[Announcing] MineNinja - BeagleBone Black Bitcoin Mining Platform

[Illutian]

So far...I'm liking this.

Glad I now use my phone for a media player at night...I can dedicate my BBB to mining instead of multi-purposing it was a miner and media player.

EDIT:

Hmm, trying to figure out how I can access the WebUI using the Internet.

Tried with port-forwarding a port of my choosing that isn't in conflict, to the local IP of the BBB. then tried http:// WAN-IP:port-number. And it's a no-go

I've also noticed that CGMiner will occasionally drop an Erupter completely requiring either a service restart or a full reboot of the BBB (using the restart service command fails to complete [aka go back to the prompt]).

Also, could we see a Windows addition to the Flashing section.

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[xjack]

So far...I'm liking this.

Glad I now use my phone for a media player at night...I can dedicate my BBB to mining instead of multi-purposing it was a miner and media player.

EDIT:

Hmm, trying to figure out how I can access the WebUI using the Internet.

Tried with port-forwarding a port of my choosing that isn't in conflict, to the local IP of the BBB. then tried http:// WAN-IP:port-number. And it's a no-go

I've also noticed that CGMiner will occasionally drop an Erupter completely requiring either a service restart or a full reboot of the BBB (using the restart service command fails to complete [aka go back to the prompt]).

Also, could we see a Windows addition to the Flashing section.

You need to tell apache to listen on that port as well, currently listening on 80.  Proceed with caution, not sure this is up to snuff in preventing advanced hacking attempts.  DMZ recommended.

Can't help much with the flashing as it still gives me a little trouble. 

[Illutian]

Found a work-around for flashing

xz -cd ubuntu-raring-13.04-armhf-3.8.13-bone20.img.xz > /dev/mmcblk1

replace the img name with MineNinja's img name

This only works if you've booted from the SDcard


Now to try and figure out a way to script the BBB to reboot every 3hrs to clear my poor 'Zombie' Erupters  

Edit:

I think I may have found why the BBB drops the Erupters. At some point during it's process runtime, 'cgminer' begins utilizing 99.5% of the CPU. This remains in effect even after the Erupters are disconnected.

MineNinja's WebUI also continues to report all Erupters as connected at this point, in which, it appears 'cgminer' has hung.

[jamesc760]

I got mineninja (mineninaBBB106.img) to boot in my BBB this morning, however I don't have the login password to any of the accounts listed on the screen: Linux User, mpd, xuser. What are the passwords? I know with the debian image, the default user and passwd are debian. Any help here?

[MWNinja]

Found a work-around for flashing

xz -cd ubuntu-raring-13.04-armhf-3.8.13-bone20.img.xz > /dev/mmcblk1

replace the img name with MineNinja's img name

This only works if you've booted from the SDcard


Now to try and figure out a way to script the BBB to reboot every 3hrs to clear my poor 'Zombie' Erupters  

Edit:

I think I may have found why the BBB drops the Erupters. At some point during it's process runtime, 'cgminer' begins utilizing 99.5% of the CPU. This remains in effect even after the Erupters are disconnected.

MineNinja's WebUI also continues to report all Erupters as connected at this point, in which, it appears 'cgminer' has hung.

The newest version of cgminer seems to do a much better job on this issue.  It replaces the standard USB drivers with some that actually work as I recall.

[MWNinja]

I got mineninja (mineninaBBB106.img) to boot in my BBB this morning, however I don't have the login password to any of the accounts listed on the screen: Linux User, mpd, xuser. What are the passwords? I know with the debian image, the default user and passwd are debian. Any help here?

root account, no password set is how the image ships.  I strongly recommend setting a password the first time you login, and if you are really paranoid create a user account and disable root access.

[jamesc760]

I got mineninja (mineninaBBB106.img) to boot in my BBB this morning, however I don't have the login password to any of the accounts listed on the screen: Linux User, mpd, xuser. What are the passwords? I know with the debian image, the default user and passwd are debian. Any help here?

root account, no password set is how the image ships.  I strongly recommend setting a password the first time you login, and if you are really paranoid create a user account and disable root access.

So, I chose Other account from the list, type in root and press enter when password screen comes on, and it comes back says authentication failed.

What is the default password for root, for the purpose of logging in to the desktop???

[jamesc760]

had to ssh to my BBB running mineninja and change the passwd for xuser. why do they not give out the password for the xuser at least? anyway, thanks for all your help. I am off and running!

[cableiso]

does this distro work with ztex?

[kano]

cgminer dropped ztex support a while back because there was an issue with it, neither of us have one, and no one popped up to support it and resolve the issue.

I just clicked on the web site (I have a BBB) and was looking at the price for a power adapter.
OUCH! More than $60 for a power adapter ... are they gold plated?

[MWNinja]

cgminer dropped ztex support a while back because there was an issue with it, neither of us have one, and no one popped up to support it and resolve the issue.

I just clicked on the web site (I have a BBB) and was looking at the price for a power adapter.
OUCH! More than $60 for a power adapter ... are they gold plated?

Pricing isn't tied to USD, we use a long-term average BTC conversion rate, and adjust when we reorder inventories.  Eventually all merchants that denominate primarily in BTC will take this approach, instead of converting from USD pricing basis.  The store is more of an experiment in running a fully BTC denominated supply chain.  It's interesting how the deflationary nature of BTC utterly fucks merchants holding inventory bought with BTC.

