Raspberry Pi / cgminer for your BFL BitForce

[fpf]

Seems it's not completely dead - but the whole USB system will fail (including the USB based Ethernet controller..)

Same issue / topic: (there are a couple more)
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=16280

It seems that some older Raspberry Debian Wheezy images did not have such issues, however I have no older images to try.

FPF

[bcpokey]

Seems it's not completely dead - but the whole USB system will fail (including the USB based Ethernet controller..)

Same issue / topic: (there are a couple more)
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=16280

It seems that some older Raspberry Debian Wheezy images did not have such issues, however I have no older images to try.

FPF

Uhm... hmm... mine lately seems to be dead sadly. I can't even boot anymore (no video), so might be a different issue. I got a rainbow frozen output with the OPs image though, so maybe there is something to this link you've posted. Most disappointing though regardless.

[fpf]

Was able to fix it with some updates...

https://github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/
sudo wget http://goo.gl/1BOfJ -O /usr/bin/rpi-update && sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/rpi-update
sudo rpi-update

It's stable now for more than 24 hours 

FPF

[AfricanHunter]

I heard that the new Rpi model has the USB issue fixed. Can anyone confirm this?

[fpf]

I have a model B with 512MB...
There is no other difference to the old one except the RAM and where it's assembled - the issues I had where all software related.

FPF

[bcpokey]

I think my issues turned out to be SD Card related (picked up a cheap pos, that seems to have been bugging a bit) in addition to any firmware problems. Worked out the contact a little better, and updated firmware, and so far so good, though I'm afraid to push my pi too hard again.

For now though 24h+ uptimes with no glitches

[moreporknz]

I think my issues turned out to be SD Card related (picked up a cheap pos, that seems to have been bugging a bit) in addition to any firmware problems. Worked out the contact a little better, and updated firmware, and so far so good, though I'm afraid to push my pi too hard again.

For now though 24h+ uptimes with no glitches

What brand sd are you using? I also had this issue, updated firmware and seemed to fix it..

[allinvain]

Very neat project.I just bought a raspberry pi a few minutes ago for this very purpose. My scenario is a bit different though. I have a few Icarus boards as well so I'm wondering if you've compiled cgminer with support for all FPGA mining boards not just specifically BFL Singles.

Also what is the default LAN IP address you've built into the image? 192.168.1.x or ?

[heavyb]

Would anyone be willing to create a youtube video on how to install the OS, modify it to your wallet info for us to watch? I have never done anything like this before but would really like to learn.  Thanks.

[allinvain]

Would anyone be willing to create a youtube video on how to install the OS, modify it to your wallet info for us to watch? I have never done anything like this before but would really like to learn.  Thanks.

That would be really neat. However, if I understand things correctly you don't have to modify anything relating to wallet info in this mining distro. You just have to change the cgminer.conf to reflect your chosen mining pool info (or solo if that's your thing).

If nobody else beats me to it I think what I shall do is when I get my raspberry pi (shipped today) I will write a guide on how to get this distro working and post it here or on pastebin.

[heavyb]

Would anyone be willing to create a youtube video on how to install the OS, modify it to your wallet info for us to watch? I have never done anything like this before but would really like to learn.  Thanks.

That would be really neat. However, if I understand things correctly you don't have to modify anything relating to wallet info in this mining distro. You just have to change the cgminer.conf to reflect your chosen mining pool info (or solo if that's your thing).

If nobody else beats me to it I think what I shall do is when I get my raspberry pi (shipped today) I will write a guide on how to get this distro working and post it here or on pastebin.

Alright cool, I will be loading this today and post how it goes.

[heavyb]

I have a 8 gb SD card and I am getting a write error that there is not enough space on the card. It comes up as 7.45 in windows explorer. Any suggestions?

[allinvain]

I have a 8 gb SD card and I am getting a write error that there is not enough space on the card. It comes up as 7.45 in windows explorer. Any suggestions?

Hmm this may help:

The problem is as follows:

Memory card manufacturers tell their capacities in gigabytes (1 gigabyte = 1 GB = 1'000'000'000 bytes), which is CORRECT.

Our Canon cameras show memory capacity in gibibytes but INCORRECTLY claim they are telling gigabytes (1 gibibyte = 1 GiB = 1024^3 = 1'073'741'824 bytes).

