Windows, Mining without being local...

[NetTecture]

how you suggest?

ObviouslyI can not log in via remote desktop, as the session then does not see the graphics card.

The goal?

I am getting some mining rigs and want them to start mining automatically when they start without a user logging in.

Is there anyspecific miner recommentation? Or other setup recommendation you can give me? I would love to either force the miner into a scheduled task or a windows service.

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[supa]

how you suggest?

ObviouslyI can not log in via remote desktop, as the session then does not see the graphics card.

The goal?

I am getting some mining rigs and want them to start mining automatically when they start without a user logging in.

Is there anyspecific miner recommentation? Or other setup recommendation you can give me? I would love to either force the miner into a scheduled task or a windows service.

Here are a couple of solutions I have used.  Please keep in mind that these solutions are the result of many restrictions (I'm in a completely different state than the PCs) and also limited remote access... If you have physical access, I would highly suggest a bootable CD/thumbie.  If you want a limited Windows environment you can check out Windows PE.  Revisor images from Redhat are easy to create and it produces USB images with little effort.

If you have a copy of Visual Studio Express, you can easily make a service that will constantly restart a miner.  Services in XP run "headless" and as SYSTEM.

If you're using XP machines (or add the optional software in Vista/7) for a telnet server (ya - telnet sucks.  It's quick and dirty - feel free to go set up ssh) and you use start.exe you can set affinity (in Vista and above) and priority (all versions) for a miner from a command line session.

I can remote launch poclbm from telnet and it has no issues recognizing GPUs.

Another option is a scheduled task - these can run as any user you choose and be interactive (have a desktop) or non-interactive (no window).

If your desktops are set to auto-logon (most home versions of Windows are) you could simply throw something in the Startup folder and be done with it.  There are also registry keys that will automatically launch processes, but no need to over-complicate.

Finally, someone mentioned PXE boots.  I'd love to try this, but don't have the infrastructure requirements.

[carbonc]

LOL !!!

Try TightVNC.

It works great for me.  Free and everything.

I remote in to my Non Mining servers via Remote Desktop then VNC to my mining servers.

[supa]

Ya, good suggestion.

I can't add VNC to the machines I remote into.  It's RDP or bust if I want a GUI.

Telnet is quick and dirty - it's part of XP.

You also have overhead and waste with VNC and it can play hell with DirectX.  I wouldn't use a graphical interface just for the waste and risk.  VNC is a screen-scraper - it literally takes "pictures" of the screen at a constant interval with compression.  Bandwidth and clocks go out the door on slower machines.

Certainly better than RDP, though.

My telnet session takes a couple of bytes.

If you can install software, look for psexec from Sysinternals.  That would make it even easier (all commands are seamlessly local) and you could grab stats all in a very streamlined method with little waste.

Mouses are evil.  Keyboards fo' life!

[NetTecture]

Here are a couple of solutions I have used.  Please keep in mind that these solutions are the result of many restrictions (I'm in a completely different state than the PCs) and also limited remote access... If you have physical access, I would highly suggest a bootable CD/thumbie.  If you want a limited Windows environment you can check out Windows PE.  Revisor images from Redhat are easy to create and it produces USB images with little effort.

I was more thinking about booting the mining machines from our SAN via ISCSI using Windows 2008 R2 Web edition in a version that fully hooks into our management systems

If you have a copy of Visual Studio Express, you can easily make a service that will constantly restart a miner.  Services in XP run "headless" and as SYSTEM.

Will do that... using my cope of Visual Studio Ultimate

If you're using XP machines (or add the optional software in Vista/7) for a telnet server (ya - telnet sucks.  It's quick and dirty - feel free to go set up ssh) and you use start.exe you can set affinity (in Vista and above) and priority (all versions) for a miner from a command line session.

Hm, remote Powershell should achieve the same thing then. I will give that a try, too

I can remote launch poclbm from telnet and it has no issues recognizing GPUs.

Another option is a scheduled task - these can run as any user you choose and be interactive (have a desktop) or non-interactive (no window).

NOW it gets interesting. I thought that was abandoned post XP for security reasons, at leasst for services. Interactive scheduled tasks could be nice. Would they also be visible on a remote desktop session?

If your desktops are set to auto-logon (most home versions of Windows are) you could simply throw something in the Startup folder and be done with it.  There are also registry keys that will automatically launch processes, but no need to over-complicate.