[cableiso]

OK.  I am now attempting to build an older version of cgminer on the board that does support ztex.  Acts about the same.  I found that the build is not exactly happy about libusb-1.0, either the references in the (ztex) header file, or the link later on in the build process.

So let's ignore ztex, ignore my use of an older cgminer.  Does building the included cgminer for any libusb device complete and later on - function properly?  What is necessary to get it to recognize the include and lib?   

[MWNinja]

You probably just need to install libusb-1.0-dev

"opkg install libusb-1.0-dev"

[cableiso]

You probably just need to install libusb-1.0-dev

"opkg install libusb-1.0-dev"

Thanks for the reply.  I checked opkg list | grep "libusb".  And that says that both 0.1-dev and 1.0-dev are installed. But for some reason, neither those nor the ones in /compat are found.  And not terribly easy to add either!

 Specifically it looks like setting LIBUSB_CFLAGS at configure time Is not actually including it in the Makefile.  Same with the libs.  They can be hacked in to the makefile by hand, but that build segfaults .

Very strange.  Any other thoughts?

[kano]

cgminer doesn't use the system libusb since 3.4.1
We ignore it coz it sux
We have our own (modified) copy in the source tree.
Each architecture has a different version of libusb and a lot of them don't work.

[Rawbit]

does this distro work with ztex?

Yes it works, but You need to download ZtexBTCMiner-121126-ARM.jar ported to ARM (sorry I can't find it now on the Internet - it's strange) - but I'm using it since one month or more.
Cgminer with my Erupters and BTCMiner with Ztex on one BBB.

Code:

ubuntu@ubuntu-armhf:~/BTCMiner$ ll
total 20396
drwxrwxr-x 2 ubuntu ubuntu     4096 Oct 28 09:12 ./
drwxr-xr-x 9 ubuntu ubuntu     4096 Oct 30 14:20 ../
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu 15816363 Nov 15 20:08 BTCMiner.log
-rwx------ 1 ubuntu ubuntu      146 Oct 28 09:12 btcminer.sh*
-rwx------ 1 ubuntu ubuntu  5050157 Oct  4 07:19 ZtexBTCMiner-121126-ARM.jar*
ubuntu@ubuntu-armhf:~/BTCMiner$ screen -list
There are screens on:
        607.CGM (10/31/2013 09:24:35 AM)        (Detached)
        553.BTC (10/31/2013 09:20:40 AM)        (Detached)
2 Sockets in /var/run/screen/S-ubuntu.

ubuntu@ubuntu-armhf:~/BTCMiner$

It works just like ordinary BTCMiner - same speeds.

[cableiso]

Thank you both for your suggestions.  I will try tonight and post my results.

[cableiso]

Found a work-around for flashing

xz -cd ubuntu-raring-13.04-armhf-3.8.13-bone20.img.xz > /dev/mmcblk1

replace the img name with MineNinja's img name

This only works if you've booted from the SDcard
.

Got a working cgminer built by a colleague, so next task was to flash my sd setup to emmc.  I noticed that my 8GB sd card had already been partitioned to 2GB by the image write, so I was successful in copying my whole sd to emmc directly.

When booted from sd, sd card is mmcblk0 and emmc is mmcblk1.
dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=1M

Worked ok for me.  Is there any risk in this method I'm not realizing?  For me, its a good way to roll out my nice clean setup to a bunch of BBB quickly.

[Illutian]

Found a work-around for flashing

xz -cd ubuntu-raring-13.04-armhf-3.8.13-bone20.img.xz > /dev/mmcblk1

replace the img name with MineNinja's img name

This only works if you've booted from the SDcard
.

Got a working cgminer built by a colleague, so next task was to flash my sd setup to emmc.  I noticed that my 8GB sd card had already been partitioned to 2GB by the image write, so I was successful in copying my whole sd to emmc directly.

When booted from sd, sd card is mmcblk0 and emmc is mmcblk1.
dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=1M

Worked ok for me.  Is there any risk in this method I'm not realizing?  For me, its a good way to roll out my nice clean setup to a bunch of BBB quickly.

Not sure, as the method you used is for a system with a Linux/UNIX command prompt. It should work just fine, but don't quote me on it.

Mine was just for Windows users, because the built-in method for flashing, which is sticking the SDcard in an un-powered BBB, holding down the USER/BOOT button, and then applying power wasn't working. ...think it requires a specific Distro setup.

[cableiso]

Found a work-around for flashing

xz -cd ubuntu-raring-13.04-armhf-3.8.13-bone20.img.xz > /dev/mmcblk1

replace the img name with MineNinja's img name

This only works if you've booted from the SDcard
.

Got a working cgminer built by a colleague, so next task was to flash my sd setup to emmc.  I noticed that my 8GB sd card had already been partitioned to 2GB by the image write, so I was successful in copying my whole sd to emmc directly.

When booted from sd, sd card is mmcblk0 and emmc is mmcblk1.
dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=1M

Worked ok for me.  Is there any risk in this method I'm not realizing?  For me, its a good way to roll out my nice clean setup to a bunch of BBB quickly.

Not sure, as the method you used is for a system with a Linux/UNIX command prompt. It should work just fine, but don't quote me on it.

Mine was just for Windows users, because the built-in method for flashing, which is sticking the SDcard in an un-powered BBB, holding down the USER/BOOT button, and then applying power wasn't working. ...think it requires a specific Distro setup.

Yes, I am doing all my work from the BBB's shell over ssh.   I also don't know why the ninja image doesn't flash itself with the USER/BOOT startup, but I am not knowledgable enough about BBB at this time to try to investigate that.