'm astonished that you closed the account simply because of high CPU usage. Especially since first you accused me of money laundering and now "The Bitcoin project is currently under investigation from many governments including UK serious fraud office."

I've learned everything I need to know about about your company in these few days.

Thanks,
xxxx