New rig, no hdd, only usb stick

[bustaballs]

So I had planned to just run an OS right off of a 16GB usb drive instead of forking over extra money, space and power for a big hard drive. I tried probably every tutorial out there on how to get ANY miner set up and going in linux and everything has failed me. I've tried 3 different distros with no luck. Something always goes wrong and I get errors. Either that or the OS stops working right part way through the tutorial. So I thought I'd just go with what I already know, Windows. But apparently you can't install windows to a USB drive. Google searches only bring up how to install windows FROM a usb drive for people with no optical drives. I'm having trouble here. I won't have the money for a HDD for some time. I had planned on this working.

Another thing I thought of was using an old Pata drive. But the mobo doesn't support it. I have a PCI raid controller that accepts IDE so I tried that but there's no option to boot from that drive so windows won't let me install to it.

[Zanatos666]

Its situations like this that BAMT was made for.  I have 2 systems running it with no HDD, just flash drives.  Its essentially a Linux distroed made to do one thing, mine Bitcoins.

[bustaballs]

I'll give it a try in a bit. Is it difficult to set up mining for litecoin and other altcoins through BAMT?

[luffy]

i think win8 can be installed in a usb flash, i haven't try it yet 

[zvs]

So I had planned to just run an OS right off of a 16GB usb drive instead of forking over extra money, space and power for a big hard drive. I tried probably every tutorial out there on how to get ANY miner set up and going in linux and everything has failed me. I've tried 3 different distros with no luck. Something always goes wrong and I get errors. Either that or the OS stops working right part way through the tutorial. So I thought I'd just go with what I already know, Windows. But apparently you can't install windows to a USB drive. Google searches only bring up how to install windows FROM a usb drive for people with no optical drives. I'm having trouble here. I won't have the money for a HDD for some time. I had planned on this working.

Another thing I thought of was using an old Pata drive. But the mobo doesn't support it. I have a PCI raid controller that accepts IDE so I tried that but there's no option to boot from that drive so windows won't let me install to it.

oh, nm, I see

wouldn't matter if you could install windows to it, since bios wont let you boot to it anyway.

you should be able to install windows on a 16gb stick

try this?  http://www.techspot.com/community/topics/how-to-install-and-boot-windows-on-an-external-usb-hard-drive.116114/

[Zanatos666]

I'll give it a try in a bit. Is it difficult to set up mining for litecoin and other altcoins through BAMT?

If you use CGMiner inside of BAMT, and update it to the latest version, you should be able to mine Litecoins.

[bustaballs]

So I got bitcoin mining up and running on it with BAMT which is cool. I unplugged the monitor cable after I had it running to use my normal computer while that rig mined. When I hooked the cable back in today to see how things were going, it stopped mining the entire time until I replugged in the monitor cable. What's up with that? I never had that issue in Windows.

[Zanatos666]

So I got bitcoin mining up and running on it with BAMT which is cool. I unplugged the monitor cable after I had it running to use my normal computer while that rig mined. When I hooked the cable back in today to see how things were going, it stopped mining the entire time until I replugged in the monitor cable. What's up with that? I never had that issue in Windows.

BAMT is meant to be run headless, no monitor, no gui.  So once you get it up and running, unplug the monitor and do everything via SSH.  Find your IP address for the machine, get Putty, and SSH in and use gpumon to check status. Anything else you need to change/configure, do it all via SSH.  It gets picky when dealing with a monitor.  Trust me, learn SSH to do what you need to do, I did, and it runs much happier with no monitor.

[bustaballs]

Once I get litecoin working, I'll work on that.

So far I'm having nothing but trouble getting litecoin working. I THINK I finally got cgminer updated. Then I make a config file and run
./cgminer --config cgminer.conf" only to be told "--config: JSON decode of file 'cgminer.conf' failed". I copied over example config files. I have no clue what's going on.

[Zanatos666]

Once I get litecoin working, I'll work on that.

So far I'm having nothing but trouble getting litecoin working. I THINK I finally got cgminer updated. Then I make a config file and run
./cgminer --config cgminer.conf" only to be told "--config: JSON decode of file 'cgminer.conf' failed". I copied over example config files. I have no clue what's going on.

I dont know what that error is, but you have to create a conf file, and then in your BAMT conf file tell BAMT that you are 1) using cgminer and 2) that you are using a conf file

Also, make sure you are logged in as root (and change the default password)

first start by editing your BAMT config
cd /etc/bamt/
nano bamt.conf

once in here, scroll down at the top a bit until you see where it talks about smtp, at the bottom of that, add these lines

cgminer: 1
cgminer_opts: --config /etc/bamt/cgminer.conf

now scroll down to where you enable your gpus (gpu 0, if you are using just one card), delete out the line that says disabled: 1 and then add this line where that was.

cgminer: 1

Exit and save.  Now you have to create the cgminer.conf file you just referenced

nano cgminer.conf

This will bring up a blank screw because its a new doc you just created.  Here is where you will put your configurations for cgminer, including your litecoin pool info.  Just do a search on the forums or Google for examples of files, copy and paste over, change your pool info, then exit and save.  Probably at this point its a good idea to reboot so:

coldreboot

Once back up, log in as root again, then go to gpumon to check the status. It should show you connected and mining.