Would violate company security policies. Our network is quite protected and well watched I would hate someone getting access to the computers that have the authority to directly issue buy and sell orders on the CME Bitcoin mining will or would not be the only financial games going on there

Finally, someone mentioned PXE boots.  I'd love to try this, but don't have the infrastructure requirements.

My idea was to try around with full windows servers discless booting from a central ISCSI SAN PXE is not persistent enough, and I want to actually get this to the same uptime control standards I put into the trading computers Especially as the cluster may be dual purposed to do volatility analysis on some financial markets.

[supa]

Sounds like you have quite the plan!

I forgot about PowerShell.  A lot of our systems still use XP and policy doesn't install PowerShell by default.

You can still set interactive tasks - but you need to include a user.  If you RDP to set up a session, then the task launches, it will launch to the first session it finds for the user specified in the task.  At least, I'm pretty sure it does.  Not sure if it takes priority on Console over RDP or... ?  Or if it's random?  Who knows - but I do know it will go into the RDP session desktop.

Since you're using VS - you could also build in a context switch to a privileged user from any of the methods above and still get the GUI into an established session.

[NetTecture]

Sounds like you have quite the plan!

I forgot about PowerShell.  A lot of our systems still use XP and policy doesn't install PowerShell by default.

You can still set interactive tasks - but you need to include a user.  If you RDP to set up a session, then the task launches, it will launch to the first session it finds for the user specified in the task.  At least, I'm pretty sure it does.  Not sure if it takes priority on Console over RDP or... ?  Or if it's random?  Who knows - but I do know it will go into the RDP session desktop.

Since you're using VS - you could also build in a context switch to a privileged user from any of the methods above and still get the GUI into an established session.

That gets complicated. Is there any GUI level mining library one could use (DLL or COM based)? Oram I stuck with CMD line applications?

What would you recommend as the best miner, for going to a pool, as well as strategically, i.e. one that is actively developped?

And, finally, is there an API documentation to start a pool? Given the plan of running like... 4-8 machines with 3 x 6990 as a start... it may be advisable to use a custom pool software as relay to track all the progress Where would i start? Any pointer to a documentation?

[supa]

My current "arrangement" doesn't allow me to get that complex, so I can't really make good recommendations.

There's an open source pool project you can grab from the forums here to create a pool, I think.  I'm not sure what features it has or doesn't have.  I was using the simple graphs available on eligius.st (a pool) to get some metrics when I was setting the environment up.  If you find a way to collect legitimate metrics that aren't just each machines estimated MHs as displayed by the miner.... please let me know.

I know that ufasoft and poclbm have worked fine on all the XP/7/2008 machines I've used them on.  They're simple to set up and work fine in a console.  For my limited environment... that's "good enough."

For Linux, I use the minerd available from the forums here.  The 4way algo seems to work best on my AMD machines - the sse for 64 has a 20% loss().  The age old combination of ssh+screen is all you need in Linux - and you have the option of streamlining your services and no GUI.  poclbm works fine on both the ATI and NVIDIA cards in the machines I have access to - since it's a mixed environment, I haven't bothered with testing anything else.

2008 has some great new ways to streamline and tailor down the OS - you'll have to let us know what tricks you use to get them running flawlessly.

[Meatball]

Teamviewer works great for remote access into machines.  Adds a bit of overhead, but assuming you're just checking in once in a while to check on things, it's fine.

[Crs]

I am using www.logmein.com for my remote desktop sessions, it does not use the rdp protocl so your ati drivers will work just fine:
PS: accesible via browser and is AES-256 secured

[ne1]

Check out linuxcoin.  I'm using it on two machines as bootable thumb drives.  Works pretty well.  I'm trying to solve the auto boot -> auto mine script myself.  if you come up with anything and get persistence to work let me know.

[supa]

USB Persistence is over engineering.

Here's a "live" example I use:

I have a webserver at 192.168.2.10 with an index file that contains my BitCoin address.  That's all it contains.

The following... you could put it in /etc/init.d to auto-startup.  Make sure it's late in the chain to avoid starting before network is ready.  You could also put in some sleeps and wait for network up, but I don't bother....

---

export mybitcoinaddress=$(wget -q -O - http://192.168.2.10)
/home/user/bitcoin-miner.exe -o http://mining.eligius.st:80 -u $mybitcoinaddress -p anything

---

Done.

For other miners that require login and pass, you could do some sed/awk/grep/whatever magic and include them all in a single page.  Or for simplicity's sake, just make separate files on the web server with each piece of information (for example, http://webserver/username, http://webserver/password, etc).