8 GB = 7.45 GiB.

The standard defining non-ambiguous binary units has been out for 10 years, but is still not well known and only slowly adopted.

For more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1541

But having said that I have a feeling we're going to need to use a bigger CF card than 8 gb unless the author releases a smaller image or we resize the image. I am most likely going to look into resizing the image as I don't see the point of buying a 8 GB CF card or bigger for a 622 mb image. A el cheapo 2 GB card should do once the image is resized (I can't for the life of me find 1 GB cards these days)

[allinvain]

Hmm, I downloaded the image and it's slightly bigger than 8 GB. This will definitely need to be resized.

[heavyb]

I have a 8 gb SD card and I am getting a write error that there is not enough space on the card. It comes up as 7.45 in windows explorer. Any suggestions?

Hmm this may help:

The problem is as follows:

Memory card manufacturers tell their capacities in gigabytes (1 gigabyte = 1 GB = 1'000'000'000 bytes), which is CORRECT.

Our Canon cameras show memory capacity in gibibytes but INCORRECTLY claim they are telling gigabytes (1 gibibyte = 1 GiB = 1024^3 = 1'073'741'824 bytes).

8 GB = 7.45 GiB.

The standard defining non-ambiguous binary units has been out for 10 years, but is still not well known and only slowly adopted.

For more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1541

But having said that I have a feeling we're going to need to use a bigger CF card than 8 gb unless the author releases a smaller image or we resize the image. I am most likely going to look into resizing the image as I don't see the point of buying a 8 GB CF card or bigger for a 622 mb image. A el cheapo 2 GB card should do once the image is resized (I can't for the life of me find 1 GB cards these days)

Thank you, this is what I figured the problem was, but I had read people had been sucessful putting them on 8 gig cards. I acctually found a 1gb card in my storage closet at working hunting for cards haha.

Does anyone have the skills the resize this?

[allinvain]

Ok, so I think I have found a way to resize this using UltraISO. I went to "Actions" and chose Change image format (or F9). Sized it up as 2GB. Now as to whether it will work or not I'll have to see once I get the board and a CF card.

Perhaps you can try it out and let me know if it works?

[allinvain]

Jeez, I dunno why I kept on saying CF. I meant SD card. Here is a list of SD cards known to work with the pi:

http://elinux.org/RPi_VerifiedPeripherals#SD_cards

[allinvain]

Ok, nevermind my idea with using a windows ISo reader program. Apparently I was seeing just the boot partition. Now that I think about it makes sense. Should've realized that sooner. As someone said:
"The boot partition IS readable by Windows, the others are not"

So the only way to resize it would be to mount the image and then copy all the stuff of it and into a new image.

I'll see what I can do in that regard, but I may take the lazy way out and just get a 16 gb SD card. They're not that expensive anyways.

[fpf]

Very neat project.I just bought a raspberry pi a few minutes ago for this very purpose. My scenario is a bit different though. I have a few Icarus boards as well so I'm wondering if you've compiled cgminer with support for all FPGA mining boards not just specifically BFL Singles.

Also what is the default LAN IP address you've built into the image? 192.168.1.x or ?

Default it's DHCP

CGminer is only enabled for bitforce in the image (at least in the old one, not sure about the new one, but I guess it's the same)
If you want to enable other devices you need to modify the compilation option in the /root/Update.sh script and run it

fpf

[allinvain]

Very neat project.I just bought a raspberry pi a few minutes ago for this very purpose. My scenario is a bit different though. I have a few Icarus boards as well so I'm wondering if you've compiled cgminer with support for all FPGA mining boards not just specifically BFL Singles.

Also what is the default LAN IP address you've built into the image? 192.168.1.x or ?

Default it's DHCP

CGminer is only enabled for bitforce in the image (at least in the old one, not sure about the new one, but I guess it's the same)
If you want to enable other devices you need to modify the compilation option in the /root/Update.sh script and run it

fpf

That's easy enough to do Any chance you can upload the core image files (meaning the 650 mb modified debian iso) so we can make our own smaller IMG file? Or perhaps release a smaller img file for 8 gb or 4 gb SD cards? (or smaller).